Need for Speed: How Transitional Foster Care Practitioners Experience ORR-Mandated Policy for Unaccompanied Migrant Children

Background and Purpose

In response to a record-breaking number of unaccompanied children (UC) arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border, the Biden administration has endeavored to shorten the period of time between apprehension and placement with an adult sponsor, usually a relative. This study examines how practitioners within ORR-contracted organizations that provide and coordinate transitional foster care (TFC) for UC conceptualize this acceleration in the context of everyday practice. Practitioners in TFC sites coordinate the completion of ORR-mandated physical and mental health assessments; medical tests and vaccinations; background checks and home studies with sponsors; legal appointments; and foster family recruitment and licensing. In line with child welfare scholarship more broadly, prior studies have tended to examine how TFC service modalities are associated with short- and long-term outcomes for different populations. However, limited research has examined the experiences of practitioners providing services to UC.

Methods

This study draws on in-depth interviews (n=65) with practitioners across five UC-serving sites in three different states between September 2022 and June 2023 that subcontract with a national refugee resettlement agency to provide transitional foster care services. Interviewees within the subcontracting agencies included front-line practitioners (case managers, mental health clinicians, medical care coordinators, and teachers) as well as administrative staff (site coordinators and program managers). In-person interviews were audio recorded and lasted between 45 and 120 minutes. Data analysis involved thematic and narrative analysis of interview transcripts using NVivo. Coding was conducted collaboratively among four researchers, and included inductive and deductive approaches to identifying emergent themes, developing preliminary codes, and refining them.

Findings

Interviewees described overlapping and at times contradictory pressures to both speed up and slow down time in care for UC as they sought to comply with ORR-mandated assessments and evaluations, as well as the reporting requirements of contracting refugee resettlement organizations. Interviewees explained that they welcomed the recent lifting of what they perceived to be unnecessarily cumbersome bureaucratic requirements. However, interviewees also felt that time constraints and pressure to “tick ORR-mandated boxes” compromised their ability to provide meaningful clinical care relevant to traumas experienced by UC while migrating. Interviewees explained that these tensions were exacerbated by their inability, as per ORR policy, to provide substantive follow-up with UC and sponsors post-release. They also expressed that these concerns had escalated amid reports of recently released UC working in unsafe environments under coercive conditions that emerged during our data collection period.

Conclusions

This study outlines a vexing set of tensions experienced by social practitioners as they seek to balance speedy reunification of unaccompanied minors with meaningful and appropriate clinical care. These findings point to the need to more deeply consider how immigration and child welfare logics intersect in the context of frontline practice settings, as well as the impact for unaccompanied children and their families.