Presentation: Understanding Post Adoption and Guardianship Instability (PAGI) for Children and Youth Who Exit Foster Care Project: Study Findings

Introduction:

“Post adoption and post guardianship instability” refers to situations in which children who exit foster care to adoptive and guardianship homes no longer reside with their adoptive parent or legal guardian. The Understanding Post Adoption and Guardianship Instability (PAGI) for Children and Youth who Exit Foster Care project aimed to understand instability among children who exist foster care to adoption or guardianship. The PAGI project included two research studies.

The National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW) Adoption Follow-Up Study (referred to as the NSCAW Adoption Study) gathered information on 383 adoptees (15-36 years old) who exited foster care to adoption and were also former participants in a prior longitudinal study, NSCAW. The Contact After Adoption or Guardianship: Child Welfare Agency and Family Interactions study explored the ways that child welfare agencies obtain information about post adoption and post guardianship instability.

These presentation slides summarize the methods and findings of these two studies.

Primary Research Questions:

• NSCAW Adoption Study:
  • To what extent have adopted NSCAW participants experienced post adoption formal and informal instability?
  • What are the risk and protective factors for post adoption instability at the individual child, parent, and family levels?
  • What is the quality of current parent-child relationships among children who exited foster care to permanency through adoption?
  • What support services are accessible to adopted youth/young adults and adoptive parents experiencing (or at risk of experiencing) post adoption instability?
  • What are the facilitators and barriers to accessing support services for adoptive families?
• Agency Contact Study:
  • What contact do child welfare agencies initiate with families after adoption or guardianship, and how does this contact provide information on the well-being of the child or youth?
  • What contact do families (parents or guardians, children, youth, and community members) initiate with child welfare agencies after adoption or guardianship?
  • How do child welfare agencies use the information gathered about families after adoption or guardianship?
  • To what extent do child welfare agencies track information about children's post adoption and post guardianship? What challenges do child welfare agencies experience in tracking instability formally and systematically?

Purpose:

The NSCAW Adoption Study examines the extent to which children who exit foster care to adoption experience instability as well as risk and protective factors for several types of formal (e.g., foster care reentry) and informal (e.g., child runs away or experiences homelessness) instability. This study also seeks to understand those services and supports received by families who have adopted children who exited foster care.

The Agency Contact Study explores the intentional and unintentional ways public child welfare agencies contact or receive information about the stability and well-being of children and youth who have exited the foster care system through adoption or guardianship.

Method:

For the NSCAW Adoption Study, adoptees and adoptive parents completed online surveys or surveys by telephone to describe their experiences with post adoption instability, the context surrounding post adoption instability events, their current parent-child relationships, and information about needed services and supports. Analyses examined secondary data available through NSCAW I and II along with data from these new NSCAW Adoption Study surveys of adoptees and their adoptive parents.

The Agency Contact Study used a multimode approach, including web surveys and key informant interviews. State adoption program managers completed up to two web-based surveys. One web survey focused on adoption practices and one focused on guardianship practices. Representatives from six child welfare state agencies also participated in key informant interviews. These interviews gathered in-depth information about post adoption and guardianship agency practices and procedures.    

Key Findings and Highlights:

• Prevalence of Post Adoption Instability - Almost 10% of adoptees experienced formal post adoption instability. Approximately 8% experienced foster care reentry after adoption and 2% experienced the termination of the adoptive parents’ parental rights or the child’s emancipation prior to the age of 18 years. Thirty percent of participants experienced informal instability after adoption. The most common informal instability events included a child running away (18% of all adoptees), leaving home prior to the age of 18 years (17%), living with a nonrelative adult instead of the adoptive parent (9%), and a period of homelessness (8%).
• Risk and Protective Factors Associated with Instability - Findings revealed factors associated with both formal and informal post adoption instability, including less nurturing adoptive family relationships during childhood and the presence of child behavior problems early in the adoptive relationship. Findings also showed factors only associated with informal stability, including older child age at the time of adoption, child sex assigned at birth (being female), and less parent-child closeness prior to the adoption. However, when accounting for the influence of all other potential risk/protective factors, only less nurturing adoptive family relationships continued to show a significant association with both formal and informal post adoption instability.

• Agency Contact - Many states initiate contact with families after adoption or guardianship. This contact includes sending newsletters and well-being letters to families, providing services and supports to families, surveying families about their needs, or offering training opportunities to help keep families engaged with the child welfare agency. More than 90% of state agency participants also indicate that families initiate contact with their agencies after adoption or guardianship. This contact most commonly occurs by phone when a family calls an agency to express a service need.  Most state agencies have access to data to help them monitor when children re-enter foster care after adoption or guardianship. However, state agency participants report that their agencies do not typically create reports on the frequency of post adoption or guardianship instability.

Practice Implications:

• Families’ knowledge of, and better access to available post adoption services and supports may help prevent post adoption instability experiences.
• More pre and post adoption supports appear particularly important for families finalizing adoptions for older children (particularly those adopted over 2 years of age) or those with known emotional or behavioral health problems.
• Post adoption instability may occur many years after a child’s adoption is finalized, when child welfare agencies may no longer be in contact with adoptive families. For this reason, it may be helpful for agencies to stay in touch with families long after adoption finalization.
• Child welfare agencies may consider the development of a systematic way to track foster care re-entries and agency-family interactions after legal custody has shifted from the state to adoptive parents or guardians.