Source: MN DHS Child Welfare Continuous Improvement Brief 1
A little over a week ago this Star Tribune article reported that Minnesota’s high foster care re-entry rate may cause the state to incur a large federal financial penalty for failing to meet the national standard. According to the article, the national standard is 9.9 percent while Minnesota is the highest in the nation at 26 percent. This blog post is meant to provide some additional context that was not directly evident in the aforementioned article.
The data and the research surrounding re-entry
Minnesota does in fact have a high foster care re-entry rate (“re-entry” is defined as a child’s return to out-of-home care within 12 months of reunification). The federal Child and Family Services Review (CFSR) listed foster care re-entry as an area for improvement for Minnesota. The Minnesota Department of Human Services issued a brief in March 2013 on foster care re-entry, which included strategies for reducing re-entry rates.
It is indeed traumatic for children to experience multiple placement changes, especially if one of those placement changes is returning to foster care following a reunification. Placement instability negatively impacts children’s social and emotional well-being. Additionally, when children are repeatedly separated from their primary caregivers, their ability to establish secure relationships is diminished.
When children re-enter foster care post-reunification, it is often due to insufficient resolution of the issue(s) that caused the initial out-of-home placement to occur. According to several national studies (see our Re-entry to Foster Care Report from February 2010), children who re-enter foster care are most likely to be teenagers, have an emotional or behavioral concern, and/or are African American.
According to the DHS brief, in Minnesota children who had been in out-of-home care for behavioral reasons or alcohol/drug abuse were most likely to re-enter care. Additionally, African American children had the highest rate of re-entry, at 30.4 percent.
Research informing policy & practice
In child welfare, reunification with primary caregivers is the preferred permanency plan for children and youth in out-of-home care when it can be done safely. Maintaining connections to primary caregivers reinforces a child’s sense of belonging to a family while promoting permanent relationships to caring adults:
Every child needs to have the assurance of physical and personal stability, and to have confidence in the regularity, relationships, and routine of daily family life. Permanency allows children to define themselves as belonging to a family, to be cared for by adults with whom they are bound by ties of heritage and long-term caring relationships. (CWLA, 2002)
Most families who come into contact with the child welfare system want to take care of their children and given the right services and support, they can. Family reunification as a permanency goal has been promoted in child welfare policy since the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980; our most recent child welfare federal laws also promote reunification as well as placement with a relative as a form of maintaining contact with a child’s family of origin.
Federal vs. Minnesota timelines to permanency
The Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (ASFA) modified permanency timelines for children and youth in foster care. Generally, ASFA requires that permanency hearings be held when a child has been in foster care for 12 months; once a child has been in foster care for 15 out of the most recent 22 months, a termination of parental rights is often required. ASFA also requires that reasonable efforts be made to reunify children and youth with their primary caregivers, except under specific circumstances.
In Minnesota, permanency timelines are even shorter. Up until last year, children ages birth to eight were to have permanency reviews six months after entering foster care; children over eight followed the 12-month permanency timelines.
However, in 2013 the permanency statutes were modified to require permanency progress reviews for any child who has been in foster care for six months (see Minn. Stat. §260C.204). Current Minnesota statute requires the courts to determine at six months if the child is able to be returned home. If circumstances have not yet changed but the parent is complying and the child would benefit from reunification, the court can order a continuance for six additional months. If the parent is not complying or not maintaining contact, then other permanency routes are to be chosen, beginning with relatives, close family friends, and individuals with whom the child has had significant contact.
The concept of a timeline to permanency is complicated. On one hand, children need to have security and stability in their lives in order to thrive. Permanency is crucial in this regard. But on the other hand, in many situations parents may need time to rectify the circumstances under which their children were removed; for example, substance abuse treatment/recovery and poverty-related issues often require more time than allotted.
It’s a complex issue
The issue of foster care re-entry is complex. In addition to the issues identified above, there are a multitude of reasons for why re-entry occurs and a multitude of strategies to reduce re-entry rates.
