Vera Institute of Justice

Overview

Removing children from their homes is traumatic for all involved and research shows that entry into foster care raises the risk of long-term adverse effects on children compared to socioeconomically similar children who are not removed, including poor school performance, homelessness, arrest, chemical dependency, and mental and physical illness. Foster care is also expensive: the United States spends billions of dollars annually to recruit, fund, and supervise foster homes. This policy brief focuses on the child welfare reforms implemented in New York City from 2002 to 2013 that many believe contributed to the decline in the number of children in foster care (from 523,616 in September 2002 to 399,546 in September 2012). It also identifies challenges that the city is likely to encounter in the future in its efforts to sustain and expand these reforms.