Foster Care is Hard

As we enter the 9th year of operations at TFFC, we want to share some insights on what’s happened for the collective foster care population we’ve served over the past 8 years.  Warning: some of this information is hard to read, but it is equally important to know, so we can continue to work together to make life better for youth in foster care.

Since 2016, we have served 2,276 foster youth (along with 1241 at-risk youth).  We’ve seen 627 foster youth return to their families and 476 youth adopted into new families, who were unable to reunify with biological family.  We have seen 376 youth age out of foster care with no permanent connection to family.

The average time these youth spent in foster care is just over 20 months.  We’ve seen some youth stay in care less than a week and we have served others who been in care for over 10 years. We’ve also seen a handful of youth who have been in and out of foster care multiple times over the past 8 years, both from failed reunification with biological family and failed adoptions.

The foster youth we’ve served have had an average of 1.73 homes while in care, with the majority having only 1 home, but unfortunately, others have had 10+ placements while in care.  We seen 131 youth placed in detention and 41 youth go to college.  For older youth especially, community support is the difference between success and failure.

Foster care is no easy life and for the kids in foster care, the tough times are really, really tough.  From going through failed adoptions, to realizing your parents are unable to make the progress needed for you to come home, to having to stay in the system until adulthood, these are all sad realities for some youth in care.

This is why we value our TFFC community so greatly. We rely on you to help us support and uplift these youth where we can, giving them hope for a brighter future.