New report reveals how Maine can continue its success by providing services to families in crisis and continuing the state’s commitment to kinship care

A report released today by the Annie E. Casey Foundation finds that nearly 57,000 children under the care of our nation’s child welfare systems are living without the stability and support of a family. The new KIDS COUNT® policy report, Every Kid Needs a Family: Giving Children in the Child Welfare System the Best Chance for Success , finds that 1 in 7 children who have been removed from their homes by child welfare systems are living in group placements, even though federal law requires that they live in families whenever possible. Group placements are happening despite evidence that family care is the most cost-effective and emotionally, psychologically and developmentally beneficial solution for children.

But according to the report, 94 percent of Maine children in the state’s child welfare system are living in a family setting, either in a kinship or foster care placement, compared to a national average of 84 percent. Maine is amongst the leaders in the U.S., ranking in the top four states for highest percentage of family-style placements. This can be explained by Maine’s commitment to child welfare policies that stress kinship care as the first priority for out of home placements. While this is great news for Maine kids in state custody, it is imperative that both state and local governments, as well as public and private agencies, continue to work together to maintain and further the existing success. Keeping kids connected to family, their kin if not their parents, helps them stay safe and strong. When birth parents cannot care for a child, relatives can offer an existing relationship and connection to his or her identity and culture, making an eventual return home easier. Research shows that rates of positive experiences are highest for children who live with kin and lowest for children who experience group placement. With more children in state custody, the need for foster and adoptive parents has grown. According to Maine KIDS COUNT data , there were over 500 more kids in state custody in December 2014 than there were in December 2011. Currently Maine has a shortage of foster and adoptive parents, at a time when demand for placements is growing. Last month, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that it needs more than 100 additional foster families and another 100 adoptive families. Every Kid Needs a Family highlights the promising ways that state and local leaders, policymakers, judges and private providers can work together as they strive to help these children who are living in group placements – and overall, the more than 400,000 children in the care of child welfare systems across the country. The report also recommends how communities can widen the array of services available to help parents and children under stress within their own homes. Every Kid Needs a Family outlines policy and practice solutions for transforming the child welfare systems and ensuring that more U.S. children are living in families:

• Increase service options: Communities that provide a wide range of services have more options that enable children to remain safely in families.
• Strengthen pool of families: Public and private agencies should do more to find families for children and to make sure those families have the support they need to help children thrive. For children who must at least temporarily live outside their homes, child welfare agencies should prioritize recruiting, retaining and supporting kinship caregivers.
• Keep residential treatment short, and with family in focus: Residential treatment should be strengthened to meet children’s acute needs in a customized, short-term way that equips young people to live in a family and to maintain family connections throughout treatment.
• Require justification for restrictive placements: Substantial justification should be required by child welfare systems and by the courts before young people are sent to group placements.

Every Kid Needs a Family: Giving Children in the Child Welfare System the Best Chance for Success  is available at www.aecf.org/resources/every-kid-needs-a-family/. Additional information is available in the KIDS COUNT Data Center , which also contains the most recent national, state and local data on hundreds of indicators of child well-being. The Data Center allows users to create rankings, maps and graphs for use in publications and on websites, and to view real-time information on mobile devices.