Please use condoms, it saves lives and Children from being victimized.

 On any given day, there are nearly 424,000 children in foster care in the United States. In 2019, over 672,000 children spent time in U.S. foster care. On average, children remain in state care for over a year and a half, and five percent of children in foster care have languished there for five or more years.

www.childrensrights.org/newsroom/fact-sheets/foster-care/ 

 The foster-care-to-prison pipeline has serious negative effects on a child’s life. The rates at which foster children are placed in the juvenile justice system are unacceptably high. Due to the foster care system’s many flaws, foster children feel its repercussions in their daily lives and many suffer through years of mistreatment. These already disadvantaged youth must hurdle through unreliable levels of care, run-ins with law enforcement, and the unnerving reality that the walls of a juvenile detention facility may wait just around the corner for them. With the high percentage of foster children who are disproportionately likely to face a criminal sentence, there are many ways in which broken procedures could be fixed. Foster care advocates argue that better legislation must be enacted to protect the interests of foster youth who are at risk of being subject to the juvenile justice system. One example is that there are currently only 13 states that protect foster youth from being discriminated against on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity (Juvenile Law Center, 2018). Legal protections must be expanded in all areas of discrimination to which foster children are subject.

 Written by Jessica Miller, Advocacy Supervisor, Juvenile Just The commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) is an issue not only abroad but in our country too, with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) estimating more than 100,000 children currently being exploited in the United States.1 Our most vulnerable children, foster children, often fall victim. According to the National Foster Youth Institute, it is estimated that 60% of CSEC victims have a history in the child welfare system.2 Experts have concluded that the average age for girls entering “the life” is 12 years old, while the average age of children involved in prostitution or working “on the track” when recovered by law enforcement is 14 years old.3

 Children in foster care are disproportionately victimized by human trafficking. Despite widespread acknowledgement of the connection between foster care and human trafficking – it is estimated that 60 percent of child sex trafficking victims have a history in the child welfare system – the topic is understudied and thus, not effectively addressed.

humantraffickingsearch.org/foster-care-and-human-trafficking-nexus/ 

 Foster children were also more than nine times more likely than non-foster children to be prescribed drugs for which there was no FDA-recommended dose for their age. For the most vulnerable foster children, those less than 1 year old, foster children were nearly twice as likely to be prescribed a psychiatric drug compared to non-foster children. 

 There has long been a strong correlation between foster care and homelessness. A study of outcomes of former foster youth in the Midwest found that by age 26, between 31% and 46% had been homeless at least once. Former foster youth are more likely to experience just about every risk factor there is for homelessness.

invisiblepeople.tv/pipeline-to-homelessness-aging-out-of-the-foster-care-system/ 

 After reaching the age of 18, 20% of the children who were in foster care will become instantly homeless. Only 1 out of every 2 foster kids who age out of the system will have some form of gainful employment by the age of 24.

51 Useful Aging Out of Foster Care Statistics | Social ...

nfyi.org/51-useful-aging-out-of-foster-care-statistics-social-race-media/