Panel:
Research on Contemporary Issues in Foster Care and Policy to Improve Child Well-Being
(Family and Child Policy)
*Names in bold indicate Presenter
Roughly 400,000 children reside in the foster-care system, and over 20,000 age out of the system each year without ever finding a permanent home. Research has linked entry into the foster care system to a plethora of negative health and human capital outcomes---such as unemployment and delinquency---with this link increasing for children who are placed in congregate care, or age out of the system. Thus, it is pertinent to explore how public policy may attenuate, and possibly prevent, these negative outcomes.
The four studies in this panel provide new evidence regarding parental intervention and the reduction of child maltreatment (and subsequent foster care entry), supply effects and racial disparities in congregate care, as well as evidence regarding the extension of welfare services and improvements in outcomes for those who age out of the system.
In order to inform the prevention of neglect, the first paper explores how protective factors associate with neglectful parenting and involvement in Child Protective Services (CPS) across levels of poverty. In particular, using a longitudinal sample, the author investigates how protective factors across early childhood relate to different dimensions of neglect, and estimates how poverty moderates the association between protective factors and neglectful parenting across early childhood.
Using administrative data on the population of U.S. foster care children, the second paper investigates if Medicaid expansion and Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) coverage prevent first-time foster care entries due to parental drug abuse. By exploiting the temporal variation in state-level Medicaid expansion, the author finds that first-time foster care entries due to parental drug abuse decreased in states that expanded Medicaid and covered methadone for MAT.
To understand black/white differences in the use of congregate care---such as group homes--- the next paper implements a two-stage model organized around the idea that congregate care demand is induced by the supply of congregate care beds---that is, supply represents the resource constraint. Relative to linear regression analysis, the authors find that when the supply effect is taken into account the black/white difference in the use of congregate care is reduced substantially.
In an effort to improve young adult outcomes, several states have extended the foster care age beyond 18. By exploiting state-level temporal variation in policy adoption and age cutoffs, the final paper explores how this extension improves health and human outcomes for those who age out. The paper further explores how the provision of services---such as career advising---further augment these improvements.
These studies contribute to the literature in that they explore new questions related to current and ubiquitous policies, and implement different methodologies to answer these questions. Ultimately, the purpose of this session is to inform public policy related to the well-being of maltreated and foster care children, and shape interventions that will successfully improve our child welfare system and the lives of those who interact with it.
