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Our Latest Report:
The State of Child Welfare 2012
 The high-profile events of the past year understandably have put child abuse at the forefront of public policy discussions. This has led to an unprecedented — and long overdue — look at how we can better protect our children from harm and help those who already have suffered abuse or neglect. Click here for more information. |
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Maximizing “Fostering Connections” to Benefit Pennsylvania Youth
 Maximizing “Fostering Connections” to Benefit Pennsylvania’s Youth examines the societal and fiscal benefits Pennsylvania can achieve by fully implementing the federal Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008. The report, released in February 2012, concludes that implementing Fostering Connections can help more youth achieve permanency through adoption or legal guardianship and can help those who stay in foster care until age 21 make a successful transition to adulthood, while decreasing costs to the commonwealth.
Click here for more information. |
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The State of Child Welfare 2011
 Pennsylvania has taken a comprehensive, family-focused approach in recent years to reduce the number of children in foster care and provide more services to keep children in their homes. The State of Child Welfare report for 2011 provides evidence this strategy is working.
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The State of Child Welfare 2010
 Child safety is mission central for the child welfare system. In recent years Pennsylvania state government officials and their county partners who are responsible for the child welfare system have built on their commitment to child safety with a visionary and aggressive goal: to safely reduce the number of children in foster care and ensure that every child benefits from a safe, stable and permanent family. In our inaugural issue of the State of Child Welfare published last year we posed some fundamental questions about how well Pennsylvania state and county governments were doing to meet this goal. Now we have the data to assess our progress.
Click here for more information. |
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Growing Up and Aging Out
 Executive Summary (PDF)
 Youth in foster care need safe, stable and permanent families. Children don’t just need their families when they are young. Family plays a critical role throughout childhood but that support continues into adulthood. For most children, their parents teach them right from wrong, help them in school, support them as they learn how to make friends and manage relationships. In most families, when a child turns 18, he or she goes off to college, trade school, work or the military. But amidst holiday breaks and summer vacations, most youth have a home to return to and parents to support and guide them for a lifetime – parents who will be there to cheer them on at their college graduation, co-sign a loan to help them buy a car or a house, walk them down the aisle, and celebrate the birth of grandchildren.
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Promoting Permanence
Executive Summary (PDF)
 Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children (PPC) released a new report Nov. 13 on the challenges and solutions to promoting a safe and permanent home for all children in the foster care system. The report shows a large number of children still in foster care after 17 months despite a legal requirement that they be released for adoption. Approximately 5,500 children (of 20,000 children in care annually) living in foster care in Pennsylvania have been in placement for more than 17 months but have not been freed for adoption. Only a little more than 10 percent of these children will be released for adoption within the next six months.
Click here for more information. |
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