Differential exit rates of minority children in foster care

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Abstract
Studies of predictors of foster care outcomes have produced contradictory findings, especially with respect to the effects of foster children's ethnicity. One reason for these contradictions may be methodological problems such as the difficulty of handling censored cases (children who remain in foster care after data collection ceases), limitations of cross-sectional data, and the necessity of treating type of exit and time until exit as separate variables. This article reports on a study of 775 foster children in which retrospective data collection and event history analysis were used to avoid these problems. A key innovation was the use of a statistical model that simultaneously estimates the effects of predictor variables on the rate of children leaving foster care for four different types of exits. Results show that children did not differ across ethnic groups on rates of exit into adoption or outcomes such as emancipation or placement with relatives. The major difference was among children who returned home, which occurred at only half the rate for black children as for white children. Variables such as age, presence of a disability, and visitation by parents also were found to differentially affect rates of various exits.

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