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| Demonstration Type: | Assisted Guardianship – Phase I1 |
| Approved: | September 18, 1996 |
| Implemented: | May 1, 1997 |
| Expected Completion: | December 31, 2003 2 |
| Interim Evaluation Report Expected: | February 2000 |
| Final Evaluation Report Expected: | February 2003 |
Illinois offers assisted guardianship to children for whom reunification and adoption are not options. To meet eligibility requirements, children must have been in legal custody of the State for at least one year3 and have resided with the prospective guardian for at least one year. Although the demonstration is geared towards children living with relatives, children in licensed non-relative foster homes may also participate. Eligible children who live in the home of an unrelated foster parent must be at least twelve years of age; there is no age requirement for children living in kinship homes.
Illinois is implementing this demonstration project in all counties of the State.
Illinois offers eligible relative caretakers and licensed, non-relative foster parents the option of assuming legal guardianship of the child(ren) in their care. To assist in the transition to guardianship and to ensure the ongoing well-being of children and families, the State provides monthly subsidy payments equal to the State's adoption assistance payments along with the following services: home study, preliminary screenings and counseling, payment of one-time court costs and legal fees, periodic casework assistance, therapeutic day care, work-related day care for children under three, emergency stabilization, and special services (e.g., physical therapy) upon approval. The State reviews guardianship subsidies periodically.
The evaluation consists of process, outcome, and cost-effectiveness components. Although the demonstration is conducted statewide, the evaluation is limited to three sites: Cook Central Region, East St. Louis, and Peoria County. Within each of these sub-regions of the State, cases are randomly assigned to experimental and control groups.
Key questions addressed by the evaluations are the following: (1) Does the demonstration result in fewer children who remain in long-term foster care? (2) Does the demonstration result in fewer disrupted placements? (3) Do rates of subsequent reports of abuse and/or neglect increase? The State also examines the well-being of children and families, satisfaction with placement arrangements, permanency, and the degree of placement stability.
Illinois completed its Final Evaluation Report for Phase I of the assisted guardianship demonstration in February 2003. The following is a summary of the findings discussed in this report.
Process Findings
Between May 1, 1997 and March 31, 2002 local courts transferred 6,822 children from Illinois Department of Child and Family Services (IDCFS) custody to private guardianship under the demonstration. In addition, the courts reunified 3,877 children and consummated the adoptions of 14,468 children. For age-eligible children assigned to the title IV-E waiver demonstration, the combined permanency rate (reunification, adoption, and guardianship) achieved statewide as of March 2002 was 61 percent.
Illinois noted that one of the major challenges to implementation was training public and private child welfare agency staff. Approximately 80 percent of children in out-of-home care in Illinois are served by private agencies under purchase of services agreements. Training focused on integrating guardianship into casework practice as a permanency option, as well as providing post-guardianship services and supports to families.
Cost Neutrality Findings
The State reported that the demonstration was cost-neutral. As of March 31, 2002, cumulative mean title IV-E expenditures in the control group were $10,637 per child for foster care maintenance payments and $7,919 per child for adoption maintenance payments. When multiplied by the 30,781 children assigned to the experimental group, times an adjustment factor, a IV-E foster care maintenance claim of $346.9 million was generated, along with a IV-E adoption maintenance claim of $258.3 million. The actual IV-E maintenance costs in the experimental group were $349.7 million for foster care and $135.9 million for adoption. Therefore, the Waiver is cost-neutral, with the sum of actual IV-E costing less than the sum of IV-E maintenance claims and showing a surplus of approximately $113.5 million. On the IV-E administrative side, the calculations showed a surplus of approximately $54.4 million.
Outcome Findings
Does the demonstration result in fewer children remaining in long-term foster care with ongoing administration oversight? Comparing the permanency rate for the control group4 with the experimental group rate suggests that the availability of guardianship boosted net permanence by 6.1 percent, statistically significant at the .02 level. For age-eligible children assigned to the demonstration prior to January 1, 1999, the combined permanency rate (reunification, adoption, and guardianship) achieved as of March 2002 was 71.8 percent in the control group (3,470) and 77.9 percent in the experimental group (3,287). Because key indicators from administrative and survey data show that statistical equivalence was successfully achieved through randomization, the only substantive difference between the two groups is the intervention. Thus, the higher permanency rate in the experimental group may be attributed to the availability of subsidized guardianship.
