Homes and foster families: 200,000 children do not live with their parents

There are many reasons for being placed in a home or foster family. Last year, around 200,000 children and young people were affected – three percent fewer than in the previous year. There is a main reason for the decline.

The number of young people growing up outside of their own families, at least temporarily, has fallen. Last year in Germany around 122,700 lived in a home and 87,300 in a foster family, according to the Federal Statistical Office in Wiesbaden. That is three percent less than in 2020. According to the statisticians, the number of people affected has fallen for the fourth year in a row.

This is mainly due to the fact that previously unaccompanied minors – such as refugees – are now increasingly leaving the homes or foster families in which they were accommodated. Most of the children and young people cared for outside their families were minors. Almost half (49 percent) were under the age of 14, and 20 percent were young adults transitioning into independent living. Children up to the age of ten were more often cared for in foster families, after which they were brought up in a home, as the Federal Office further reported.

Slightly more boys (54 percent) than girls were brought up outside their own families. The stay in the home ended on average after 21 months, the placement in a foster family after a little more than four years or 49 months. The parents of the affected children and young people were single parents in about every second case (51 percent). Almost a fifth, or 19 percent, had a mother or father with a new partner, and 17 percent were cohabiting couples. According to the Federal Office, it is striking how often those affected live close to the subsistence level: “In 140,400 or 67 percent of all cases, the young people themselves or their families of origin lived completely or partially on transfer payments.”

According to the statisticians, the most common reason for accommodation in a home or with foster parents in 2021 was that the young people were not considered to be adequately cared for – for example because the reference person was absent due to illness or they had traveled alone from abroad. The Federal Office named child endangerment as the second most common reason, for example through neglect, physical or sexual violence, and thirdly, limited parenting skills of the parents.