About PlainFoster

Our Mission

PlainFoster exists to make public foster-care statistics easier to inspect without separating them from their source.

Federal tables contain useful state-level counts, but the files are spread across workbooks and jurisdiction reports.

We turn those files into readable profiles, single-measure comparisons, and count trends while preserving a reproducible path back to each input.

The intended audience includes researchers, journalists, foster families, advocates, students, and readers seeking a careful starting point.

PlainFoster does not try to reduce a child-welfare system to one score or declare that one state has solved a complex public responsibility.

Our editorial philosophy is simple: publish what the source supports, explain the denominator, and withhold what cannot be rebuilt.

What You Can Find Here

The public state directory covers the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Each profile shows children in care on September 30, annual entries, annual exits, and selected FY2022 discharge outcomes.

Profiles also show median time in care among children exiting and selected placement-setting shares from the jurisdiction reports.

The trend tables contain seven published count series for every federal fiscal year from FY2013 through FY2022.

Metric pages rank one measure at a time and display the unweighted mean across the 51 public jurisdictions.

Rankings do not adjust for case mix, state law, court systems, service availability, or reporting practices.

Data Sources

Every figure currently served by PlainFoster comes from files published by the federal Administration for Children and Families.

The first source is the AFCARS Trends in Foster Care and Adoption release.

Its state workbook supplies the FY2013–FY2022 count series used on public state pages.

Its national workbook supplies the official national counts shown on the homepage.

The second source is the ACF archive of FY2022 AFCARS jurisdiction reports.

PlainFoster uses one report for every state, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.

Those reports supply placement-setting counts, discharge-reason counts, total exits, and median time in care among exits.

The source contract and publisher links are documented on the methodology page.

Current Data Scope

The comparable public series runs from FY2013 through FY2022.

The current outcome and placement measures use the FY2022 preliminary-estimate jurisdiction reports.

Counts describe a federal fiscal-year reporting system and are not estimates of the caseload today.

Children in care is a point-in-time count for September 30.

Entries and exits are events recorded across the fiscal year.

Reunification, adoption, and aging-out percentages use documented discharge counts divided by total exits.

Placement percentages use documented placement counts divided by children in care on September 30.

Median length of stay describes children exiting care, not everyone who remained in care at year end.

ACF's national total includes Puerto Rico, while PlainFoster's public state table stops at the 50 states plus D.C.

How the Database Is Rebuilt

A checked-in ETL downloads or reads the official files and builds the public SQLite database from scratch.

The workbook parser reads the published worksheet data rather than copying figures into page templates.

The report parser extracts values from the table coordinates on the relevant FY2022 report pages.

Calculated rates are rounded only after the underlying numerator and denominator are read.

Each source is recorded with its URL, local path, retrieval date, scope, and SHA-256 hash.

The rebuild hard-fails if expected state, trend, metric, or source row counts change unexpectedly.

It also hard-fails if official national and Alabama checkpoints do not match.

A discharge-conservation check prevents the extracted exit reasons from exceeding reported total exits.

Independent rebuilds are compared before a replacement database is promoted.

Why Some Former Measures Are Absent

A 2026 source-lineage audit found that the previous database could not be recreated from its checked-in ETL.

Representative national and Alabama counts also disagreed with the federal workbook the site cited.

PlainFoster replaced that database with a clean rebuild from the official files.

Per-capita, maltreatment, re-entry, placement-stability, maltreatment-recurrence, and timely-permanency displays were removed.

Their former values lacked a defensible archived-source path in the prior pipeline.

A removed measure can return only after an exact publisher file, period, definition, unit, and tested parser are documented.

Withholding an unsupported number is part of the product, not an omission to conceal.

Grades and Rankings

The A–F profile grade is a PlainFoster aid and is not a federal assessment.

It equally weights four within-release percentile ranks.

The four measures are reunification, adoption, aging out, and median length of stay.

Higher values are treated as favorable for reunification and adoption.

Lower values are treated as favorable for aging out and median length of stay.

The four percentiles are averaged before the letter band is assigned.

A grade summarizes this narrow four-measure profile and does not establish child safety or overall system quality.

A single-measure ranking is kept separate from the composite grade.

Limitations and Responsible Use

AFCARS is a state-reported administrative dataset, and cross-state comparisons require care.

State laws, courts, information systems, definitions, case mix, and service structures differ.

A higher or lower rate does not by itself identify the policy or practice that produced it.

The data does not describe the experience of every child or family.

It should not be used to make decisions about an individual case.

This information is for general reference only and should not be considered legal, medical, social-work, or other professional advice.

Readers making consequential decisions should consult the original agency report and qualified local professionals.

Editorial Independence

PlainFoster is independent and is not affiliated with ACF, HHS, a state child-welfare agency, or another government body.

Government agencies do not review or endorse PlainFoster's calculations, grades, prose, or design.

Source files determine the published numbers; advertisers do not choose rankings or receive preferred treatment.

We do not sell rankings, accept paid placement, or conduct outreach on behalf of covered entities.

PlainFoster is operated by Kiznis Studio, an independent data-engineering studio (solo-operated).

PlainFoster is responsible for source selection, methodology, corrections, and public explanations.

Corrections and Contact

Corrections should identify the page, displayed value, expected value, source URL, and reporting period when possible.

A reported discrepancy is checked against the publisher file and then traced through the parser and database.

If the source supports a correction, the ETL is fixed before the database is rebuilt.

We do not patch a wrong number only in the visible page because that would leave the underlying defect intact.

Material corrections are documented in the source contract or site changelog.

Questions, source suggestions, and correction reports can be sent through the contact page.