Reentry into Out-of-Home Care: Implications of Child Welfare Workers' Assessments of Risk and Safety

Abstract

This longitudinal analysis examined predictors of reentry to foster care among children and youths who entered foster care between 2001 and 2007. Three sources of administrative data (Chapin Hall Center for Children longitudinal files, National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System, and structured decision making) from one state were used to assess whether Child Protective Services workers' risk and safety assessment decisions are predictive of reentry into foster care. Cox regression modeling identified characteristics associated with reentry during this period. Findings suggest that current neglect assessment, problems with parenting skills, motivation to improve parenting, safety assessment decision, length of stay, substantiated allegations, and unsubstantiated allegations were associated with likelihood of reentry. The results suggest that child welfare systems could more effectively use assessment tools to match families with needed services. KEY WORDS: child maltreatment; foster care; risk assessment; safety assessment; structured decision making ********** When social workers and other child welfare professionals reunify maltreated children and adolescents with their parents, it is with the expectation that known risks have been minimized and that homes are safe. Decisions to reunify families increasingly rely on child welfare workers' perceptions of both risk of maltreatment and household safety. However, there has been little examination of whether social workers' assessments are predictive of child welfare outcomes such as reentry into care. Since passage of the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) in 1997 (H.R. 867, 1991), child welfare agencies have been required to seek more timely permanency for children through family preservation, time-limited reunification efforts, and, when reunification was not possible, through termination of parental fights and adoption promotion and support (Child Welfare League of America, 1997). While promoting family reunification through the provision of services, ASFA reduced the amount of time parents have to reunify with their children from 18 months to 12 months. ASFA also required the development of performance indicators and outcome measures related to the achievement of timely permanency. These changes in policy and practice, and the outcome measures used to evaluate state performance, have led to increased efforts to quickly reunify families after a child has been removed from a home due to child maltreatment. There is general consensus that in some cases, these reunification efforts are unsuccessful and children reenter out-of-home care after being returned to live with their parents. In an effort to protect children from subsequent maltreatment and to standardize assessment practices, many states have implemented empirically based assessment tools for use in child welfare practice. LITERATURE REVIEW Decision Making in Child Welfare Increasingly, child welfare and juvenile justice agencies are adopting assessment instruments as decision-making tools (DePanfilis & Scannapieco, 1994; Krysik & LeCroy, 2002; Shook & Sarri, 2007). In child welfare agencies, these tools generally focus on family-level risk and environmental factors, whereas in juvenile justice settings, they are used to assess individual behavior (Shook & Sarri, 2007). Literature has suggested that these tools can be used to measure or predict case outcomes (Lyle & Graham, 2000), but there have been few empirical studies using assessment instruments in this manner. Rather, the literature related to these assessment tools has largely examined four domains: (1) definitions required for assessing risk and safety (DePanfilis & Scannapieco, 1994; English & Pecora, 1994); (2) implementation of specific decision-making systems (Doueck, English, DePanfilis, & Moote, 1993; K. Johnson, Wagner, Scharenbrock, & Healy, 2006); (3) challenges related to the use of existing tools and models, including reliability and validity of instruments (Baird & Wagner, 2000; Baird, Wagner, Healy, & Johnson, 1999; Baumann, Law, Sheets, Reid, & Graham, 2005, 2006; Camasso & Jagannathan, 2000; Dorsey, Mustillo, Farmer, & Elbogen, 2008; English & Graham, 2000; Gambrill & Shlonsky, 2000; W. …