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Chapter One: What Is Foster Care? might put her in touch with a social worker, who will help her find a place for the kids to stay. The mother will have her operation, recover in the hospital, and then the family will be reunited. In this example, foster care is a pretty easy and positive situation. The mom put her kids in care voluntarily, and she will get them back the minute she is ready. This is called reunification . Child welfare laws in the United States are all based on the belief that most kids are better off with their birth parents. So the system is designed to keep as many families together as possible. Numbers vary from year to year, but about half of the kids in foster care end up going back to their parents. Unfortunately, many foster situations are not as straightforward as this first example. If the state decides that a child is not safe at home, he or she is put in foster care, whether the parents like it or not. This can happen because of physi- cal abuse, neglect , or for some other reason. For instance, if a single parent is arrested, the children might be put into foster care while the case is going on. Foster care takes several different forms. Kids might be placed with relatives (called “kinship care”), in a group home, or with a foster family. (See chapter three for more on different types of foster care.) It is common for kids to experience a few different living situations while in foster care. For instance, the police might remove a child from an abusive home and put him or her into what’s called “emergency” (short-term) care. That might last for a few days or a week, while social workers decide if it is safe for the child to return home. If it is not safe, the child will probably be moved to some other, hopefully more permanent, living situation. FOSTER CARE BY THE NUMBERS Because kids come and go, it is tricky to count how many foster kids there actually are. In any given period, say a month or a year, a certain number of kids will enter foster care, while a certain number of others will leave. They might return home, get adopted, or “age out” (a term referring to foster kids reaching adulthood, which is covered in chapter four).