---
title: "Disabled Children Stay in Foster Care 50% Longer and Have the Worst Outcomes"
description: "An NPR investigation of more than 500,000 cases found disabilities are the largest single route into the foster system"
author: "rews desk"
published: 2026-10-03T09:00:00Z
modified: 2026-10-03T21:00:04Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/disabled-children-stay-in-foster-care-50-longer-and-have-the-879867
language: en
tags: ["health", "law", "welfare", "disability", "children", "us"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# Disabled Children Stay in Foster Care 50% Longer and Have the Worst Outcomes

*An NPR investigation of more than 500,000 cases found disabilities are the largest single route into the foster system*

By rews desk · October 3, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/disabled-children-stay-in-foster-care-50-longer-and-have-the-879867

## In brief

- An NPR investigation found children with disabilities are the largest group entering foster care and have the worst outcomes
- Federal data on more than 500,000 children show disabled children stay in care about 50 percent longer
- About 10 percent of disabled foster children live in group homes and institutions, versus 4 percent of other children
- Former foster youth described misdiagnosis, restraints lasting an hour or more and dozens of placements
- Recent brain science shows restraint-based punishments can heighten stress and trigger further outbursts in children

Children with physical and behavioral disabilities make up the largest group entering foster care in the United States, and they have the worst outcomes, staying in the system about 50 percent longer than other children, an NPR investigation found.

NPR obtained federal data on more than 500,000 children and youth in foster care in 2025. About 10 percent of disabled children in care live in group homes and institutions, compared with 4 percent of children without disabilities, and disabled children are less likely to return to their parents or to be adopted. To get past the numbers, NPR interviewed former foster youth about what happened to them.

Tyrome Laundersville was 9 when his parents put him in the family car at their Iowa home and drove him to a psychiatric residential treatment center. At first, he recalled, he thought, “Oh we’re going somewhere fun.” Instead he moved from facility to facility until he was 18, collecting diagnoses along the way: fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, ADHD, bipolar disorder, oppositional defiance disorder. Locked-down centers, some where he needed permission to use the bathroom, only made his behavior worse. “I wasn’t just being bad. I was hurt. I was angry,” he said. “I just wanted someone to understand me and not judge me for my behaviors and actions that I’ve always had my whole life.”

Marissa Pike of Massachusetts entered foster care at 12 and was moved through more than 30 placements in less than 10 years, including psychiatric centers and hospitals where she was medicated with anti-psychotic drugs. She was misdiagnosed; the autism at the core of her behavior was identified only years later. When she refused to follow staff instructions, workers restrained her, sometimes one, two or three holding her down, occasionally for an hour or more, until the episodes sent her to the hospital and then the next institution. Now 28, she is a foster parent herself, with two adopted children. Looking back, she said, she was “just overstimulated and probably needed some noise-canceling headphones and 15 minutes, then I would have been fine.”

Restraint and similar punishments are used to control children during explosive outbursts, but recent brain science shows the techniques can do harm: the stress puts a child’s body on alert and triggers further outbursts the child cannot control. The foster care community, with its long ties to institutional care, has been slow to change.

JoJo Kimble had school accommodations for her autism, but in South Carolina foster care, at 15, the diagnosis was erased and replaced with bipolar disorder. “It’s easier to treat,” she said. “You can’t treat autism with medication.” The new label brought a series of therapeutic group homes and psychiatric hospitals. Now 23 and out of care, she lives on her own, attends college to become a nurse and helps a professor research the impact of childhood cancer on families.

Rasheeda McCrae, 35, is legally blind, the result of physical abuse when she was a baby, and has behavioral health issues. When she entered care at 14 in Baltimore, her caseworker brought her to a dark foster home with several flights of stairs. “She didn’t even go upstairs,” Ms. McCrae recalled. “She just came in, dropped my bags, dropped me, did the paperwork and left.” The other children watched television and rode bikes; she stayed in her room. After two years she moved in with an aunt.

Adriene Caldwell went into care in Texas at 12, diagnosed with mild depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Her foster mother and the woman’s own children lived in the nice part of the house; the foster girls, three to five at a time, ate in the basement. “We were second class,” Ms. Caldwell said. “We had to sit on the floor. We were considered dirty. We were not allowed on the furniture.” Her depression deepened, and at one point she tried to end her life. She writes about her childhood in a memoir published this year, *Unbroken: Life Outside the Lines*.