Sunday, 16 January 2005 - 8:45 AM

This presentation is part of: Outcomes of Child Welfare Services

Predicting Placement Disruption Among Foster Youth: The Role of Behavior Problems and Foster Home Integration

Purpose: Children and youth who remain in foster care for an extended period of time are at high risk for multiple moves while in care. Available data also suggest that rates of placement movement have increased over time. Although placement movement potentially exacerbates behavior problems and disrupts social and educational experiences, relatively little research has examined predictors of unplanned moves. This research examined risk for placement disruption among young adolescents placed in family foster care. The hypotheses tested focused on understanding associations between youth behavior problems and placement disruption. Study hypotheses included that the association between behavior problems and placement disruption would be mediated by the youth’s degree of belonging and integration in the foster home.

Methods: The caseworkers and foster parents of 179 randomly selected adolescents were interviewed by telephone when the adolescents were 12 or 13 years old. Interviews included standardized measures of emotional and behavioral problems and the response rate was over 85% for both caseworkers and foster parents. Placement moves were prospectively tracked for four years. Multivariate logistic regression analyses were used to test the hypotheses. Models controlled for variables that have been associated with placement movement in previous studies, such as receiving an enhanced foster care rate and intensity of caseworker support.

Results: Over half of the youth experienced an unplanned move from their foster home during the follow up period. Contrary to expectations, behavior problems as reported by caseworkers, but not foster parents, were predictive of placement disruption. As hypothesized, a strong sense of belonging and integration in the foster home was highly predictive of placement stability, and sense of belonging and integration completely accounted for the association between caseworker’s report of behavior problems and risk for disruption. Race and sex differences in risk for disruption were also found, with African American boys at highest risk for disruption in the multivariate model.

Implications for practice: Results suggest that a youth’s sense of belonging and integration into the foster home might be an important dimension of placement adaptation that should be considered during service planning. Stabilizing behavior problems might not be sufficient to lessen risk for unplanned moves. Brief measures of foster home integration could easily be administered to foster parents to provide information about this aspect of adaptation for service planning. However, more research is needed to replicate this finding in broader populations and to understand how a youth’s sense of integration and belonging might function to lessen risk for disruption. In addition, understanding why African American adolescent boys might experience increased risk for disruption should be a priority for future research.

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