Parenting Engagement in Foster Care Placement Stability and Permanency

Background

For more than three decades, Family-Centered Practice (FCP) has impacted policy and case management performance standards, shifting focus to systemic support for child well-being. Standards of FCP encourage the participation or voice of the family with various levels of structured intervention to promote democratic family involvement in the case planning process. Particularly in foster care, goals of stable and permanent placement reduce potential child welfare risks, thus remain key outcomes. Historically, child welfare services predominately engage mothers, as mothers are historically the primary caregivers of the children. Research on engaging fathers, or fathers and mothers together, in child welfare is limited.  The current study aims to use a family engagement approach to examine the effect of both mothers’ and fathers’ engagement in child welfare services on permanency and stability outcomes with a larger sample and more rigorous approach than has been used in prior work.

Methods

Utilizing Quality Service Review (QSR) data, this study analyzed 1617 out of home child welfare cases collected from 2007 to 2017 in a Midwestern state in the U.S.  Every two years, reviewers evaluated randomly selected cases on various outcomes including permanency, stability, and parent engagement.  Rated on six-point scales, permanency indicates the extent to which a child is living in a family situation that will endure lifelong while placement stability is defined as the extent of prospective stability of the child’s current home settings and relationships over the next 6 months. Parent engagement (for both mothers and fathers) was measured using a six-point scale indicating the extent to which each parent had a role, voice, and influence in case planning. Additionally, the analysis included sixteen variables at the child, parent, and case levels as control variables. Data wereanalyzed using a three-way interaction analysis with post hoc probing techniques.

Findings

For main effects, permanency was significantly lower when both parents engaged in case planning and management.  Cases without any parents’ engagement showed the largest difference from dual parent engagement group (β= .594, p < .001).   High-quality of engagement with fathers (β= .209, p < .001) and mothers (β= .413, p < .001) each significantly increased permanency. For placement stability, engaging both parents in case planning and management also demonstrated the lowest score on placement stability as compared to other forms of parent engagement. This difference was relatively greater in comparison to cases that did not engage any biological parents (β= .513, p < .001).  The quality of engagements with fathers and mothers waspositively associated with placement stability, respectively.

 

Practice Implications

This study highlights the potential benefit of high quality engagement with mothers and fathers for positive foster care child outcomes, although the benefits of parent engagement may be compromised when both parents are engaged in case management. Potential relationship conflicts (non-IPV), male dominance or lack of acceptance of influence, and challenges with navigating care with both parents involved may explain lower stability and permanency outcomes.  These findings point to a need for further evaluation the mechanism within these relationships and care process that cause deleterious outcomes.