A Multi-Pronged, Evidence-Based Approach Can Reduce the Number of Children in Foster Care
By Lonna Davis, Vice President, Children and Youth
July 31, 2026
Most of us associate summertime with family and community, spending time together, enjoying the outdoors, having backyard barbecues with friends. But we are the lucky ones.
Some 344,000 children were in foster care in 2024, the last year for which we have data, with 70,000 children waiting to be adopted into a family. A quarter of children who “age out” of foster care – meaning they leave state care without having been adopted – are homeless within just a few years.
In some states, particularly those that offer few supports to struggling parents while being quick to remove children from their families, foster youth may live in hotels or sleep on the floors of child welfare agencies.
In our country, there are simply too many children without a home.
To address this issue, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has launched “A Home for Every Child,” a new initiative to reduce the number of children entering foster care and increase the number of foster homes available to them.
It’s an important and worthy goal, and one we at Futures Without Violence (FUTURES) share. We’ve been working diligently for decades to tackle the first part of the equation: reducing the number of children going into foster care by increasing the capacity of families to safely care for their children at home. We’re doing that by improving the child welfare system’s response to domestic violence, and building supports for families before they even come to the attention of child welfare.
Supporting Parents Can Help Keep Kids Safe
Not everyone knows that domestic violence is one of the most common risk factors for child maltreatment among children involved in the child welfare system – slightly higher than parental mental health or substance abuse issues, though the three sometimes co-occur.
Yet many child welfare agencies don’t know the best ways to address domestic violence and help children who have been exposed to it.
In some instances, they underestimate the danger posed by abusive parents and fail to support parents who are victims of abuse so they can live independently of their abusers. In other instances, they over-estimate the risk or blame the mother for not doing enough to protect her child from witnessing the abuse (or its consequences). Often they treat all children exposed to violence the same way, even though each child has a unique experience with widely varying degrees of risk.
The result? Too many children are removed from homes where support for parents could help keep families together and children safe.
When we take children away from loving, capable parents and place them in the care of agencies that are overburdened, we are failing, often creating life-long trauma for children who had an alternative to foster care.
There is a better way.
Ways to Increase Family Safety
A multi-pronged, evidence-based approach can reduce the number of children in foster care while increasing child and family safety.
Steps include:
- Educate state child welfare agencies about how to safely support children in homes with domestic violence. We need fewer removals and more success in meeting non-abusing parents’ needs for safety and economic independence instead of pushing children into foster care.
- Increase funding for domestic violence services, including work with men and fathers. Significant increases in funding for the Office of Family Violence Prevention and Services would enable local community-based organizations with expertise in domestic violence to collaborate with child welfare organizations. These programs need funding to increase their capacity to meet the needs of survivors and their children.
- Incentivize innovative partnerships between child welfare and domestic violence agencies. ACF should re-issue grants that support innovation with the explicit goal of reducing unnecessary child removal while increasing child and family safety. Our Promising Futures initiative is doing just that in 55 communities across the country, with results that include improving children’s safety and reducing use of foster care.
- Initiate lasting, longer-term change. It’s time to rethink child protection so that fewer children are brought into the system at the outset, and more families get the help they need. Most children exposed to domestic violence do not need to be separated from their families. Instead, survivors and their children need a compassionate response that offers safety, healing, and economic security.
Reducing the Number of Kids in Foster Care Saves Money
How do we know this works? In one example from our Promising Futures program, four Illinois counties placed domestic violence experts in child welfare offices so services and supports could be coordinated, utilizing state funding and a federal grant from the Office of Family Violence and Prevention Services.
The result? Seven percent more children stayed with a parent who survived domestic violence, reducing use of foster care and saving an estimated $6.3 to $11.5 million
We know that robust community supports, coordination between state child welfare agencies and domestic violence service providers, and access to evidence-based responsible fatherhood programs would go a long way toward achieving the very important goals A Home for Every Child is advancing.
Together, we can shift resources to genuinely support families and allow many more children to have safe homes with loving parents.
