Bridging Disciplinary Boundaries (January 11 - 14, 2007)

During the past fifteen years, there has been a rapid increase in the number of children placed with kin (Cuddeback, 2004). However, social work research has not kept pace with the exponential growth of kinship care (Berrick & Barth, 1994). As a result, best practices cannot easily be drawn from comparisons of children in out-of-home care (Goerge, Wulczyn, & Fanshell, 1994). Thus, a systematic review of kinship care research in the United States and an outcome study of kinship care in Colorado were conducted to meet this need.

The systematic review employed a rigorous vetting process based on the standards developed by the What Works Clearinghouse. After a comprehensive search of the literature, quantitative studies conducted from 1992-2005 that examined the effect of kinship care on child welfare outcomes were assessed on their internal and external validity. Meta-analyses were then conducted to calculate effect sizes for 23 of the studies that merited inclusion into the evidence base. The outcome study used a matched case design to compare children in kinship care with children in foster care on data collected from case records entered into Colorado's Statewide Automated Child Welfare Information System. The actual sample included 636 children formally placed in kinship or foster care in Colorado in 2002 and subsequently matched into 318 pairs based on gender, ethnicity, program area, county, age at entry, and allegation severity.

According to the systematic review findings, children in kinship care experience better outcomes in regard to reentry, mental health problems, behavior problems, adaptive behaviors, and family relations than do children in foster care. However, children placed with kin are less likely to achieve permanency and utilize mental health services. The findings from the outcome study indicate that children in kinship care had significantly fewer placements, were more likely to be in guardianship, and were less likely to still be in placement, have a new institutional allegation of abuse or neglect, or reenter out-of-home care. Again, children in foster care were more likely to be reunified.

Although tempered by several threats to the validity and reliability of the two studies, the results yielded important implications for the practice, policy, and research of kinship care. Most notably, human services departments and child welfare agencies should continually reexamine kinship care outcomes and costs to better maximize this placement option. Policymakers should enact legislation that both encourages and adequately funds kinship care while fully supporting foster care. Finally, researchers should explore informal and voluntary kinship care arrangements and investigate the service utilization and certification of kinship caregivers.