Analysis of differences among individual permanency options found that virtually all of the difference in legal permanence was accounted for by subsidized guardianship, which contributed 16.7 percentage points to the combined permanency rate in the experimental group. The reunification rate was statistically equivalent in both the control and the experimental groups (9.7 percent vs. 9.4 percent). As of March 31, 2002, 25.7 percent of children in the control group had aged out or still remained in long-term foster care, compared to 19.7 percent in the experimental group. This mean difference of 5.9 percent is also statistically significant at the .02 level. It was thus concluded by the State that the Illinois subsidized guardianship demonstration resulted in fewer children remaining in long-term foster care with ongoing administrative oversight.
Although early data suggested that the waiver was also helping to boost adoption rates in the experimental group, the final results from Phase I indicate that adoption in the control group (61.6 percent) has moved ahead of adoptions in the experimental group (51.8 percent). While this higher rate of adoption in the control group is not greater than the percentage point advantage that subsidized guardianship adds to the combined permanency rate, it does raise the issue of whether it is acceptable public policy to have greater legal permanencies at the expense of fewer adoptions.
Does the demonstration result in fewer disrupted placements? Children discharged to the permanent homes of adoptive parents and legal guardians exhibit higher rates of home stability than children who remain in foster care. The State attributes this to the fact that children in foster care can be moved at the discretion of the child welfare agency, while children in legally permanent homes can only be moved by a decision of the court. Thus, the expectation is that children in the experimental group will exhibit a higher overall rate of home stability than children in the control group.
The proportion of children assigned to the demonstration prior to January 1, 1999 living in the same home in which they resided at the time of original assignment to the demonstration was 67.3 percent in the control group and 68.7 percent in the experimental group. While children in the control group were slightly more likely to move than children in the experimental group, this small difference of 1.5 percentage points is not large enough to rule out chance fluctuations as the source of the difference. Thus it cannot be concluded confidently that the demonstration increased home stability.
This lack of an intervention effect suggests that the degree of placement stability may be determined by factors independent of the legal relationship between the child and caregiver. Analysis completed by the State's independent evaluator seems to indicate that kinship is a common denominator that contributes to home stability in both the control and experimental group, regardless of whether the child remains in kinship foster care, is adopted by relatives, or enters legal guardianship.
Rates of dissolution of the 6,820 statewide cases that entered subsidized guardianship between April 1997 and March 2002 are low. Only 237 (3.5 percent) are no longer living in the home of the original guardian: 1.0 percent are no longer in the home because the guardian died or became incapacitated, and 2.2 percent of children are no longer in the home because the caregiver requested or was relieved of legal responsibility and the guardianship was dissolved. Of all the cases that were disrupted because of death or incapacitation and legal dissolution, 117 (49 percent) have required that IDCFS be appointed guardian of the child; of the remaining children, 73 were appointed a new guardian, 39 were returned to the biological parent, 4 were adopted, and 4 children had no legal guardian appointed.
Does the withdrawal of regular administrative oversight and casework services from the families in the subsidized guardianship program increase the rate of subsequent reports of abuse or neglect? Concerns have been raised that children in subsidized guardianship might be at greater risk of harm due to the withdrawal of administrative oversight and casework services, coupled with the greater potential access of abusive and neglectful parents to the guardian’s home. To evaluate this possibility, children were tracked for reports and indicated findings of abuse and neglect through the IDCFS Child and Neglect Tracking System.
For children assigned to the IV-E waiver demonstration prior to January 1, 1999, the overall proportion who had a subsequent substantiated report of abuse and neglect was 6.1 percent in the control group and 4.7 percent in the experimental group, meaning that there were fewer findings of abuse and neglect in the experimental group. In fact, subsequent indicated abuse and neglect was lowest among children eventually discharged to private guardians: 3.0 percent compared to 3.9 percent for adopted children, 7.7 percent for children who aged out or remain in foster care, and 8.8 percent for children reunified with their birth parents.
The small difference between children discharged to private guardians and adopted children is not statistically significant. Thus, it can be concluded that the withdrawal of regular administrative oversight and casework services from the families in the subsidized guardianship program did not result in higher rates of indicated subsequent reports of abuse or neglect.
1This profile is based on information submitted by the State as of March 2003. Illinois refers to its demonstration as “subsidized guardianship.” This was Illinois’ first of three demonstrations. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) granted Illinois a second waiver in September 1999 to implement a substance abuse services project. In August 2001, HHS granted a third waiver for an enhanced child welfare training demonstration. Back
2The demonstration was scheduled to end June 30, 2002. HHS granted Illinois a five-year extension, which began January 1, 2004. Back
3Prior to July 1, 2001, it was required that children be in legal custody of the State for two years. Back
4Illinois refers to its control group as the “cost neutrality group.” Back
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