New federal figures show that the number of U.S. children in foster care has dropped 8 percent in just one year, and more than 20 percent in the past decade. The drop, welcomed by child-welfare advocates, is due largely to a shift in the policies ...

Authorities say a 7-year-old girl who was snatched from California as a toddler has been placed in a foster home after being found living with a palm-reading couple in Phoenix. Los Angeles County sheriff's Capt. Patrick Maxwell said Monday that Amber Nicklas is with a family ...

A girl abducted by three aunts from her California foster parents nearly seven years ago, when she was an infant, was found Wednesday living in Phoenix, authorities said. Detectives from the Phoenix Police Department's missing persons unit, the Los Angeles County Sheriff ...

An aging con man convicted of killing two young couples in Wisconsin and Ohio decades ago claims he also shot his foster son to death. In a jailhouse interview with The Associated Press, 77-year-old Edward W. Edwards says he lured Dannie Boy Edwards to a secluded cemetery near the family ...

No single youngster can be the poster child for America's foster care system, with its mix of happy endings and heartache. Yet Tatiana Fowler's smile, as she embraces the woman who adopted her, gives a hint at the groundswell of change that is ...

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Behavioral tics such as head banging, hand flapping, and body rocking are more common in toddlers living in orphanages, but often disappear after children are placed in foster homes, a new Romanian study shows. The earlier the children were removed from the orphanage and the longer they lived with their foster family, the larger the reduction ...

A state judge on Friday struck down an Arkansas law approved by voters that banned gay couples and other unmarried people living together from serving as adoptive or foster parents. Pulaski County Circuit Judge Chris Piazza said in a two-page ruling that people in "non-marital relationships" are forced ...

Indiana is trying to shift hundreds of foster children with medical, emotional or behavioral problems into cheaper care for children without special needs, a move that cuts payments to families who care for the state's most challenged children. The change would give foster families less money to pay for therapy, food and clothing and other costs. And some fear ...

Hiding from merciless militiamen and trekking through unforgiving mountainous terrain, Madhel Majok escaped the mass slayings and genocide of the Sudan that killed his parents. The 9-year-old orphan fled to neighboring Kenya, where he then survived vigilante shellings on his crowded refugee camp. Majok remained ...

Nearly two dozen new state statutes take effect with the start of the new year. Some are arcane or technical changes to existing laws while others are more sweeping. The new statutes will: _Increase the minimum auto insurance liability coverage required for drivers, boosting boost costs for motorists who carry ...