Report Description
Of all children who enter foster care in a 12-month period, what is the rate of placement moves per 1,000 days of 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 rolling year time periods. Available Intervals: Jan-Dec, Apr-Mar, Jul-Jun, & Oct-Sep. The option to display All intervals is also offered. The earliest available time period for this report is Jan 1, 1998 – Dec 31, 1998. The end date of the most recent time period corresponds with the most recent quarterly 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).
Denominator
The denominator is, of children who enter foster care in a 12-month period, the total number of days these children were in foster care as of the end of the 12-month period. Children in care less that 8 days or who enter care at age 18 or more are excluded. Non-dependent children in guardianship placements (NDLG) are excluded. The days in care during the placement episodes are cumulative across episodes reported in the same year. Youth who turn 18 during the 12-month period do not have time in care beyond their 18th birthday counted.
Note: the count of placement days differs between the denominators of the federal measures 4-S1 and 4-P5 and the Placement Days report in several ways:
- 4-S1 includes placement episodes of 8 days or more. 4-P5 counts days for placement episodes that opened during the specified year (i.e., entries to care) and remained open for 8 days or more. The Placement Days report counts all days in care, regardless of time in care. Note: The Placement Days report can be filtered for entries during the year (In Placement before Period Start = ‘No’), which approximates 4-P5, but counts placement days for entries, regardless of time in care.
- For all three reports, age is calculated at the beginning of the period or at entry (if the child enters during the period). 4-S1 and 4-P5 include children under age 18 while Placement Days includes children under age 21. *Note – for 4-S1 and 4-P5, a child’s 18th birthday and following care days are not counted in the denominator. Therefore, for a child who turns 18 in care during the period and remains in care, additional days will be added to the count in the Placement Days report, but not in 4-S1 and 4-P5.
- The 4-S1 and 4-P5 denominators include Adoptive Placements, Trial Home Visits, and Runaways. Non foster care placements are also included if the placement episode includes other foster care placement types. The Placement Days report excludes Adoptive Placements, Trial Home Visits, Runaways and non foster care placements from the denominator.
Due to these differences in the count of placement days methodology, even when similar filters are applied, the reports will yield different results.
Numerator
The numerator is the total number of moves from one placement to another placement during the 12-month period for all children in the denominator. The initial placement in foster care (removal from home) is not counted nor are exits that do not lead to a subsequent placement (e.g., returns home or trial home visits). If the child leaves a placement temporarily, e.g., on a trial home visit or as a runaway, and returns to the same placement that event is not counted as a placement move. If a child had more than one placement episode during the 12-month period, moves in all episodes are counted. Moves after a youth’s 18th birthday are not counted. If the child is placed in respite care and that care is reported as a placement, both the move into and the move out of respite care are counted as moves.
Performance
Performance for this measure is the numerator divided by the denominator, expressed as a rate per 1,000 days. The rate is multiplied by 1,000 to produce a whole number which is easier to interpret. A decrease in the rate per 1,000 days indicates an improvement in performance.
National Performance
The National Performance for this measure is ≤ 4.48 per 1,000 days. For details, please see CFSR Technical Bulletin 13 (PDF).
Notes
In the drill-down tables for this report, days in care selections are available: in addition to the default of ‘All’, users may select children in care ‘8 days or more’ or ‘7 days or less’.
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.
Notes
County is assigned in this analysis using the county specific code from the case assignment table (or, if this information is not available, using the county specific code from the referral table, or if this information is not available, using the government entity type from the state id table) active on the first placement episode start date during the time period.
Agency Type is assigned based on the responsible agency on the first placement episode start date during the time period.
Age is assigned based on how old a child is at the placement episode start date during the specified time period.
Cells containing a period (“.”) represent a value of zero. In cells representing quotients, a period may also indicate the indeterminate form 0/0.
Secure Site Features
This report may also be run with filters in place to restrict the data to various subgroups of other variables (e.g., Black subgroup of the Ethnicity variable, <1 year old subgroup of the Age variable, etc.). Please see Report Dimensions and Filters for details.
Report Dimensions and Filters
Reports can be stratified based on the supervising agency. For cases under the supervision of Child Welfare, children are assigned to the county in which there is an open case or referral. Probation and Other agency supervised cases are assigned to the county in which there is an open case, referral, or state id county code. The CWS/CMS codes for each agency are drawn from the variable placement_episode.agency_responsible_type (plc_epst.agy_rspc) and listed below:
- Child Welfare
- County Welfare Department (34)
- Probation
- County Probation Department (33, 5603)
- Other
- State Adoptions District Office (37, 5606)
- Indian Child Welfare (5602)
Agency types of Out of State Agency (35, 5604), Private Adoption Agency (36, 5605), Mental Health (6133), KinGAP (6134), and Missing are excluded from all analyses.
Please note that the federal outcome measures for the second round of the Child and Family Services Review that include foster care data are based on Child Welfare, Probation and Other data. California CWS Outcomes System measures are based on Child Welfare data ONLY.
Child age is organized by the following intervals and derived from a child’s date of birth as captured in the CWS/CMS variable birth_dt:
- < 1 yr*
- 1-2 yrs
- 3-5 yrs
- 6-10 yrs
- 11-15 yrs
- 16-17 yrs
- 18-20 yrs OR 18-21 yrs**
The calculation of age is based on a date appropriate for the particular report. For example, the ‘Entries to Foster Care’ report calculates the age of children and youth on the day they enter foster care. ‘Exits from Foster Care’, on the other hand, calculates age at exit.
