IV. Key Findings and Implications

The circumstances that bring children to the attention of the child welfare system are often unique, complex, and multi-dimensional. Diagnosing child maltreatment, providing appropriate services, and helping parents meet their responsibilities to protect and nurture their children involve collecting and using detailed information from many people and sources. Each child welfare agency, and its partners in providing services, must be held accountable to measure, report, and track results for the children they serve.

As the Federal agency with oversight responsibility for State child welfare programs, the Department must ensure that States provide quality services that result in positive outcomes for children and families. The 1998 Annual Summary of State Child Welfare Data (Annual Summary), found at the end of this chapter, provides detailed contextual information and performance data for 30 States with the best data available on the national set of outcome measures. The chapter describes the criteria used in selecting the 30 States for inclusion in the Annual Summary. It discusses some key findings based on the aggregate performance of these 30 States, and highlights their implications for policy and practice in child welfare, and it concludes with a presentation of the Annual Summary.

The availability and quality of data are critical factors in measuring outcomes for children in the child welfare system.

Criteria for Inclusion of State Data in the Annual Summary

The Annual Summary presents a picture of the status of children receiving services from State child welfare agencies, based on a sample of 30 States with the most comprehensive data submissions to the NCANDS and AFCARS. The 30 States were selected based on the following criteria:

• Data on the majority of the outcome measures must have been provided. A State must have provided data for at least 9 of the 13 outcome measures.

• Data for most of Outcome 3.1, Exits from Foster Care, must have been provided. A State must have provided data for at least 70 percent of all exits of children from foster care and included data on exits to adoption.

Appendix F indicates which States have data included in the Annual Summary for each contextual element and outcome measure. It also indicates which States are not included in the Annual Summary, but have data included on their State pages. In effect, some elements have data from more than 30 States.

In the coming years, it is anticipated that State data submissions will improve and data from more States will be included in future annual summaries, resulting in data that are more comparable to national statistics.

Because the contextual information in the Annual Summary is based on a sample of 30 States, the data should not be regarded as national statistics. For example, highlights from Child Maltreatment 1997 in appendix A show more complete information from more States on child maltreatment victims than the Annual Summary. Similarly, the FY 1998 AFCARS Report, also in appendix A, reports data from more States and shows many more children in foster care on September 30, 1998, than the Annual Summary.

Findings Based on the Contextual Information

The first two pages of the Annual Summary provide contextual information for the 30 States. Some key findings from the contextual part of the Annual Summary follow:

• In 1997, there were 485,870 child victims of maltreatment in these 30 States. In Child Maltreatment 1997, it was estimated that there were 984,000 victims of maltreatment nationwide.

• In these 30 States, more than half of the child victims suffered neglect (56%). A fifth of the child victims (20%) were victims of physical abuse; 12 percent experienced sexual abuse.

• In FY 1998, 153,168 children entered foster care in these States. Forty-one percent of these children were 11 years of age or older. The FY 1998 AFCARS Report estimates that there were 286,000 children entering foster care nationwide, and 40 percent were 11 years of age or older.

• The median length of stay of the children who exited care was 10.8 months. The median length of stay of children in care on September 30, 1998, was 22.2 months.

• African American and Alaska Native/American Indian children were over-represented in the foster care system. African American children were 17 percent of the general population, but 48 percent of the children in foster care at the end of FY 1998. Alaska Native/American Indian children were 1 percent of the general population and 2 percent of the children in foster care at the end of FY 1998.

• In these 30 States, 23,523 children were adopted. Almost half of the children adopted were African American. The FY 1998 AFCARS Report estimates that there were 36,000 children adopted from the public child welfare system nationwide, and 46 percent were African American.

Findings and Policy Implications Based on the Outcome Measures

The Annual Summary presents performance data for the 30 States. Some fundamental questions were developed in order to frame the findings from the Annual Summary and discuss the policy and practice implications of these findings:

1. How many children are repeat victims of maltreatment?

Eleven percent of child victims of maltreatment were estimated to have been victims of at least one additional incident of maltreatment within 12 months.

The State child protective services (CPS) agency must ensure that the child's safety is the paramount concern in all decision-making. The CPS agency must make every effort to utilize assessment tools to determine the dangers to the child and the family, the problems precipitating those dangers, and the families who are most likely to re-abuse their children. The CPS agency should make accessible, timely, and appropriate services available to these families and children and evaluate the results of these interventions before deciding to close the case.

