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The college where I teach, focuses on the issue of foster children all throughout the year, but especially during May. Here are some of the statistics and information that they distribute:

On any given day there are more than 400,000 children in foster care. If you were able to bring together all these children into one city, this city would be the 43rd or 44th biggest city in the United States. This city made up of foster children would be bigger than cities like Miami, Pittsburg, St Louis, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Minneapolis, New Orleans and Honolulu. Over the course of a year nearly 700,000 children spend at least some time in foster care and that makes this population of children and youth bigger than all but 18 U.S. cities.

Approximately 254,000 will leave foster care this year, nearly 128,000 will be reunified with their families, another 52,000 will find new loving families through adoption and 36,000 will stay with a guardian or with their families through kinship care. But at the same time 28,000 youth will leave foster care because they became too old and they “aged” out of foster care and 1500 will runaway. Another 254,000 will enter foster care and replace the ones that left. Far too many will spend the entire year in care.

Aging out of foster care and into college is a difficult transition that few make successfully. ... 2.5 percent of former foster children in the Midwest had graduated from college by age 26.

May is Foster Care Awareness Month,
Rosie (& Mr. Fun), aka Carol