Watching the Numbers 2023: Covid-19's Effects on Child Welfare System
Child welfare activity, which declined with the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic, remains below pre-pandemic levels.
Our annual Watching the Numbers report tracks trends in key child welfare indicators and our latest report includes six years of data ending with City Fiscal Year 2022. Notably, this year’s report includes monthly data from the onset of the pandemic in early 2020 through August 2022.
Lower levels of activity remain for: abuse and neglect reports; investigations; court filings and orders; mandated services; foster care admissions; and discharge outcomes. These and other indicators have stayed below recent historical trends. Less child welfare activity has not made children less safe at home and advocates point to important lessons learned during the pandemic – when a more generous social safety net helped to meet the needs of families and diminished abuse and neglect reports and child welfare surveillance.
Some key trends in this year’s report:
Continuing a long-term trend, children entering foster care and the total foster care population declined. The number of children admitted to care stayed below 3,000 in calendar year (CY) 2021.
After dropping to a pandemic low of 240 adoptions completed in CY2020, the number of adoptions increased to 438 in 2021, still significantly lower than in previous years. The percent completed in less than two years was 10% in 2021.
The number of children discharged to reunification within a year increased in 2021.
Average caseloads for child protective workers increased to 8.4 in FY22, and 105 workers had caseloads over 15.
The number of families receiving preventive services remained low, at 15,395 in FY22, with lower numbers of new families in evidence-based services and new entries in preventive care overall.
The racial disparities among children in foster care remained high in 2022, with Black and Latinx children representing over 85 percent of children in foster care.
Monthly data for selected indicators remained lower than in pre-pandemic 2019. After a sharp drop in the spring of 2020, monthly data for investigations, emergency removals, abuse and neglect cases filed in Family Court, court-ordered supervision, preventive services, and admissions to and discharges from foster care all increased. Nevertheless, they still remained below pre-pandemic levels.
This report is made possible thanks to the generous support of the Child Welfare Fund and the Ira W. DeCamp Foundation.
