Definition:
The median length of stay in substitute care of all children who exit substitute care during the fiscal year.
Population:
The number of children exiting substitute care during the fiscal year.
Measure:
The median number of months children stay in substitute care. The median represents the amount of time in months that it took half of the children who exited substitute care in a fiscal year to exit care or emancipate. If the child has more than one spell during the fiscal year, the most recent spell is selected. The same child can be counted more than once if the child exited substitute care, reentered, and exited again in different years.
Exclusions
-
Children whose legal spell is 7 days or fewer are excluded.
A Note on Age
Age is calculated as of the date of the child exits substitute care.
A Note on Legal Spell
A legal spell was defined as the period a child is in DCFS legal custody during an open child placement case. In other words, it is the time period that a child legally enters substitute care until the child legally exits care. Using a comprehensive list of court hearings regarding the child’s legal custody history, a table with records of the time (spell) during which a child is under DCFS custody was created. The legal status effective dates and the legal status code were used to determine the spell.
The data used to compute this measure come from the DCFS Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW), and these data were extracted on September 30, 2025. All indicators are calculated based on the state fiscal year, which spans the 12-month period from July 1 to June 30.
A Note on Totals
The per-year totals for this measure ("ALL CHILDREN") reflect the total numbers of children with valid values for the breakdown being viewed. Since counts may be culled from records missing geographic, demographic or placement type information, totals between breakdowns may not be identical. For example, adding counts for all age groups for a given year may not produce the same result as adding races, since there may be missing races and/or ages in the population.
A Note on Small Populations
To protect privacy and ensure statistical reliability, when the applicable population is between 1 to 5, the value is displayed as "≤ 5" and the outcome data is masked. If the applicable population is zero, the value is displayed as "0" and the outcome is also masked.
A Note on Race
If the child’s ethnicity was coded as any of the following Hispanic origin, their race/ethnicity was coded as Latinx regardless of their race code: Hispanic South American, Hispanic Cuban, Hispanic Mexican, Hispanic Puerto Rican, Hispanic Spanish Descent, Hispanic Dominican, Hispanic Central American, and Hispanic Other. If the child’s ethnicity was non-Latinx and they had more than one race code, then their race/ethnicity was defined as multiracial. If the child’s ethnicity was non-Latinx and the value of the race is Native American/Alaska Native, Asian, Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islanders, or multiracial, it was coded as "Other." If the value of primary race was "could not be verified," "unknown," "declined to identify," or missing (null), it was treated as missing and excluded when indicators are reported by race/ethnicity.