Which Families Can Be Reunited?

This issue of The Future of Children covers foster care, including safety and stability, adoption and guardianship, kinship care, older children, and the much-debated topic of family reunification. The family reunification article is more research-based than most of the other articles and is the focus of this Research Watch.

Most foster care placements end with the children returning to their biological parents. But surprisingly little research has been conducted to determine how often that reunification is successful for the child, and whether success can be predicted.

The article quotes one study showing the importance of the quality of case plans, assessments, family engagement and compliance, service coordination before and after reunification, and monitoring of the reunification. Most of the article focuses on a data set of 1.3 million foster children in 12 states who were followed for up to 10 years after leaving foster care. The Multi-state Foster Care Data Archive includes children in Alabama, California, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin ? states that account for 55 percent of children in foster care in the United States.

Researchers found that approximately half of the children placed in foster care between the ages of 1 and 17 were reunified with their parents. The percentage is closer to one-third for infants who were under 1 year old when first placed in foster care, while almost 40 percent of those infants were adopted. Another 10 percent were placed with family members.

Approximately 20 percent of the children first placed in foster care between the ages of 1 and 5 are adopted, as are just under 10 percent placed between 6 and 12 years old.

Race and ethnicity influence whether a child will be reunified with the parents, adopted or placed elsewhere. Whites are slightly more likely to be reunified than children of other races and ethnicities, and less likely to be adopted. African-Americans are somewhat less likely to be reunified, compared with other groups (although more than 40 percent are reunified), and slightly more likely to be adopted (more than 20 percent) or placed with a relative (more than 10 percent). The differences are small and do not support the conventional wisdom about which children are ?adoptable.?

Reunification is more likely to take place after a short placement in foster care, than after a long placement. For example, 28 percent of children who leave foster care within a year are reunified with their parents, compared with 16 percent of those who leave during their second year in care, and 10 percent of those who leave during the third year.

Unfortunately, the data also show that 28 percent of the kids who are reunified with their families return to foster care within 10 years, and most of those return within one year.

The researchers raise important questions about how little is known about reunification. In addition to not knowing what strategies would help reunification succeed, little is known about whether reunification truly is a successful outcome for most children. For example, a small study in San Diego found that children who were reunified were more likely to engage in risky behaviors and had more behavior problems than those who stayed in foster care.

The bottom line: We don?t know as much about reunification as we should.