Autistics more likely to be Foster children

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Foster care is intended as a temporary solution for children whose parents cannot care for them. At any one time, about half a million children in the United States are in foster homes.
The foster care system has a reputation as a place for children who are victims of abuse or neglect; this reputation is only partially deserved. About half of children in foster homes have a chronic disability that can make caring for them difficult. In fact, many of these children enter foster care because they have complex medical needs that their families cannot manage, often because of limited resources.

When children enter the foster care system, they are automatically enrolled in Medicaid, and their foster parents receive funds for their care. As a result, this system is becoming a critical component of caring for children with disabilities.

We have found that children with autism are particularly likely to end up in the foster care system.

Long- and short-term outcomes for children in foster care are not good: Children who spend any amount of time in foster homes are less likely than their peers to graduate from high school and more likely to end up homeless, in the criminal justice system or in long-term residential care.

Foster care may be an even less desirable place for children with autism, given their special needs. Although foster parents may receive some specialized training, it is generally not nearly enough to help them adequately care for these children.

Because all children in foster care are on Medicaid, using Medicaid claims is one of the best ways to study the prevalence and healthcare experiences of children with autism in the system.

To see if there is something specific to autism that puts a child at risk for ending up in foster care, we compared children who have autism, intellectual disability or neither.

We found that the prevalence of children with neither condition in foster care was stable from 2001 to 2007, ranging from 3.5 to 3.9 percent. The prevalence of children with intellectual disability was more than twice as high in 2001 (8.3 percent), but went down over time to 7.3 percent in 2007.

The prevalence of children with autism in foster care started out slightly lower; it was 7.5 percent in 2001. It climbed to 10.5 percent in 2005 and then declined to 9.1 percent in 2007.

When we statistically controlled for children’s age, race, sex and state of residence, we found that children with autism were 2.4 times more likely, and children with intellectual disability 1.9 times more likely, to enter foster care than typical children.

I was a foster child...until I got adopted at four. Apparently, I had to be taken away from my severely autistic biological mother who wasn't fit to raise a child.