Report Description
This report provides point-in-time counts of sibling groups placed in Child Welfare supervised foster care.
Refresh Schedule
This report is refreshed quarterly. For information on publication schedules, please refer to Source Data below.
Time Periods
This report uses point-in-time counts. Available Intervals: Jan 1, Apr 1, Jul 1, & Oct 1. The earliest available time period for this report is Jan 1, 2008. The end date of the most recent time period corresponds with the most recent point-in-time period included in the data extract. For Over Time Views you have the option to select the earliest year displayed, which controls the display for tables and graphs.
Report Data
This report uses the Foster Care Files. For information on these files, please refer to Source Data below.
Notes on Source Data
Refresh Schedule:
| Extract name | Data cutoff | Website refreshed by |
|---|---|---|
| Quarter 1 | April 1 | July 1 |
| Quarter 2 | July 1 | October 1 |
| Quarter 3 | October 1 | January 1 (following year) |
| Quarter 4 | January 1 | April 1 |
For example, the CWS/CMS 2025 Quarter 3 Extract (Q3 25) reported on events up to the data cutoff of October 1, 2025. Reports based on the Q3 25 extract were available on the website by January 1, 2025.
For reporting purposes, we use the CWS/CMS extracts to construct three primary longitudinal analysis files types (allegation, foster care, and case) which track children’s histories in the Child Welfare System. In addition to specifying supervising county and capturing child-level demographics, these files include additional information:
Allegation File
– This file includes one row for each allegation for each child, including allegation type, reporter type, responses such as investigation, as well as allegation disposition (e.g., substantiated, inconclusive, and unfounded).
Foster Care Files
– These files include one row for each placement home for each child, including dates of entries and exits to foster care, placement type, and length of stay.
Case Files
– The primary file includes one row for each case service component for each child. Secondary files serve to locate cases within caseloads, offices, and counties. The files include information about children’s case services, including case openings and closings, and service components.
Population Data Files
– Includes California Department of Finance (DOF) annual child population counts and Poverty Population Estimates derived from the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS).
Quarterly Wage File
– Quarterly Wage data from 1993 forward for all children age 16 and older with a record of an out-of-home foster care placement in the Child Welfare Services / Case Management System (CWS/CMS) since January 1, 1998.
Postsecondary Enrollment Data
– Postsecondary Enrollment data for children age 16 and older with a record of an out-of-home foster care placement in the Child Welfare Services / Case Management System (CWS/CMS).
Methods
This report provides point-in-time counts of sibling groups placed in Child Welfare supervised foster care. Users may select report data for children who are placed with either ‘all’ or ‘all or some’ of their siblings. Sibling groups are identified at the county level, not the state level. A sibling group size of ‘one’ is used to signify a single child with no known siblings in the supervising county. When children are not in an active out-of-home placement, the last known placement home is used to determine whether siblings were placed together.
Sibling groups are constructed from an unduplicated point-in-time count of all children who have an open placement episode in the CWS/CMS system (see the In Care/Point In Time methodology for additional details). A set of sibling identifier variables (derived from the CWS/CMS Client Relationship table) and placement address variables (derived from the facility address information from the Placement Home table) are used to locate all whole, half, and step-siblings.
Data tables are stratified by county (rows). In single-time views of the data, the columns present five statistics: ‘Number of Instances’ is a count of all child/youth placements for children and youth who have siblings in foster care in the same county (i.e., count of all children/youth in sibling groups of 2 or more). Columns labeled ‘Placements with All Siblings’ and ‘Percent with All Siblings’ contain information for those groups in which all siblings were placed together. The columns labeled ‘Placements All or Some Siblings’ and ‘Percent All or Some Siblings’ contain information for those sibling groups where at least 2, and up to and including all siblings, were placed together. Multi time views of the data allow you to select one of these statistics and display values over time.
Children and youth with a missing placement type are excluded from this report.
Notes
Based on your Age Group selection, the children and youth included in the analysis are either age 0 to 17 or 0 to 20 years on the specified date. Neither of these age ranges correspond to the Point in Time/In Care report which is based on children age 0-21 years. For correspondence with the Point-In-Time report, restrict the Point in Time/In Care report to the age subgroup 0-17 or 0-20 years using the filters.
You may also select the Relative or Nonrelative Placement option to restrict your analysis:
Relative
- Relative/NREFM
- Tribally Approved Home
Nonrelative
- All other applicable placement types
Cells containing a period (“.”) represent a value of zero. In cells representing quotients, a period may also indicate the indeterminate form 0/0.
The following methodology may include references to report features not available on the public site version. On the public site, masking is performed to protect the privacy of individuals served by CDSS and comply with CDSS data de-identification guidelines. Values of 1 to 10 and calculations based on values of 1 to 10 are masked (‘M’ or ‘*’). In stratified views of the data, additional values (the lowest available) are masked to prevent calculation of values 1 to 10.