Relative Permanence: Subsidized Legal Guardianship for Kinship Caregivers

Background and Purpose

Kinship care has been increasingly prevalent foster care placements in the United States.  In 2000, California implemented legislation that established subsidized legal guardianship for children leaving kinship foster care. In 2008, the federal government passed an Act that established payments for subsidized legal guardianship, which has increased the possibility of legal permanence for children placed in foster care with relatives. Subsidized legal guardianship seeks to promote permanency while decreasing the financial strain faced by kinship caregivers and addresses shortcomings of kinship foster care. Specifically, legal guardianship does not sever the biological parents' legal rights to the child which may be appealing for kin. We examined factors leading to kin guardianship participation and assessed child and case characteristics associated with reentry into foster care.

Methods

Data were extracted from the California's administrative child welfare database. This process allowed for a population-level, prospective analysis of children who exited child welfare to kin guardianship. The study included all children who exited foster care to kin guardianship before age 18 between 2001 and 2010 (N=25,593). This study considers factors associated with the return of a minority (N=4,494) of these children to care. Descriptive statistics were reported on the number and proportion of children who exited child welfare through kin guardianship. Two Cox Regression Models were run to estimate the risk of reentry following exit to kin guardianship.

Results

Descriptive statistics showed differences in characteristics between children who reentered and those who did not reenter into foster care after exiting through kin guardianship across child welfare across demographic variables, child welfare case characteristics, parent characteristics and local jurisdictions. Frequency distributions showed that the rates of reentry to foster care for children who first exited foster care through kin guardianship varied significantly across age of exit to kin guardianship. There was a striking difference between children who were age 11 and younger and those who were age 12 and older. A multivariate analysis affirmed this finding. The data were stratified into two separate groups (older and younger children) for the models.

Conclusions and Implications

The current investigation presents a decade of data allowing us to examine the implications of an essential policy change. California's implementation of subsidized kin guardianship offers an opportunity to look at the stability of subsidized legal guardianship as implemented in a universal program in the most populous state in the United States. Examining reabuse and reentry into care are, arguably, the two of the most important outcomes of the program since subsidized legal guardianship is premised on the safety and stability of kinship care placements. This study uses the likelihood of reentry as a marker of successful permanency efforts as a first step toward understanding the implications of policy changes that have expanded subsidized legal guardianship. By ascertaining the factors leading to guardianship disruption, efforts can be undertaken to mitigate their influence. California may provide insight about issues other states may encounter as efforts to expand subsidized legal guardianship are enacted.