National Foster Care Awareness Month

Hey bloggy friends .... I'm going to step on a soapbox for a bit.....

May is National Foster Care Awareness Month.

As I've mentioned before, I sit on the board of a non profit that grants wishes to children in foster care. This is often a population that is overlooked and unseen. Please read below on the facts of foster care.

Facts About Foster Care

Many of the wishes granted by One Simple Wish are made by foster children through their families or through the social service agencies that support them. Foster children are an often invisible population. Foster children need our voice...and here are some facts to explain why:

• Nearly 500,000 children live in the foster care system each year. • About 58% of children in foster care are children of color. • Approximately one third of the children remain in foster care for three years. • Over 20,000 children age out of foster care every year with little to no support. • Children who age out of of foster care are several times more likely to end up homeless, addicted to drugs or incarerated. It is estimated that more than 250,000 prisoners in the US were once foster children. • The average child in foster care remains in the system for more than 2 years, living away from their families, friends and familiar environments.

Children who are confirmed by child protective services as victims of maltreatment by age group: less than 18 (Number) – 2009*

http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/acrossstates/Map.aspx?loct=2&ind=6225&dtm=12944&ch=a&tf=38

Now That You Know The Facts, Here's How You Can Help:

1. Wear This For Awareness.
All month long, show your support for foster children and One Simple Wish.

Set of 2 One Simple Wish Support Bracelets - $5

2. Grant A Wish or Donate.

Browse One Simple Wish wishes and make a small miracle happen for a foster children. Every wish granted, is another sign of hope to a child in foster care.

Donate Now.
91% of all donations go to our wish granting program.

3. Get Involved
Volunteer with One Simple Wish and see first hand how much our work makes a difference. Click here to go to MeetUp.com to see our current volunteer opportunities or contact us to find out more.

4. Spread the word
Simply repost this post to spread the awareness and have your friends and families visit One Simple Wish to see how they can help a child in need.

*Definitions: Victimized children include those who are the subject of at least one substantiated or indicated maltreatment report, and/or who were identified as alternative response victims. Percent estimates of maltreated children in each age group are based on the total number of children less than 18 who are victims of maltreatment. It is important to note that the numbers presented here cannot include victimized children who have never been made known to the system through a maltreatment report. Because of this, and because of state differences in policies and practices—including variations in the legal definitions of maltreatment—readers should exercise caution in interpreting trends and in making state-by-state comparisons. Percentages are not calculated for a small number of cases where age is unknown but are included in the total number of maltreated children. Therefore, percentages may not total to 100 percent. We use the same definition of substantiation as the Child Maltreatment 2009 report. Unlike many of the tabulations in Child Maltreatment our analyses examined the number of children who were maltreated, not the number of maltreatment incidents. Since a child can be the subject of more than one maltreatment incident, the numbers of children in each category presented here will be smaller than Child Maltreatment’s tabulations pertaining to numbers of incidents. Victims who were unborn or are older than 17 years old are not included. State estimates are shown only for states with valid data. Child fatalities are included in the National total, but not within state totals. State-level data on fatalities are not available in NCANDS in order to protect confidentiality. Due to missing state data National totals are not provided before 2004. National estimates include Puerto Rico after 2005. More...

Data Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Administration on Children, Youth and Families, Children’s Bureau. National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) Child File, FFY 2000–2009. NCANDS data used with permission from Cornell University’s National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect website, http://www.ndacan.cornell.edu. The collector of the original data, the funding agency, NDACAN, Cornell University, and the agents or employees of these institutions bear no responsibility for the analyses or interpretations presented here. More...

Footnotes: Updated April 2011.
N.A. – Data not available.

Note: Maps use the natural break classification method, which reflects patterns in the data by dividing the map into naturally occurring groups. Using statistical tools, this method determines cut-off points for each group by identifying large gaps in data values.

Note: The District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands are not included in maps and rankings because they are not states and therefore comparisons on many indicators of child well being are not meaningful.