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| Demonstration Type: | Assisted Guardianship/Kinship Permanence1 |
| Approved: | April 17, 1997 |
| Implemented: | March 1, 1998 |
| Completed: | September 30, 20042 |
| Interim Evaluation Report Date: | December 13, 2000 |
| Final Evaluation Report Date: | October 2003 |
Maryland offered assisted guardianship to children for whom family reunification and adoption were not viable permanency options. To be eligible for the demonstration, children must have been living in the stable home of a relative or kinship caregiver for a minimum of six months. Maryland included in its demonstration both title IV-E eligible and non-IV-E eligible children.
Children enrolled in the State’s Restricted Foster Care (RFC) program, a program for children living with relatives who meet the licensing requirements for foster parents and who were paid the foster care subsidy rate of $600 per month, were eligible for the demonstration. In addition, children enrolled in Maryland’s Kinship Care Program, which includes children living in unlicensed relative foster homes, were eligible for the demonstration.
The demonstration began in the City of Baltimore. Plans to expand the demonstration to other counties were not implemented.
Maryland offered kinship caregivers and relative foster parents the option of becoming legal guardians while continuing to receive financial assistance and support services, creating a new permanency option for these children. Modeled after the State's Adoption Assistance Program, Maryland’s assisted guardianship demonstration was designed to convert long-term foster care and kinship care placements to permanent guardianship arrangements.
Under Maryland’s title IV-E waiver agreement, the guardianship subsidy was $300 per child, per month. This amount was lower than the foster care rate and higher than the TANF child-only payments (noted above). In other words, kinship caregivers who became guardians received a $122 increase to support the child in their care, while licensed relative foster parents who became guardians had their subsidy payment reduced by half (to $300). The State's hypothesis was that relative foster parents would accept the reduced stipend in order to have the authority to make decisions on behalf of the child without State involvement.
In addition to the subsidy, guardians were granted priority to receive support services—including individual and family counseling, parent training, medical support and mental health assessment—from local social service offices,
Evaluation Design
The evaluation consisted of process, outcome, and cost-effectiveness components. Children in both Kinship Care and RFC were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups during two data collection periods. In total 1,021 children were assigned to the experimental group and 737 children to the control group. However, caregivers for only 507, or 50 percent, of the children in the experimental group signed consent forms for participation in the demonstration.
Evaluation Findings
Process Evaluation
Fewer caregivers than expected agreed to participate in the demonstration, and still fewer cases in the experimental group were interested in seeking guardianship. Caregivers of only 200 children in the experimental group sought guardianship. This was approximately 20 percent of the experimental group or 39 percent of those who consented to participate in the demonstration.
The reason for the low response rate is unclear; however, staff in Maryland noted that fewer RFC caregivers than anticipated were interested in guardianship. Apparently, ending child welfare agency involvement with the family was not as great an incentive to pursue guardianship as anticipated, when it meant reducing the assistance they received from $600 to $300.
Outcome Evaluation
Maryland’s final evaluation report noted that children in kinship care in the experimental group exited foster care more rapidly than those in the control group. No such effect was observed for children in RFC. Of those children who exited care, children in the experimental group were more likely to exit care in the custody of a relative than those in the control group. This was true for all children in kinship care and for children in the second RFC cohort group.
There did not appear to be significant differences in the permanency rates of children in the experimental and control groups, calculated as the sum of the number of children who exited care as a result of reunification, adoption, or guardianship in the control and experimental groups divided by the number of children assigned to each group.3 By the end of the demonstration, 42 percent of the children in the experimental group achieved permanency, as compared to 43 percent of the children in the control group.
1Based on information submitted by the State as of February 2004. Maryland had two waiver agreements. The first waiver agreement provided for an assisted guardianship program. On September 16, 1999, HHS granted the State a second waiver agreement to implement a component to provide Services to Substance-Abusing Caretakers and Managed Care/Capitated Payment System components. Back
2HHS approved bridge extensions through September 30, 2004. Back
3Permanency rates were calculated based on data provided in Maryland’s final report. Back
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