Recommitting to Promote Well-Being during National Foster Care Month

May 7, 2013

In honor of National Foster Care Month, ACYF Commissioner Bryan Samuels wrote for the ACF website about the evolution of the child welfare system over the last 25 years and the importance of redoubling our efforts to promote child and family well-being:

This May, we mark National Foster Care Month for the 25th time in our country’s history. In the quarter-century since this observance was established, the child welfare system in the United States has undergone dramatic shifts. Most strikingly, the number of children in foster care has decreased steadily since its peak in the 80s and early 90s; today there are27 percent fewer children in foster care than in 1996.

Certainly this reduction is the result of positive changes in the child welfare system: more children are able to stay safely in their homes, and those who do come into foster care are moving more quickly to permanency. During National Foster Care Month, we can celebrate the progress the child welfare system has made, but we must also recommit ourselves to improving outcomes for the approximately 400,000 children who are in foster care on any given day.

Read the rest of Commissioner Bryan Samuels’s post marking National Foster Care Month on the ACF Blog, and find resources for National Foster Care Month on the Child Welfare Information Gateway.

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