Foster Care Exit Rate Disparity: Trends and Dynamics

Background and Purpose: In this first paper, we identify the ways in which foster care exit disparities differ. Traditionally, Black children are thought to leave care at rates that are slower than the rate for other children. However, discussions based on average disparity rates gloss over the fact that disparity rates vary by place and by sub-population, and more importantly, have changed over time. Therefore, understanding the disparity in foster care exit requires evidence before discussions turn to solutions and policies. The purpose of this paper is to understand (1) how disparity changed from 2000 to 2010 to 2015 using three cohorts of longitudinal data, (2) how disparity differs depending on permanency exit types (adoptions, reunifications, and exits to relatives), and (3) whether disparity persists or changes depending on the duration in care.

Methods: We used foster care data from 16 states. To assess the change in exit disparity, we used three cohorts of longitudinal data to show how much the exit disparity changed over time using the county random effects model and the state fixed effects model to account for clustering. To investigate different dynamics among different exit types (adoptions, reunifications, and exits to relatives), we built separate models for each exit and observed unique dynamics that a more general approach to permanency cannot capture. To account for censoring, we used the person-period data structure. The person-period structure detects disparities that are sensitive to periods (i.e., a function of how long children have been in care).

Results: We found that exit disparities have decreased substantially throughout the past two decades. When we looked at each permanent exit, we observed that the overall disparity is mainly caused by adoptions. We observed only small disparities in reunifications and exits to relatives. Further, we observed the extent to which the disparities changed depending on person periods. In adoptions, the disparity persists throughout all person periods. However, for reunification and exits to relatives, a different story is revealed. Early in placement, Black children exit faster than White children. Among children who spend more time in care, the exit rate for Black children slows relative to White children. Similar patterns describe relative exits.

Conclusions and implications: One-size-fits-all generalizations do not accurately describe the experiences of Black children or White children. On the contrary, exit disparities are nuanced, depending on exit types and the duration in care. Proposals to address disparity have to reflect this diversity of experience. Importantly, if differences are already shrinking, one has to make sure that any proposed solution won’t reverse a positive trend. More importantly, we observe that adoption disparity persists—Black children move more slowly to adoption. Though it is important to bear in mind that changing adoption patterns affect reunifications and guardianships, adoption disparity should be a focal point of policy and practice. As such, a single narrative that explains racial disparity is limiting. Though structural bias may tie the various narratives together, deeper analyses reveal the many different ways the problem must be approached.