What Are Group Homes?

Nationwide, approximately 523,000 young people live in foster care. According to the Child Welfare League for Children, the number of children removed from their homes is increasing, while the number of licensed families needed to care for these children is decreasing.

Older children who enter the foster care system are most likely to end up in group foster homes and institutions rather than individual homes. A growing number of children between the ages of eleven and fifteen who enter the foster care system end up in emergency shelters or group homes.

A licensed group home is defined as “a facility of any capacity that provides 24-hour non-medical care and supervision to children in a structured environment.”

Group homes represent a compromise between institutional care for troubled teenagers and foster care for dependent, abused and neglected youth. They emerged historically from “the crisis of the American orphanage” (1931–1940), during which the declining number of orphanages coincided with an increase of children in foster care.

Group homes represent a growing phenomenon in the United States social work arena. Also called “children's homes,” they provide out-of-home placement for children in foster care. Reasons for placement might include physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect or desertion, teenage pregnancy or behavioral problems.

In my case, my mother died of cancer when I was ten years old and my father remarried within the following year. After the first year of their marriage, his new wife asked him to choose between us. Having lost his first wife, my father chose to keep his second one.

From ages twelve to sixteen, I grew up in a series of temporary placements, including an all-girls group home, a coed group home and an emergency shelter.