May 15, 2012 View past editions of Adoption Triad Welcome to the May 2012 edition of Adoption Triad, a monthly e-brief for adoption professionals. In honor of National Foster Care Month, this edition focuses on encouraging the adoption of children and youth in foster care, celebrating those making a difference for the more than 400,000 children and youth currently in foster care across the country, and accessing foster care and adoption statistics. Review the National Foster Care Month website to read and hear real-life personal stories of children and youth in and adopted from foster care. Some of these stories were adapted from the Voice for Adoption Family Portrait Project. Visit the Child Welfare/Foster Care Statistics section of Information Gateway's website for State and national data on the number of children in the child welfare system, trends in foster care caseloads, and well-being outcomes. The Child Welfare Outcomes Report Data site provides the latest data from the Child Welfare Outcomes Report to Congress. The report builder allows users to select and view the specific State(s), data, years, and display format: graph, table, or map outputs. It also allows for comparison of data across States. See an overview of the number of children adopted from foster care in each State: http://cwoutcomes.acf.hhs.gov/data/tables/adopted_overview. Read Information Gateway's How Many Children Were Adopted in 2007 and 2008? for information on adoption statistics and adoption trends for adoptions from all sources. It notes that 136,000 children were adopted annually in the United States in 2007 and 2008, and approximately two-fifths of all adoptions occurred through the foster care system. Public agency adoptions accounted for 39 percent (52,657) of all adoptions in 2007 and 41 percent (55,303) of all adoptions in 2008. In 2000, approximately 40 percent of all adoptions (50,000) were public adoptions. Adoption Triad is published on the third Tuesday of each month. We welcome your feedback on Adoption Triad, as well as on our website and publications. Regards, Phyllis Charles Adoption Program Manager Child Welfare Information Gateway Adoption Triad is distributed at no charge by Child Welfare Information Gateway (http://www.childwelfare.gov), a service of the Children's Bureau/ACF/HHS (http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb). It provides adoption professionals with practical information to help them identify, recruit, train, and retain families for children and youth, and provides resources on all aspects of adoption for members of the adoption triad: birth parents, adopted people, and adoptive parents. Other free subscriptions from Child Welfare Information Gateway are available at www.childwelfare.gov/admin/subscribe