Children in Foster Care in Canada in 2016 & 2021

Nation-wide information on the number of children in out-of-home care is lacking in Canada – which largely stems from the fact that child welfare falls under the jurisdiction of provinces, territories, and First Nations. [...] The number of children in out-of-home care is usually reported either as (1) a point-in-time count of the number of children in out-of-home care at a given date (e.g., month-end or year-end), as (2) the number of children who enter out-of-home care in a certain year, or as (3) the number of children in out-of-home care at the beginning of the year plus all entries during the year. [...] Finally, the voluntary and discretionary nature of the Census can lead to biases in the data that might contribute to underestimating the total number of children in foster care. [...] In 2021, an estimated 26,680 children in Canada were reported to the Census as living in a foster home, a rate of 4.45 children per 1,000; a slight decrease from the rate of 4.93 per 1,000 reported in 2016. [...] To obtain the rate of foster children in care, the total number of foster children is divided by the child population and multiplied by 1,000.