Early Evidence of the Influence of Extending Foster Care to Young Adults on Exits to Legal Permanency

Background: Concern has been raised about potentially negative effects of extending foster care to age 21 on older youths’ exits from care to family reunification, adoption and guardianship, commonly referred to as legal permanency (Courtney, Dworsky, and Napolitano, 2013). Some observers argue that extending foster care to young adults may lead social workers and courts to view the achievement of legally-permanent placements with less urgency. Others speculate that individuals may be more reluctant to adopt or assume guardianship of older adolescents if that might lead to a loss of benefits for the young person. This study examines the relationship between extended foster care and older adolescents’ exits from care in California. 

Methods: Using administrative records from California’s child welfare system, we identified 21,884 youth who were in care at age 17 on January 1st of 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013, respectively. Youth who remained in care on their 18th birthday were coded as “still in care” while exits from care included reunification with family, adoption, legal guardianship, emancipation, runaway, and “other” exits. We compared the exits of youth who were 17 and in care on January 1st of 2010 and 2011, the two years immediately preceding the change in the law, to those of youth in care at 17 on January 1st of 2012 and 2013, the first two years that the law was in effect, through the youth’s 18 birthday. We also estimated logistic regression models of change in exits over time, controlling for selected characteristics of youth and their experiences in care.

Results:  Youth in the extended-care era (81.96%) were more likely than youth from the earlier period (71.42%) to remain in care to 18 (p < .001). Youth were much less likely to exit to emancipation prior to age 18 in the extended care era (.93%) than before (7.52%) (p < .001). Runaway and exits we categorized as “other” also declined markedly, going from 6.96% of all exits prior to the change in the law to 4.12% afterwards (p < .05). There were no statistically-significant changes over time in the rates of adoption and guardianship for these older youth (about 3% of all exits), but the percentage of youth exiting to reunification prior to age 18 declined slightly from 11.01% prior to the law to 10.01% after the law went into effect (p < .05). Logistic regression controlling for youth gender, race/ethnicity, time in care, episodes in care, number of placements, primary placement, and the urbanicity of the youths’ placing county, found the same relationship between extended care and exits as found through descriptive analyses.

Conclusions: Early evidence suggests that youth approaching the age of majority in care are more likely to remain in care past their 18th birthday when child welfare policy makes that option available. However, the exits that are most affected by this are legal emancipation (i.e. becoming legally independent prior to age18), running away from care, or experiencing other generally undesirable exits that do not constitute legal permanency, rather than exits to permanency.