Bridging Disciplinary Boundaries (January 11 - 14, 2007)

Purpose: The Adoption and Safety Families Act (ASFA) of 1997 is a legislative initiative requiring states to expedite the permanency of children in foster care by initiating termination of parental rights (TPR) and instituting a reduced time frame for family reunification efforts. Despite the potential impact of the legislation on children in care, there is little research documenting the time frames and predictors of TPR and adoption post-ASFA. The purpose of this study is twofold: 1) to examine the timing and the risk factors associated with TPR of children who first enter into foster care; 2) to examine the timing and the risk factors associated with the adoption of legally-free children.

Methods: Two samples were drawn from foster care files of the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) in 32 states between October 1998 (FY 1999) and September 2002 (FY2002). The TPR sample consisted of 47,559 children who first entered into foster care due to child abuse and neglect in FY 1999. The adoption sample comprised 25,270 legally-free foster children whose parental rights were terminated from April 1999 to March 2000. Potential risk factors extracted from the AFCARS for examining both TPR and adoption include age and race/ethnicity of child, types of child maltreatment, and types and location of foster care placement. Risk factors specific to TPR include number of removals from home and age of primary caretaker when the child was removed. Risk factors specific to adoption include race/ethnicity of caretaker at placement and household structure of foster care family. The timing of TPR and post-TPR was examined by plotting the Kaplan-Meier survivor/hazard functions. Survey Logistic regression analysis and Cox proportional hazards regression were used to identify risk factors. Multiple imputation methods were used to handle missing data.

Results: The hazard of TPR was low after entering foster care, but increased rapidly starting 10 months and then declined after 32 months in care. Factors associated with a higher probability of TPR include younger age, black/African American, parental substance abuse, abandonment, and pre-adoptive homes. The hazard of adoption was low immediately after TPR but increased steadily starting 3 months and then declined after 20 months. Consistent with the findings of previous studies, racial minority status and older age were negatively associated with the probability of adoption. Characteristics of foster care services turned out to be powerful predictors of adoption. Specially, legally-free children placed in pre-adoptive homes, those who shared the same racial/ethnic background with their foster caretakers, and those who were placed in two-parent families were greater likely to be adopted.

Implications: Our findings confirm prior research results regarding the disparity between white and racial/ethnic minority children in permanency outcome. The present study adds new knowledge by highlighting the importance of increasing pre-adoptive homes from racial/ethnic minority backgrounds as a plausible intervention strategy in expediting the adoption of legally-free minority children. Moreover, specific targeted efforts on permanency planning to racial/ethnic minority children may improve their permanency outcomes, in addition to TPR-and-adoption strategy.