There are 408,425 children in foster care; over 360,000 are in foster family homes, group homes or child care institutions during the course of a year. These children face enormous challenges in getting the health and mental health care, education and other special services they need. Although foster care is intended to be temporary, many children stay in foster care for long periods of time.
A medically fragile child is one who, because of an accident, illness, congenital disorder, abuse or neglect, has been left in a stable condition, but is dependent on life sustaining medications, treatments, equipment, and has need for assistance with activities of daily living.
In the United States, special needs is a term used in clinical diagnostic and functional development to describe individuals who require assistance for disabilities that may be medical, mental, or psychological. For example, Children with autism, Down syndrome, dyslexia, blindness, or cystic fibrosis, may be considered to have special needs.
More than 16.4 million children in America are poor, but they live in working families. Impoverished children lag behind their peers in many ways beyond income: They are less healthy, trail in emotional and intellectual development, and are less likely to graduate from high school.
Children are suffering from a hidden epidemic of child abuse and neglect. Every year 3.3 million reports of child abuse are made in the United States involving nearly 6 million children (a report can include multiple children). The United States has the worst record in the industrialized nation – losing five children every day due to abuse-related deaths.
