According to the most recent federal data, there are currently more than 400,000 children in foster care in the United States. They range in age from infants to 21 years old (in some states). The average age of a child in foster care is more than 8 years old, and there are slightly more boys than girls.
About the children
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Cuts in Nutrition Assistance Would Make It Harder for Families to Afford Food
The 2019 Trump budget cuts SNAP by more than $213 billion over the next ten years — or by nearly 30 percent. It imposes large benefit cuts on most households even though current benefits average just $1.40 per person per meal, and radically restructures how benefits are delivered. It also includes other benefit and eligibility cuts that would cause at least 4 million people to lose SNAP benefits altogether. The cuts would affect every category of SNAP participant, including the unemployed, the elderly, individuals with disabilities, and
low-income working families with children.
Cuts in Housing and Energy Assistance Would Make It Harder for Families to Pay Rent
As discussed below, the President’s budget includes substantial cuts in non-defense programs —programs outside defense that are funded each year through the annual appropriations process. Among these are substantial cuts in low-income housing programs that would affect a broad swath of low-income households,
including several million working families with children, seniors, and people with disabilities. The 2019 Trump budget proposes the largest retrenchment of federal housing aid since the U.S. Housing Act was enacted in 1937.
- Cancels Housing Choice Vouchers — which help low-income households afford private, modest apartments — for about 200,000 low-income households. These cuts would hit extremely low-income seniors, people with disabilities, and working families with children hard, undercut community efforts to reduce homelessness, and weaken housing stability, which is critical to children’s development and school attendance.
Raises rents on low-income families with HUD rental assistance. Nearly all households receiving rental assistance that are headed by a person who is not 62 or older or disabled would have to spend 35 percent of their income on rent, up from 30 percent under current law.
Working families would bear the bulk of such rent increases and be especially hard hit, because they also could no longer subtract child care expenses from their incomes in determining their rent payments (i.e., rents would be raised from 30 percent of income after deductions for costs like child care to 35 percent of gross income).
The budget also raises the minimum monthly rent to $150, which means rents would triple or more for the poorest families; this change would largely hit households that live below
half of the poverty line, and it would likely result in more evictions and homelessness.
The budget also eliminates the Social Services Block Grant (SSBG), which provides $1.7 billion in flexible funding to states each year for services such as child care, day programs for seniors and people with disabilities, services for homeless individuals and families, and others.
Trump Budget Deeply Cuts Health, Housing, Other Assistance for Low- and Moderate-Income Families | Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
& ^^^ that ^^^ doesn't take into account the 2017 tax cuts.
