The number of 13- to 17-year-old foster youth in congregate care decreased from 27,500 in 2023 to 26,100 in 2024, according to a new Child Trends analysis of federal foster care data. This decline is consistent with a downward trend that has been occurring since 2009, with the exception of a spike in 2023.
The number of youth ages 13 to 17 in foster care who reside in congregate care settings decreased from 2023 to 2024
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Source: Child Trends’ analysis of data from the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS). The figure includes young people ages 13 to 17 in congregate care at the end of the listed federal fiscal year.
Congregate care includes group homes and larger institutions that supervise youth, as well as those providing intensive behavioral health care.[1] Many research studies (although not all) have found that youth fare worse when placed in congregate care settings, including experiences of maltreatment in such settings. Congregate care is also three to five times as expensive as family-based care. In light of this, several federal laws aim to reduce congregate care use, except when needed for intensive therapeutic treatment, including the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997, the 2008 Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act, and the 2018 Family First Prevention Services Act.
While congregate care use decreased from 2023 to 2024, it remains higher than some in the field would like given recent policy shifts. Some researchers attribute the reliance on congregate care to a lack of foster families into which youth could otherwise be placed. However, not all jurisdictions have a shortage of foster families and many foster parents likely refuse youth with challenging behaviors. On the other hand, the continued decline in the number of youth in congregate care could reflect the lack of accessible residential treatment options. Whether congregate care is an appropriate placement for youth likely depends both on the specific type of congregate care institution and on each youth’s characteristics and needs.
Interested in learning more about congregate care? Research on older transition-age youth in care is available on Child Trends’ website. Examples include a brief on the 2018 Family First Prevention Services Act and how it and other federal laws regarding federal funding play a role in states’ financing of congregate care. Contact Sarah Catherine Williams at swilliams@childtrends.org, Rachel Rosenberg at rrosenberg@childtrends.org, or any of the experts in Child Trends’ child welfare research area for more information.
[1] For the congregate care data presented here, Child Trends combined the categories of “group care” and “institution” in the AFCARS data. Starting in FY 2022, the AFCARS data were submitted to the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) in a new format, which limits comparability across years. Furthermore, the data presented here are based on the original format for consistency with Child Trends’ repository of state-level child welfare data and will not match the ACF Dashboards.