Placement stability
How many times was a child moved, and were siblings kept together or split apart?
Every move restarts a child’s life — new house, new school, new adults to trust. The count of moves is one of the few things the record does hold.
Source: AFCARS
Maltreatment in care
Abuse, neglect or assault that happened inside a placement.
The number most likely to be undercounted, precisely because the agency responsible for the child is the same one that would have to report it.
Source: NCANDS
Running away, and going missing
Including the trafficking-risk window that opens when a child runs.
A child who runs is not a discipline problem. They are a child who is now unprotected, and the clock starts immediately.
Source: AFCARS
Education and health continuity
Schools changed, care interrupted, conditions left untreated.
Continuity is what a stable childhood actually consists of. It is also what a move quietly destroys.
Source: AFCARS + Medicaid/CHIP
Aging-out outcomes
Housing and homelessness, employment, education, justice involvement, early parenthood — and mortality.
The cliff at eighteen. Mortality is on this list because a child who did not survive must never simply drop out of the data as though they aged out fine.
Source: NYTD + HMIS + vital records
Removals that should not have happened
Cases where a child was taken on a claim the record itself later contradicts.
This is not a judgement about any person. It is the record disagreeing with itself, which is a fact about the file, and a reason for a human being to look.
Source: Court records + AFCARS
Why no numbers are shown yet
Defined and ready. The federal file is a manual download under a data-use agreement — there is no public API — so no figure is shown rather than an invented one.
Requires the token to join two or more systems, which is Phase 3. Defined now so the measure cannot quietly change later to fit whatever data arrives.
Checks & Balances is trusted because every figure is reproducible from an official source. The same rule governs this page. AFCARS, NCANDS and NYTD have no public API — they are manual downloads under a data-use agreement — so this ships with the measures defined and not one invented number. A fabricated outcome figure about children would cost more than it bought.
The systems a token would join
A child's true story is scattered across systems that never talk to each other. Because the same person carries the same token in each, the picture can be assembled without the identity ever being assembled.
| System | What it holds | How it is obtained |
|---|---|---|
| AFCARS | Foster care — placements, moves, exits | NDACAN, data-use agreement |
| NCANDS | Abuse and neglect reports and findings | NDACAN, data-use agreement |
| NYTD | Outcomes survey of youth aging out | NDACAN, data-use agreement |
| Medicaid / CHIP | Physical and behavioural health, and gaps in care | State agreement |
| Juvenile & adult justice | Involvement before and after aging out | State agreement |
| HMIS | Homelessness records — the aging-out cliff | CoC agreement |
| Education | Enrolment, mobility, completion | State agreement |
| Courts | Dependency and family court — removals, evidence, guardians | Court agreement |
| Vital records | So a child who did not survive is never dropped from the data | State agreement |
This is not speculative: Chapin Hall's Multistate Foster Care Data Archive already links foster-care records across states, and privacy-preserving record linkage is established practice in health and administrative research. The method is proven; what is new is applying it, under this encryption, to this population.