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Permanency is a core tenet for children entering foster care with the goal of timely family reunification, adoption, or guardianship. Family reunification is recognized as the favored permanency outcome because it is associated with an assortment of positive foster care outcomes. Notably, there has been a recent emphasis on placing children entering foster care into kinship homes as a means to maintain family connections, create stability, and reduce trauma experienced from family separation. However, research on the impact of kinship placement on permanency outcomes has been mixed. Researchers have found kinship placement lowers the likelihood of legal permanency and reunification in particular (Barth et al., 1994; Hayward & DePanfilis; Webster et al., 2005). Other researchers have found no significant differences in reunification between kin and non-kin placements (Koh and Testa, 2008; Zinn, 2009). Due to the combination of mixed results and the increased efforts of kinship care, we examine the following research question: Do children initially placed in kin foster homes, compared to non-kin foster homes, experience higher incidence of reunification, adoption, or guardianship?
Methods:
Our sample is drawn from one midwestern state and uses children who entered care from 2011 to 2022 (N = 35,892). We conducted a multivariate competing risks analysis to understand the effect of kinship placement on permanency outcomes (i.e., reunification, adoption, and guardianship). We also fit Cox regressions to assess cause-specific hazard models for the permanency outcome of reunification, adoption, and guardianship.
Results:
The competing risk analysis revealed initial placement in kinship foster homes, compared to non-kin homes, increased the incidence of reunification (sdHR 1.19; p < .001) and guardianship (2.57; p < .001). Initial placement with relatives was associated with a decrease in the incidence of adoption (sdHR .49; p <.001). Cause-specific analyses show, at any given point in time, initial placement with relatives increased the rate of reunification by 29% (p < .001) and guardianship by 224% (p < .001). Initial placement with relatives decreases the rate of adoption by 13% (p < .01), at any given point in time.
Conclusions and Implications:
This research provides evidence that kinship placements are not a hinderance to reunification. Although previous research has found kinship placement to be a barrier toward reunification, our results indicate the opposite: kinship placement results in increased incidences and rates of reunification. We also find that kinship placement has robust effect on the permanency outcome of guardianship. As more states implement kinship first policy, our data suggests recent statewide efforts to focus on kinship placements are not vain. Initial placement with relatives contributes to permanency outcomes of family reunification and guardianship.