Factors Associated with the Decision-Making Process in Kinship Diversion

Background:

Policies have advocated kinship placements since the 1990s (Testa et al. 2015), but no study to date has examined which child, caregiver, and caseworker characteristics are associated with the type of kinship placement. Three types of kinship placements include: (1) public kinships wherein children are placed in paid foster placements; (2) voluntary unpaid kinship placements wherein child welfare agency staff divert children from care without payment; and, (3) private unpaid kinship wherein parents arrange placements outside of the child welfare system upon incapacitation, such as incarceration or drug treatment. This study begins to fill this gap.

Methods:

This study uses data from Wave 1 of the second National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW II). The sample includes 790 children living in kinship arrangements following a substantiated maltreatment report. Of the 790 children, 403 were in public kinship placements, 292 were in voluntary unpaid kinship placements, and 95 were diverted into private kinship care. We used multinomial logistic regression analysis with multiple imputed data. Survey weights are used to ensure generalizability of results.

Results:

Results show that the probability of a child being diverted into private kinship care is 18.6% whereas the probability of being diverted into voluntary kinship care is 35.8%. Every one-year increase in a child’s age reduces the probability of being diverted into private kinship by 2.5% (p < 0.01).  On average, the probability of a child being diverted into private kinship care was about 25.7% higher when caseworkers had at least master’s degrees as compared with those with bachelor’s degrees or less (p < 0.05). The probability of being diverted into private kinship care was about 20.5% lower for caseworkers whose assessments indicated a moderate or severe harm level as compared with caseworkers whose assessments indicated a harm level of none or mild (p < 0.1). Compared with paid kinship care, a one unit increase in the number of children in caregiver’s household reduces the probability of being placed into voluntary kinship care by 6.2% (p < 0.05). The probability of being placed into voluntary kinship care was on average about 20.2 % lower for caseworkers with a master or higher degree than those with a bachelor’s degree or less (p < 0.05).

Conclusion and implication:

Private kinship care and voluntary kinship care are different types of kinship diversion. The only common factor predicting these two types of unpaid kinship care is the caseworker’s level of education; however, the direction of the impact of that factor differs between the types of kinship care. Other factors predicting the decision for diverting children to private and voluntary kinship care differ by the type of care.  Differentiating between the types of kinship diversion has important implications for practice. Examining a variety of factors can help child welfare scholars develop a comprehensive understanding of the decision-making processes used in selecting kinship diversion for out-of-home placements. A better understanding of the factors and biases influencing the decision-making process may have implications for policy guiding the use of kinship diversion.