2. Is permanency being achieved for children under the placement and care responsibility of State child welfare agencies?

Eighty-two percent of children exiting foster care left to permanent placements: 66 percent were reunified with their families or other relatives, 14 percent were adopted, and 2 percent had legal guardians appointed.

While most of the children who exit foster care achieve permanency, some children do not. State child welfare agencies should take steps to achieve permanency for all of the children under their placement and care and ensure that these children grow up in safe, stable families.

3. Is permanency being established for children of different races and ethnicities?

Racial and ethnic differences in the percentage of children who exited to permanent placements were relatively small: 80 percent of African American children exited to permanency compared to 82 percent of Hispanic children, 82 percent of Alaska Native/American Indian children, and 83 percent of Caucasian children.

Approximately four-fifths of all children leaving foster care, regardless of race or ethnicity, exit to permanent settings. However, the contextual data from the 30 States show that African American and Alaska Native/American Indian children are over-represented in foster care. For example, African American children comprised 17 percent of the general population, but 48 percent of the children in foster care at the end of FY 1998; Alaska Native/American Indian children were 1 percent of the general population and 2 percent of the children in foster care during the same period.

States should work to develop and/or reinforce community supports for families that are designed to address cultural differences and increase parental child rearing competencies to help parents overcome abusive behavior toward their children. State child welfare agencies should take steps to keep children safe and, if they are removed from their homes, to find them permanent placements as quickly as possible.

4. How many youth exit foster care to emancipation?

In these 30 States, approximately 6 percent of children exited foster care to emancipation. More than one-third of these children were younger than 12 when they entered the foster care system, meaning they had spent 6 or more years in care without finding a permanent home.

Given the large number of children growing up in foster care, this finding supports the mandate of the Foster Care Independence Act of 1999, which requires States to provide independent living and other supportive services to children who continue to remain in foster care to help them transition to self sufficiency. It also suggests that States should make increased efforts to find permanent homes for older youths.

5. How quickly are children in the foster care system being reunified with their families?

Sixty-five percent of children who were reunified with their parents or other relatives had been in foster care for less than 12 months.

While most children are being reunified with their families within 12 months of entering foster care, many other children take much longer to reunify. If children must be separated from their parents, the State child welfare agency should work for the child's return, if it can be done safely. The agency should identify which services are needed by families of abused or neglected children and take steps to expedite the safe return of children to their families through the provision of services.

6. Of the children entering foster care in FY 1998, how many were re-entering foster care?

Seventeen percent of the children entering foster care in FY 1998 had been in foster care previously.

State child welfare agencies must avoid reunifying children without providing the necessary supportive services to their families.

7. How quickly are children in the foster care system being adopted?

Sixteen percent of adoptions occurred within 2 years of the child's entry into foster care. However, 49 percent of adoptions occurred after the children had been in foster care 4 years or more.

Many children wait too long to find a permanent home. The Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (ASFA) includes provisions that shorten the timeframe for making permanency planning decisions and establish a timeframe for initiating proceedings to terminate parental rights. Also, ASFA strongly promotes the timely adoption of children who cannot return safely to their own homes. Many State child welfare agencies have implemented effective practices to meet the ASFA provisions, thus reducing the length of time to adoption. These agencies work concurrently to reunify a family while, at the same time, planning for the possibility that reunification will not succeed. For example, an agency might seek out foster parents or potential adoptive parents who will be willing to adopt the child should reunification efforts fail. These and other practices —like listing the child with appropriate adoption exchanges or taking timely steps to complete home studies —can expedite the time to adoption.

8. Are children experiencing stable foster care placements?

For children who had been in foster care less than 12 months, 81 percent had two or fewer placements; for children in care 48 months or more, only 39 percent had two or fewer placements.

The longer children remained in foster care, the less likely they were to have experienced stable placements. To reduce the number of placement settings experienced by children in foster care, State child welfare agencies should provide adequate supports to foster children and their foster parents in order to prevent the disruption of placements.

These data highlights are based on the data presented in the Annual Summary, which follows. The Annual Summary provides a baseline for tracking State performance on the outcome measures in the future.

Click here to view The 1998 Annual Summary of State Child Welfare Data

Return to Table of Contents