Bridging Disciplinary Boundaries (January 11 - 14, 2007)

Purpose: Kinship foster care has become a major part of the formal child welfare system since the 1990s. Even though kinship foster home is recognized as a prioritized placement option in most child welfare agencies, there is still ambivalence toward the effectiveness of kinship placements. The present study is intended to accurately examine the major child welfare outcomes, comparing kinship foster care with non-relative foster care.

Method: The present study has used a longitudinal AFCARS file for Illinois, which combines AFCARS six-month submissions for the fiscal year 1998 through 2004. A total of 32,022 cases have been selected as final samples whose first out-of-home placement is either kinship or non-relative foster home. 1,500 children in non-relative foster care have been randomly selected and matched to those in kinship foster care, using the method of propensity score matching. The matching variables are as follows: a child's age, race and gender, the presence and the type of a child's disability, the year of a child's entry into care, the reason for a child's removal from home, a child's case goal, the finalization of termination of parental rights, a foster caregiver's race, and the locality of services provided. The use of the matched samples is to address the limitations of previous studies that do not control for the different characteristics of kinship and non-kinship placements in comparing their child welfare outcomes. Permanency and stability outcomes have been compared between children in kinship and non-relative foster homes, using both the whole and the matched samples.

Results: Before the matching, kinship foster placements are significantly different from non-relative foster homes on most of the matching variables. After the matching, the group differences have disappeared. The results of the analysis for the whole sample are consistent with the previous literature. Children in non-relative foster care are more likely to be reunified with their parents and to be adopted. Guardianship is more likely to be achieved for children in kinship foster care. In addition, children in kinship foster homes are less likely to re-enter the out-of-home care and to have multiple placements while in care. When using the matched samples, the results are quite different. The likelihood of reunification, adoption and guardianship is not significantly different for the two groups. The rate of re-entry is also not significantly different. However, kinship foster placements are still more stable, compared to non-relative foster homes.

Implications for practice: It has been the general perception that kinship foster care is different from non-relative foster care in achieving the child welfare outcomes, especially in the areas of permanency and stability. However, the results of the present study demonstrate that the type of placement is related to the stability, but not to the permanency. The child welfare system should recognize the strength of kinship foster placements, especially in promoting stability, and should re-examine their role in achieving permanency.