Abstract
This paper investigates the time caseworkers spend supporting long-term foster care and adoption placements. Undertaken in Australia through collaboration between university and non-government agency researchers, the ‘Cost of Support Study’ tracked the hours that caseworkers spent supporting twenty-seven children and their carers over a nine month period. 3 3 The research also tracked the time taken by carers for tasks related specifically to the placement — i.e. above and beyond ‘ordinary parenting’. See full report of the research at http://www.buseco.monash.edu.au/ebs/pubs/reports/cost-of-support-final-report.pdf; and Research Report Summary ( O'Neill, Tregeagle, Forbes, Cox, & Humpheys, 2010). Further papers on the carer findings and the methodology itself are in preparation. The placements were part of a ‘Find-A-Family’ program for ‘hard to place children’, many of whom had previously experienced multiple placement breakdowns. The program has a history of 78% stability on the first placement (over the young person's time in the program) and 93% by the second, with the type of support provided by this accredited agency's program detailed here. The weekly worker diaries reveal an average of 3 hours 32 minutes of worker time per week per placement; however wide variation is apparent in the time given to each placement, and depends on the characteristics of the child involved. Further, the resources required to support each placement are found by multiplying worker hours by the hourly cost per worker, using New South Wales government costings. The paper contributes to the important debate regarding the link between worker time and stability in care, by deepening our understanding of the costs involved in providing high quality support and supervision of casework.
Highlights
Stability of foster care placements is generally considered an important factor for understanding the poor outcomes that are too common for children and young people who have spent long periods of time in out-of-home care
To be measured precisely stability rates should be measured over a long period of time, as they are based on information collected regarding the duration of placements
A key objective of the research was to calculate the cost of support for a worker per week, and we investigated the average number of hours per day for each placement over the study period
Summary
Stability of foster care placements is generally considered an important factor for understanding the poor outcomes that are too common for children and young people who have spent long periods of time in out-of-home care. Most recent research regarding the factors associated with instability has focused predominantly on the characteristics of the child, the carer household, or the different types of care, such as residential or foster care (Barber & Delfabbro, 2003; Oosterman, Schuengel, Slot, Bullens & Doreleijers, 2007; Jones, 2010). Factors such as placing siblings together, worker continuity (Pecora, 2010), worker skills, foster parent assessment and retention (Jones, 2010) are acknowledged as factors that can assist stability. Information must be amalgamated over different children, with individual situations having relatively little impact on the overall rate
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