When Age Group is not selected as a row or column dimension, users may filter reports to include children of specific ages (e.g., only 3 year olds) or to create a different age category than those shown above (e.g., a group of 2-6 year olds). This is done by checking those age boxes for which report data are to be included.
* In some reports, this category is separated into infants with ages of less than one month (‘<1 mo’) and others less than one year old (i.e., ‘1-11 mo’).
** The available age range varies by report.
- The Child and Family Services Review, round 3 (CFSR3) reports, for example, are restricted to children and youth less than 18 years old. The age groupings and available age filters reflect these ranges.
- In some reports, ‘18-21 yrs’ is separated into ‘18 + 60 days’, ‘18 + > 60 days’, and ‘19-21 yrs’:
- 18 + 60 days: Youth who are in the first 60 days of their 18th year
- 18 + > 60 days: Other 18-year-old youth (i.e., older than 18 plus 60 days)
- 19 to 21 year olds.
These categories are intended to support analysis of the effects of the implementation of Assembly Bill 12 (AB12). AB12 allows youth to voluntarily remain in or reenter foster care. Youth exiting as part of the ‘18 + 60 days’ group are more likely to have experienced a conventional exit; those in the ‘18 + > 60 days’ and ‘19-21 yrs’ group are more likely to have made use of the AB12 changes.
- In Transition-Age Youth Research & Evaluation Hub (TAY-Hub) reports, the age range is limited to youth in care age 18-20 or 18-21 years. In these cases, rather than presenting grouped ages, the ages 18, 19, 20, and 21 (if applicable), are presented as separate rows or columns. This approach is intended to allow a focus on older youth and to provide a detailed stratification by age.
Child ethnicity is collapsed into six groups based on 31 codes from the CWS/CMS variables p_ethnctyc and hisp_cd. Ethnic groups and codes are listed below:
- Black
- Black (823)
- Ethiopian (826)
- White
- White (839)
- White-Armenian (840)
- White-Central American (841)
- White-European (842)
- White-Middle Eastern (843)
- White-Romanian (844)
- Latino
- Those children coded as Hispanic using the Hispanic Origin indicator (hisp_cd = ‘Y’), regardless of primary ethnicity (p_ethnctyc) selection
- Hispanic (830)
- Mexican (3164)
- South American (3165)
- Caribbean (3162)
- Central American (3163)
- Asian/PI
- Asian Indian (822)
- Cambodian (824)
- Chinese (825)
- Filipino (827)
- Guamanian (828)
- Hawaiian (829)
- Japanese (831)
- Korean (832)
- Laotian (833)
- Other Asian/Pacific Islander (834)*
- Other Asian (5922)
- Other Pacific Islander (5923)
- Hmong (835)
- Polynesian (836)
- Samoan (837)
- Vietnamese (838)
- Native American
- Alaskan Native (820)
- American Indian (821)
*Code is inactive.
Note: In late 2017, CDSS provided instruction to counties to ask clients which of the federally recognized races (those marked with an asterisk in CWS/CMS) they identify with. Once a federally recognized race is selected, a secondary “Hispanic” ethnicity can be selected in Other Ethnicity. If the client does not identify with any federally recognized race, then workers were asked to select “Declines to State” as the primary race. However, the Hispanic Origin indicator should always be marked as “Yes” for children with Latino backgrounds in order to avoid accidental categorization into Missing.
When ethnicity is not selected as a dimension on the website, the default filter includes Missing values and all ethnicities. Users can also filter *DYNAMIC* reports to include only children of specific ethnic groups (e.g., only Native American and White children) by checking those ethnicities for which report data are to be included.
Census-based Ethnicity’ option (available on some reports) labels will read ‘Hispanic’ rather than ‘Latino’ for consistency with Census Bureau usage.
Ethnic groups for population data and rates reports are based on the California Department of Finance annual population projections.
- Black
- White
- Latino
- Asian/PI
- Native American
- Multi-Race
In the rates reports and disparity indices, the denominators–child population based on California Department of Finance data–may include children/youth in the multi-race category. However, the numerators–children with allegations, children with investigations, etc., based on CWS/CMS–always have null values for multi-race, since we do not construct a multi-race category from CWS/CMS data. Conversely, ethnicity may be missing in CWS/CMS and, in those cases, rates numerators are categorized as missing. Department of Finance population data does not include a missing category and, therefore, that row is always null for the denominators of the rates reports. Given these differences between the data sources and the resulting null values, no rates are calculated for the multi-race or missing rows.
See Population methodology for important details.
Note: For Transition Age Youth (TAY) reports, the category Missing is suppressed, therefore the total for this dimension will differ from the total for other dimensions in the same report.
Child sex at birth is based on the CWS/CMS variable gender_cd and categorized as Female (1), Male (2) or Intersex (3).
Children for whom Sex at Birth is not coded are reported as Missing.
When Sex at Birth is not selected as a dimension, the default filter includes Missing values and Female, Male and Intersex. Users can also filter reports to include only children of a specific gender (e.g., only Male children) by checking the sex at birth for which report data are to be included.
Note: For Transition Age Youth (TAY) reports, the categories Intersex and Missing are suppressed, therefore the total for this dimension will differ from the total for other dimensions in the same report.