Month in Review: August 2025
If you've been reading our monthly recaps for any length of time, it's no secret that we sadly have to turn away the vast majority of the referrals we receive due to not having enough open homes. So how do you solve a problem like this? First, you get to the bottom of it by collecting more information! Over the last number of months, our Leadership Team has been hard at work coming up with metrics to help us identify areas where we can focus our efforts to increase the number of children we are able to provide homes for. Unlike a typical business project, these metrics aren't about revenue streams or profit margins - they are about precious human beings getting the safety and loving care they deserve.
We are excited to be able to report more detailed metrics this month for referrals, thanks to a newly created reporting dashboard!
So without further ado, let's break down August's referrals:
Age:
- 0-2: 12% of referrals
- 3-5: 14.5% of referrals
- 6-8: 14.8% of referrals
- 9-11: 8.1% of referrals
- 12-14: 10.8% of referrals
- 15-17: 10.0% of referrals
- Over 18: 8.3% of referrals
County:
- Berks - 27.7%
- Montgomery - 21.5%
- Lehigh - 12.3%
- Northampton - 9.2%
- Dauphin - 9.2%
- Delaware - 7.7%
- Schuylkill - 4.6%
- Bucks - 4.6%
Children we were able to place:
We were able to place two children in August. One, an infant, was a foster care placement. The other, a tween, was a matching adoption placement.
Reasons we couldn't place children:
For a while, we have been tracking the reasons we have to deny referrals. The most commonly selected reason by our intake workers was, "No Available Homes." Around the middle of August, we decided to break down this into more detailed reasons. We are now tracking whether the reason we did not have an available home was because of:
- the child's age (for example, if the child is a teen but we only have homes open to children under 10)
- the child's location (for example, if the child is located in Berks County but the only open home we have is in Northampton County and that is too far to manage visitation)
- the number of siblings (for example, we may have had a home for one child but not for all 3 of the siblings to remain together)
- the child's level of need (for example, the child needs to be in a home without pets for safety reasons, but all of our open homes have dogs)
We are hoping that tracking these reasons more specifically will allow us to focus our recruiting more strategically. For example, if we find that we are denying most children because of location, we can work on recruiting more homes within the counties that we receive the most referrals from. We already know that we will always need homes for larger sibling groups, older youth, and children with special needs - but this data can help us to solidify and better communicate the urgency of those needs.
We are hopeful that this more robust tracking and reporting of our foster care referrals will help us to continue to increase the number of children we are able to find homes for - after all, that is the heartbeat of what we do!
If you would like to explore what kinds of homes are needed in your specific location and whether you might be able to help meet these needs, we are now offering individual consultations with families. Please contact us to book your no-obligation, no-pressure meeting!
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