Population Flow Exhibit 4: National Estimates of the Substitute Care and Adoption Populations, 1991 VCIS Survey

Population Flow Exhibit 4
National Estimates of the Substitute Care and Adoption Populations, 1991 VCIS Survey

Population	Number of Reporting States	Reporting States Total	National Estimate
Substitute Care(1):
Children in Care at the Start of the Reporting Period	37	335,043	404,878
Children Entering Care	37	204,709	247,378
Children Exiting Care	37	188,440	227,718
Children in Care at the End of the Reporting Period	50	417,930	423,283
Adoption(2):
Children Adopted	19	6,073	16,680
Children Waiting to be Adopted	17	6,682	20,686
Children in Non-finalized Adoptive Homes	16	6,664	20,060

Source: VCIS Survey, Part I, questions 1, 2, 4, and 5, and Part II, questions 15, 20, and 25.

For substitute care, reporting states include only those states that passed the flow-data edit; i.e., states where the number of children at the end of the reporting period equals the number of children in care at the start plus the number of children entering care, less the number of children exiting care (within 5 percent).
For adoption, all states who reported data are included in the reporting states total.