Foster Care Awareness Month
To learn more about becoming a Foster Parent with SOS Illinois, visit us at sosillinois.org/fpq
Did you know that May is Foster Care Awareness Month? SOS Children’s Villages Illinois highlights the needs to create a sense of community for foster kids and keeping siblings together. To read more, here is a link to SOS Children’s Villages Illinois CEO, Tim McCormick, speaking to Hinsdale Living Magazine in 2018 about the goals of SOS Illinois and how you can get involved. For those of you ready to dive right in, see below more information on the phase’s of becoming a foster parent at SOS Illinois.
Foster Care Facts (via American SPCC)
45% of foster children live in non-relative foster family homes.
32% of foster children live in relative foster family homes.
23% of foster children live in institutions, group homes, trial and pre-adoptive homes.
118,000 children and youth in America are waiting to be adopted.
On average, a child can spend almost 12 to 20 months in foster care.
10% of foster children spend more than 5 years in foster care.
26% of children entering foster care are under the age of one.
About 22% of youth in foster care are age 13 or older.
20,500 youth are emancipated from foster care without reunifying with their families, or being adopted.
Of youth who age out of foster care, 1/4 are incarcerated within 2 years and only 1/2 graduate from high school.
Children and adolescents with foster care experience are diagnosed with PTSD at twice the rate of U.S. war veterans.