The Effect of Initial Placement into Kinship Foster Care on Reunification from Foster Care

Abstract

ABSTRACT Recent child welfare research using administrative child welfare data has discovered that children who are placed in kinship foster care are re uni fied more slowly with their biological parents than children who are placed in foster care with nonrelatives. However, no research has examined the question of whether this effeet of placement into kinship foster care on re unification rates is due to selection bias. This research addresses this question by using a bivariate probit model and finds evidence that some of the effect of placement in kinship care on re unification rates can be attributed to selection bias.