Abstract: Permanency Disproportionality: The Impact of Ethnicity on Reunification, Adoption and Guardianship (Society for Social Work and Research 21st Annual Conference - Ensure Healthy Development for all Youth)

Schedule:

Sunday, January 15, 2017: 10:05 AM

Preservation Hall Studio 4 (New Orleans Marriott)

* noted as presenting author

Joseph Magruder, PhD, Research Associate, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA

Daniel Webster, PhD, Research Specialist, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA

Andrea Lane Eastman, MA, PhD Candidate, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA

Aron Shlonsky, PhD, MSW, Professor of Evidence-Informed Practice, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

Background and Purpose

Work with disproportionality in child welfare services has focused primarily on referral, substantiation, and removal rates. In recent years the longstanding focus on permanency through reunification and adoption has been augmented by guardianship as an alternative form of permanency, especially for children living with relatives. This was reflected in the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 (P. L. 110-351) which established federal participation in payments for subsidized legal guardianship of children in relative foster care in much the same way that adoption has been subsidized. This study uses statewide data to consider differences in the choice of adoption and guardianship for children for whom reunification is neither possible nor desirable.

Methods

Data were extracted from an administrative child welfare database in a large western state. This process allows for a population-level, analysis of children taken into foster care who exit to permanency over time. The study included all children who exited their first child welfare foster care spell to permanency before age 18 between 2012 and 2014 (N=65,415). This study considers factors associated with the type of permanency – reunification, adoption, and guardianship - achieved by children with special focus on the differences between those discharged to adoption and guardianship. Descriptive statistics are across child, caregiver and service variables. Event history regression models were used to understand the importance of the observed differences between adoption and guardianship.

Results

Reunification rates were relatively similar for all race/ethnic groups. However, there were significant differences between those children who exited to adoption or guardianship, with guardianship being a much more common exit for African American and Native American children. For the child these differences included not only ethnicity, but also age and disability status. Also significant were several characteristics of the foster parents who adopted or became guardians including kinship status, single parent status, and age—with children four times as likely to exit to guardianship if placed with a relative foster parent.

Conclusions and Implications

This study suggests that race/ethnicity is a significant factor in determining the type of permanency achieved on behalf of a child for whom safe reunification is not possible. Among the unanswered questions is the degree to which the observed differences are the result of agency respect for cultural differences versus other factors.