Enhanced AFCARS Dashboard: Data on Foster Care and Adoption Now Includes Tribal Reporting

Dear Partners and Colleagues,

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), through its Administration for Children and Families (ACF), has released preliminary fiscal year (FY) 2024 foster care and adoption data with enhancements to the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) Dashboard. The preliminary data now includes reporting for eight federally recognized tribes after the AFCARS 2020 final rule, advanced under the first Trump administration, required, input from Title IV-E tribes. The tribes represented in the data collection include: Cherokee Nation; Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians; Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, Michigan; Navajo Nation, Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah; Pascua Yaqui Tribe of Arizona; Penobscot Nation; Port Gamble S'Klallam Tribe and Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community of the Salt River Reservation, Arizona.

Preliminary analysis of trends in the FY 2024 dataset includes a continued decline in the number of children entering and remaining in foster care. On September 30, 2024, the last day of FY 2024, approximately 329,000 children were in foster care, down 3.2% from the prior fiscal year. In FY 2024, nearly 171,000 children entered foster care, a decrease of 1.8% from FY 2023. In FY 2024, there were 176,730 exits from foster care, with 45% of children reunified with parents or caregivers and 27% adopted. Additionally, 39% of children in care were placed with relatives or kin through kinship care.

The Dashboard makes child welfare data more transparent, accessible, and actionable for state agencies, tribal governments, and advocates. The updated dashboard now includes single-year age counts, placement rates, comparisons between national and state percentages, average time from entry to exit, and expanded filters for national, state, and tribal data. These enhancements improve usability and reflect ACF’s commitment to transparency and timely reporting on foster care and adoption data.

Explore the AFCARS Dashboard, and, if you have questions or feedback, contact us at CBDatateam@ACF.hhs.gov.

Jennifer Haight

Director, Division of Performance Measurement and Improvement

Children’s Bureau

Administration for Children and Families

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