CW: Foster Care
Across the United States, an alarming trend has emerged: an increasing number of children are staying in hospitals after they no longer need medical care. They are not recovering from surgeries or waiting for test results; they have been medically cleared for discharge but do not have a safe place to go.
Pediatric hospitals across the Midwest, New England, and the Pacific Coast are experiencing a terrible crisis. Children are stuck in hospitals for weeks, or even months, because the system that was designed for treating them hasn’t worked. What was once viewed as an individual problem has quietly become a national crisis.
For many parents like Quette from Illinois, this problem is all too real. She called 911 when her teenage son, who was paralyzed following a shooting, started having difficulty breathing.
Anticipating emergency care rather than a long hospital stay, she was unprepared for the shock when, having treated him, he could not leave the hospital. Without a home health aide and no guidance from his legal guardian, his grandmother, the state took him into custody.
He did not stay in the hospital due to medical necessity, but because, according to the state, there was no currently available alternative placement. This is the reality seen across other states, including Massachusetts, Washington, and Colorado, where pediatric units have become makeshift holding areas for kids with nowhere else to go. Advocates have long said that disabled children in foster care face more barriers compared to nondisabled children.
In a 2006 report called Forgotten Children: Children with Disabilities in Foster Care, they found that disabled children account for around a third of all children in foster care. They often had their medical, developmental, and emotional well-being ignored by the very institutions that should work to protect them.
Research presented at the American Academy of Pediatrics’ 2024 National Conference, has only intensified these concerns. Disabled children in foster homes have a harder time finding permanent placements than nondisabled children and face greater mortality in care. These findings corroborate what families and advocates have been saying for decades. Our foster care system can’t effectively care for disabled children, and the consequences are devastating.
When specialized foster homes are unavailable and families don’t receive the support they need, children are left with only one option: remaining in hospitals never meant to house them. They wait in rooms meant for healing, not living, watching days turn into weeks with no clear path forward. No child should have to experience that kind of limbo simply because the right help doesn’t exist.
Instead of getting the stability and specialized care they’re entitled to, they are confined to clinical settings intended to treat serious illnesses, which is damaging. Some children are sleeping under fluorescent lights in emergency rooms on stretchers and others wait months in pediatric wards, watching the world go by outside of their hospital room’s windows. They miss school, they often don’t have a regular schedule, and are stuck in environments that don’t offer the developmental, emotional, or social support they need. Many children are anxious or depressed, and can regress.
Hospitals, too, feel the strain. Staff who should be attending to critically ill children are instead looking after children who do not need medical attention but cannot safely be discharged. They are then unable to pay, and hospitals get caught in a vicious cycle of healthcare costs that leaves them paying when the children are medically cleared.
And though states like Missouri have reimbursed hospitals for thousands of boarding days, that figure seems inadequate to the true extent of the problem. Pediatric leaders nationally are well aware of a harsh reality: hospitals were never intended to act as long-term facilities for children in need of a safe place to stay. There are many reasons behind this crisis.
The problem is compounded by a widespread shortage of foster homes equipped to care for children with medical or behavioral needs, severe understaffing in home health nursing, and limited capacity in residential facilities. When parents are unable to get necessary services for their children, some feel it necessary to give up custody in hopes that the state can provide the support.
These children are stuck in hospital rooms, waiting months for an appropriate placement to open up. They need a safe, secure environment in which they can grow and develop.
Until states can invest in infrastructure that can help them meet their demands for home and community-based services better foster care, and more out-of-home placements, many more children will likely continue to stay in hospitals. It is not due to illness but due to the failure of other systems.
Sources:
Anthony, Cara. “Kids Keep Getting Stuck in Hospitals, Even After Being Cleared for Discharge.” KFF Health News, 18 May 2026.
“Children in Foster Care With Disabilities Face Significant Challenges.” American Academy of Pediatrics, 27 Sept. 2024, www.aap.org/en/news-room/news-releases-from-aap-conferences/children-in-foster-care-with-disabilities-face-significant-challenges/.
Forgotten Children: Children with Disabilities in Foster Care. United Cerebral Palsy and Children’s Rights, 2006, https://e1.nmcdn.io/assets/crsite/wp-content/uploads/imported-files/forgotten_children_children_with_disabilities_in_foster_care_2006.pdf.