AMARILLO, TEXAS -- Nationwide, there are fewer kids in foster care than in nearly a decade.  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 new figures, released Tuesday by the Department of Health and Human Services, show there were 423,773 children in foster care as of Sept. 30. That's down from about 460,000 a year earlier and from more than 540,000 a decade ago.

Locally Randall and Potter counties are following that national trend. In the last decade, there are about half as many kids in foster care, bringing the number in 2009 to 554 children.

The drop is largely due to a shift in policies and practices, but officials tell ProNews 7 there hasn't been a change in the number of investigations or the amount of child abuse reported. The difference comes once they find abuse, "What we try to do now more often is to work with the family to keep the children with those parents or again to find a close relative that they can stay with safely," said Greg Cunningham, the spokesman for the Amarillo Department of Family & Protective Services.

Cunningham continued saying kids who are taken out of foster care tend to do better when living with relatives.

"Not only can they stay in contact with their families better, generally they stay in the same neighborhood, they go to the same schools, a place that they know, as opposed to going to a complete stranger's house," said Cunningham.

And when relatives do accept these kids, there's more help from state incentives. It gives money to relatives that would have gone to a foster family. That's making it a lot easier to find those placements and it's making it a lot easier for grandma or grandpa to take them in financially," said Cunningham.

Cunningham gave ProNews7 a list dating back to 2002 of how children there are in foster care.

                                        Potter/Randall Counties             High Plains (including Lubbock and 36 counties)

2002                                 1,154                                       3,640

2003                                 1,229                                       3,790

2004                                 1,063                                       3,715

2005                                 1,054                                       3,917

2006                                 959                                          3,568

2007                                 938                                          3,373

2008                                 709                                          3,118

2009                                 554                                          2,492