Study conducted to provide basic descriptive data about DSW’s foster care service and appraise the way in which the system provides for children in care. Report responds to concerns about rapid turnover in foster placements experienced by some children and young persons in care. The research refers specifically to the Department’s foster care system and does not cover informal arrangements in the community or arrangements run by church-based or other non-statutory welfare agencies. At the time, approximately 1,000 children and young people in NZ were removed from their families by the courts and placed in the care of the DSW each year. The report examines case histories of a sample of 654 children in care. Analysis revealed considerable over-representation of Māori children who comprised more than half of the sample. The profile of children in care that emerged from the data is as follows: ‘these children are almost exclusively from low socio-economic status families, likely to be Maori or part Maori, also likely to be ex-nuptial, and born to mothers who had begun their families at a very young age.’ A third of all children who came into care aged 10 or older, and 60% of all boys of this age, eventually passed into the hands of the Justice Department. There was, however, no apparent difference across ethnic groups when it came to this likelihood.