Paul Szmal: We're going to focus for the next few minutes on foster care and to talk about that with us, Jennifer Cox is here from Family Counseling Service of the Finger Lakes. Jennifer, good to have you back.
Guest: I'm happy to be here.
Paul Szmal: So let's start by just kind of giving some basic numbers on how many people are doing foster care here in state and how many kids are actually part of foster care.
Guest: This is a very difficult thing to track because so much can happen within the span of a year, of course. But for anyone who's interested, the statistics and numbers are available on the OCFS website. And here's some of what I was able to pull up. In New York state, in the year 2025, there were 12,814 youth placed in care. 22.7% of those were between the ages of two and five years old. And 21% of those were between the ages of 14 and 17 years old. So those were the largest age groups in foster care last year. 36% of those youth are Black, 27% are Latino, and 24% are white. Those are the largest groups by race demographic. And about 12% of them return to care about two years after returning home. So there are a lot of those youth who have been in foster care more than once.
Paul Szmal: No, that's got to be difficult to be in and out and in and out. That doesn't really create a stable environment, does it?
Guest: No, it doesn't. Foster care is very difficult for a lot of different reasons. First of all, 25 to 30% of foster care youth across the country are diagnosed with PTSD at some point in their lives, which makes them about four times more likely than the average population to have PTSD. One of the ways we measure trauma in individuals is what we call adverse childhood experiences or the ACE score. And foster care youth are much more likely to have a very high ACE score, usually four or higher. Foster care youth are often removed not only from their parents' homes, but from the neighborhoods and the school districts that they were in, sometimes even having to be placed outside of county because county foster homes are often very limited in number and you have to go find where someone has an available bed. So these are youth that are not only being removed from the family that loves them, but are being, sometimes, or being removed from traumatic environments in their homes, but now they're being removed from their school districts, their teachers, their friends, their classmates, and they may be put in a new classroom environment that's following a whole new curriculum and they have to play catch-up. And then a disproportionate number of foster youth will change placements about two times a year, which means they're having to do that multiple times in the school year. So that's a lot of challenges for not only the children that are in foster care, but it's challenging too for the parents that are administering that care.
Paul Szmal: Absolutely. 30 to 50 percent of foster families quit after the first year. It is very challenging to step up into this role because you're not just bringing the child into your home and then trying to provide the love and the care that that child needs while they're with you. You're also trying to navigate Medicaid, you're trying to navigate the DSS system, you're trying to navigate family court, and you're trying to hold all of these various pieces of the puzzle together for this child. And sometimes they're easier to work with than others.
Guest: Very true.
Paul Szmal: We're talking with Jennifer Conks from Family Counseling Service of the Finger Lakes. It's National Foster Care Month here in May, so we're focusing on that. Now we've laid out the challenges that both the caregivers and the foster youth are facing. What is the state doing to try to remediate some of this?
Guest: So the state is gradually trying to make progress in some very key elements that we found help with long-term permanency for youth and their families. First of all, we are seeing an increase of youth being able to discharge successfully back home to their parents. In the year 2025, 57.5 percent of youth successfully discharged home and 20 percent discharged to an adoption where they had a permanent family resource. We're also trying to do things like keep siblings together in placement so that they have that relationship that matters so much. 73 percent of sibling pairs were able to stay intact in foster care last year, 58 percent of groups of three siblings, and then 27 percent of groups of siblings that were four or more, which is an increase from previous years, although that continues to be something we want to improve. We're also trying to match foster care youth with families that have a similar cultural background to themselves, because when you're being removed from your home, you're being removed from your school, you're being removed from your church, for example, you're being removed from a community where you feel like you belong, and this can't perfectly replicate that, but it can help with some of those feelings of isolation and disruption. So 50 percent of foster youth last year were placed in a foster home that matches some of their cultural background. Now, white children benefited from this the most. 77 percent of white foster youth were placed with white foster families. 61 percent of black foster youth were placed with black foster families. So that's something we're continuing to look at increasing as well.
Paul Szmal: Now, there are things that people can do, Jennifer, even if they're not foster parents, to help foster children along the way.
Guest: Absolutely. We really need to look at foster care not just as what's happening specifically in the foster home or in the birth parent home. We really need to be looking at what we can do as broad communities to support foster youth because they are experiencing so much displacement. There's no guarantee they're going to stay with one foster family at a time. So the environment really needs to come together, especially because 25 to 33 percent of foster care of youth in homelessness have a history of foster care, and 46 percent of foster youth across a three-state spread experience homelessness at least once by age 26. So a couple things that we can do to really target this. One, as a community, we can come together and try to build more mentorship programs. So many of the youth that are in foster care until they're above the age of 18 have been in foster care for more than three years. In fact, I believe the statistic is 53 percent of those who age out of foster care have been in care for more than three years, which means they're not getting those normative like job training experiences. They're not getting those normative like high school guidance counselor helping you plan your future experiences. So mentorship programs, Big Brothers Big Sisters, employment mentorship is a huge step of what we can do for these foster youth. You can speak to your local politicians or even your state politicians and really emphasize protecting social welfare programs that help prevent some of the family separation in the first place, and then continue to go on to fund care for foster youth. Every foster youth is on Medicare, for example, and that's what lets them have access to their medical care. And honestly, the biggest thing you can do even if you're not sure how to step into those any specific organized roles in your church community, your school community, when you're organizing family events, for example, we can do our part to use very inclusive language. We can talk with when we're talking to kids in a group, we can talk about your trusted adults instead of focusing specific on your mom and dad, because not all of the kids in our communities are having that normative experience right now. And we can do our best to help them be included.
Paul Szmal: It's a tough road to go for either the children or the adults that are involved in the program. But it sounds to me, Jennifer, like we are trying to make some positive changes. And although change is difficult, we're starting to see from the numbers that you're telling me some positive results.
Guest: Change is very difficult. And part of it is because there's a heavy amount of burnout for the individuals who work in the foster care programs. I should know I actually used to myself before I came to Family Counseling Service. In fact, I'm not locating the number I had written down. But I believe it was about 40% of turnover for DSS workers who work in foster care by year, which is huge. And we know that the more caseworkers a foster youth has, the lower their chances of permanency and discharge to a permanent home after foster care goes down. If you have one county worker, you return to a permanent home with like 70% chance. But as soon as that number goes up, it's exponentially lower. So a huge thing that we need to do as a state to help continue to increase those positive outcomes to increase the permanency and the returns home within like a two-year span that we're seeing. We really need to look at how can we structure our resources so that we're not dealing with like one DSS worker that has 70 cases.
Paul Szmal: Right, right. Because that contributes to the burnout when you when you're trying to deal with essentially more than you can effectively handle.
Guest: Yeah, and then you're not able to step up and give these families what they need either. Everybody loses when our system is just so limited.
Paul Szmal: If people want to find out more information about becoming a foster parent, or maybe they already are a foster parent, they're looking for some resources, what are some places they can turn to, Jennifer?
Guest: Well, I know I just said that we're trying to prevent the burnout with our DSS workers, but frankly reaching out to the county is the best resource you have in order to know what is immediately available in your area. There are movements across the country that are trying to do things to support foster care in general, but they tend to be very widespread. The most enthusiastic resource I found was unfortunately located in California, which is a bit far from us. So I think this is one of those situations where our environment, our community really needs to come together and recognize that this is a big gap that we need to build a bridge for. Now, if you need any kind of services that Family Counseling Service of the Finger Lakes offers, you can check out their website. It's fcsfl.org.
Paul Szmal: Jennifer, as always, appreciate the conversation. Thank you so much.
Guest: Thank you for your time. I appreciate it.
