Every youth in foster care needs and deserves a permanent, loving family. Despite the nation’s stated goal to achieve permanency for children, in 2015 more than 20,000 youth aged out of foster care, meaning they left the child welfare system without a permanent family.
The number of youth who age out of foster care has remained above 20,000 in recent years, even in the wake of increased efforts to achieve permanence for all children in foster care.
For far too many youth, aging out of care results in homelessness, work instability, and a lack of stable, loving relationships with adults. These grim facts are even more heartbreaking because we know these youth could have found a permanent family, if only they had been given the chance.
Younger foster children have a much better chance of finding a permanent family. Once waiting children in foster care are nine or older, they are much less likely to be adopted.
In 2015, about 40 percent of waiting children were nine or older, but 75 percent of those who were adopted were younger than nine.
The articles below are designed to help adoption professionals find and support families for older children and teens. Most of the articles were published in Adoptalk, our quarterly newsletter, which is a benefit of NACAC membership.
- Both Sides of the System: The Cycle of Adoption
- Successful Older Child Adoption: Lessons from the Field
- A Family for Every Child: Strategies to Achieve Permanence for Older Foster Children and Youth
- Adoption = Forever and Always
- From Fear to Advocacy: My Journey from Foster Care to Helping Others
- From Both Sides of the System: The Cycle of Adoption
- Youth Are Never Too Old to Be Adopted
- Teens Need Permanency and Purpose
- It’s Time to Make Older Child Adoption a Reality: Because Every Child and Youth Deserves a Family