The outcomes list includes reducing recurrence of child abuse and neglect, reducing the incidence of child abuse and neglect in foster care, increasing permanency for children in foster care, and reducing time in foster care to family reunification without increasing reentry into the child welfare system. Additional outcomes include reducing the time in foster care to adoption, increasing placement stability, and reducing placements of young children in group homes or institutions. The introductory chapter depicts the child welfare system as seen through the perspective of children in the system, describes the current challenges in child welfare, and discusses the responses of Congress and the Department of Health and Human Services to these challenges. The next chapter presents the seven outcomes, the measures for each outcome, and the rationale for the selection of each of the measures. The third chapter describes the data sources used for measuring State performance on the outcomes. Further chapters present findings from the first year’s effort in measuring State performance. They also summarize the best available State data on the outcome measures and present five pages of information about each State. The discussion notes that an estimated 984,000 children nationwide were victims of maltreatment in 1997, that 56 percent of these children experienced neglect, 20 percent experienced physical abuse, and 12 percent experienced child sexual abuse. An estimated 286,000 children entered foster care in fiscal year 1998. The median length of stay of children in care on September 30, 1998, was 22.2 months; the median length of stay of the children who exited care was 10.8 months. Eleven percent of the child victims of maltreatment were estimated to have been victims of at least 1 additional incident of maltreatment within 12 months. Figures, tables, and appended tables and methodological information