Adequate preparation and support
Foster parents have access to services and supports to help them take care of their foster children. These services and supports are inconsistently available to families post-reunification. The circumstances under which a child was initially removed are resolved when the child is out of the home, so what happens when the child returns? As stated previously, foster care re-entry is likely when the circumstances are insufficiently resolved, which may not be evident until the child returns home.
One strategy is to provide post-reunification services to support families during their first few months of reunification, as this time period is when children are most likely to re-enter foster care. Similar to how these services help foster parents provide a stable and caring environment for their foster children, these services and supports would also be very useful to families learning how to be a family again post-child welfare involvement.
Another strategy to reduce the risk of re-entry is trial home visits. Minnesota currently utilizes this strategy, whereby children are returned to their homes under the custody of the county or tribe. While the obvious benefit is that the county or tribe is able to pinpoint any possible issues (including issues related to children’s behavior) and work with parents and children to ensure successful reunification, another benefit is a reduction in the amount of time children and their families spend apart from one another. Children who participated in trial home visits in 2010 had a lower re-entry rate than those who did not (13 percent vs. 24 percent).
Data recording
One issue brought up by DHS concerns the category “child behavior problem” in Minnesota’s Social Services Information System (SSIS). This is a broad category that does not provide sufficient details concerning the actual reason for re-entry. Breaking up this category to distinguish among parent/child conflict, juvenile delinquency, and children’s mental health concerns would help in terms of predicting (and thus preventing) foster care re-entry. Currently DHS is working on incorporating these changes into SSIS.
Prevention services
A very effective method of preventing foster care re-entry is to prevent out-0f-home placement in the first place. Minnesota has a variety of preventive services available to families. For example, Minnesota has implemented Family Assessment (FA), or differential response, in order to promote family preservation and avoid out-of-home placement. Approximately 70 percent of maltreatment reports fall under this category. Additionally, the Parent Support Outreach Program in Minnesota was given additional funding for statewide implementation in 2013. This voluntary program supports at-risk families to prevent their entrance into the child welfare system overall.
Cross-system collaboration and cooperation
One of the main concerns in virtually all human services agencies nationwide is the siloing of services. When systems are not integrated and agencies do not collaborate, children and families do not receive optimum care. Improved collaboration among the various systems involved in the lives of children and families in the child welfare system would provide more insight into the diverse needs of these families and could help prevent future re-entry.
In sum
Minnesota’s high foster care re-entry rate is a cause of concern. The state has some strategies underway to reduce this rate, as do some counties. Additionally, the legislature has enacted laws and appropriated funding that may help as well. As we consider progress that has been made and progress yet to be made it is essential that we recognize the complexity of this issue while demanding no less than the very best efforts of child welfare agencies and the professionals who work within them. High quality research and evidence-based/evidence-informed practices must be the driving force behind policy development and practice initiatives designed to increase family stability while decreasing Minnesota’s foster care re-entry patterns.
We want to hear from you! Leave a comment below!
I especially liked the sentence: “As stated previously, foster care re-entry is likely when the circumstances are insufficiently resolved, which may not be evident until the child returns home.” I think this is key. I assume that Mn already has pre-reunification visits with parents, e.g., trial home visits. Here, it sounds as if they are not? Perhaps you mean much more lengthy visits such as a month or so long This I assume may produce a problem with rates – for instance if a child is in a group home or FFA, then does the facility get paid to keep the bed open? How will Mn fund the post-reunification services? The parents could certainly use the same services we try to give to post adoptive families. Does Minnesota use Safety Organized Practice? I think that helps assess more clearly the safety issues for those children who should not be returned. Of course, if they can’t be returned and they are over 5, that means they may not exit from foster care and the feds will not be pleased with the exit rates.
Thank you, CASCW for your response to the Star Trib article on MN’s high re-entry rate. I was personally disappointed about the negative light in which birth families were cast. Those of us committed to youth knowing and connecting with their families already face societal misconceptions about families (e.g., “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” thinking). So many families have their own untreated trauma histories, have not gotten a fair shake, or adequate support and could be great resources if properly supported. The profound healing impact of knowing your people–who you are and where you come from–was also missed. And finally, I wish there had been much more mentioned about the successful efforts to combat re-entry, the things we already know about how to do to address this problem, and the need for on-going support to make these services possible.