Concurrent Planning and Permanency Outcomes of Children in Foster Care: A Moderating Role of Race

Background: Despite concurrent planning being a widely recognized child welfare practice, there is limited and inconsistent evidence regarding its impact on promoting the achievement of permanency in children. Additionally, given the presence of racial disproportionality in the child welfare system, which is closely linked to permanency outcomes, it is essential to examine this association through a racial justice lens. This study investigates the association of concurrent planning with the time to achieve permanency among children in foster care and the moderating role of race in this relationship.

Methods: This study utilized child welfare administrative data from a Mid-Atlantic state. The sample included children (aged 0-17) who were placed in out-of-home care between 01/01/2008 and 04/21/2023. The unit of analysis was individual episode records of each child in care, as permanency goals and outcomes may vary across episodes even for the same child. As a result, the final sample included in the analysis was 20,895 case records. The following measurements were included in the competing risk model: concurrent planning status, length of stay in foster care, permanency outcomes (i.e., reunification, guardianship by a relative [RE], guardianship by a non-relative [NR], adoption), age, gender, ethnicity, removal reasons, and number of placement changes.

Results: Cross-tabulation results of permanency goals and outcomes showed that the most prevalent permanency goal combination was Adoption+Guardianship NR (49.43%) for children who achieved adoption; Guardianship NR+Reunification (25.68%) for those who achieved guardianship NR; Reunification+Guardianship RE (39.57%) for those who achieved guardianship RE; and Reunification+Guardianship NR (67.91%) for those who achieved reunification. The survival analysis revealed that compared to children without concurrent plan, those with concurrent plan experienced a higher rate of achieving any forms of permanency (HR = 1.24). For each permanency outcome, children with concurrent plan had a higher hazard of achieving reunification (HR = 1.32), guardianship RE (HR = 1.40) and guardianship NR (HR = 2.07), but a lower hazard of achieving adoption (HR = 0.46). For the interaction effect, the significant difference between white and non-white children was only found in the models of any forms of permanency (p < .001) and reunification (p < .01). To be more specific, when the concurrent plan was in place, both non-white and white children experienced a higher rate of achieving any forms of permanency (HR = 1.11 for white children; HR = 1.34 for non-white children), indicating that non-white children had a 34% higher rate of achieving permanency compared to those without a concurrent plan, and reunification (HR = 1.16 for white children; HR = 1.41 for non-white children), indicating that non-white children were 41% more likely to be reunified compared to those without a concurrent plan.

Implications: These findings highlight the effectiveness of concurrent planning in expediting reunification and guardianship, but not adoption. This study suggests developing a clear guideline as to how concurrent plan should be implemented in practice to promote the timely achievement of permanency goals. However, since concurrent planning was less effective for adoption, the two-year state-mandated timeframe for adoption warrants further exploration.