Thread: 70-plus children missing from Kansas' foster care system

The Parental Rights Foundation this week reviewed the five latest AFCARS reports and uncovered some disturbing trends. According to the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) summary of 2016 data released in October of last year and the four previous reports, the number of children in foster care nationwide has been trending upward since 2012, while the average age of children in foster care is trending down.

We know of far too many cases where families are invaded and divided when they shouldn’t be, which raises serious alarms when the foster care population rises. And the younger a child is taken into foster care, the more severely they will feel its negative effects throughout their life.

Further, parental rights are terminated at an alarming rate, with such judgments thrown around cavalierly as though they were not “the death sentence of family court.”

For all these reasons, we found the following most visible trends deeply troubling.