Caseworker Visits after Reunification and Children's Reentry into Foster Care: A Survival Analysis

Background: Not all children who reunify experience stability upon returning home, resulting in a reentry into foster care. While there are a number of post-reunification services and programs that can be offered to a family upon case closure, the one that is most accessible to child welfare agencies is continued caseworker visits. The current study aims to examine the association between caseworker visits after reunification and children’s reentry into foster care and to identify other factors associated with children’s reentry into foster care.

Methods: Administrative child welfare data from one Mid-Atlantic state were utilized for this study. The sample consists of 3,510 children and youth who were between the ages of 0 and 15 at reunification and who reunified with their families of origins between July 1, 2016, and June 30, 2020. These children/youth were administratively followed for two years after they returned home. If the child was removed from their home and placed into foster care at any point within those two years, it was considered a reentry. A number of individual- (e.g., age) and case-level (e.g., post-reunification caseworker visits) variables were examined. Descriptive statistics, chi-square test, and survival analysis were conducted using SAS software.

Results: Of the full sample, 12.62% (n = 443) of children/youth reentered foster care within 24 months of reunification and 52.02% (n = 1,826) received caseworker visits after reunification. Additionally, 57.03% of the 3,067 children/youth who did not reenter foster care had caseworker visits after reunification, compared to 17.38% of the 443 children who did reenter foster care had post-reunification caseworker visits. The survival analysis revealed that the provision of post-reunification caseworker visits (HR = 0.69) reduced the risk of reentry by 31.0%. Additionally, male children (HR = 1.36), children living in metropolitan areas (HR = 1.24), those with behavioral issue (HR = 1.58), and those who had prior history of removal (HR = 1.77) were more likely to reenter foster care by 36.0%, 24.0%, 58.0%, and 77.0%, respectively. The risk of reentry was 82.0% lower for children of other races compared to Black children (HR = 0.18), 50.0% lower for children aged 1 to 5 years (HR = 0.50), 57.0% lower for those aged 6 to 10 years (HR = 0.43), and 44.0% lower for those aged 11 to 15 years (HR = 0.56) compared to infants. While court-ordered returns increased the risk of reentry by more than double (HR = 2.37), the last placement being a trial home visit decreased the risk of reentry among children by 32.0% (HR = 0.68).

Conclusion/Implications: These findings suggest that keeping child welfare cases open post-reunification to allow for ongoing contact between child welfare staff and the family may be a promising intervention strategy to prevent children from reentering foster care. In doing so, the current study suggests providing guidance on the timeframe, frequency, and duration of these visits following reunification.