Archive: October 2012

Jennifer Haight In 2005, Tennessee’s Department of Children’s Services engaged the Data Center in an effort to improve outcomes for children placed with contracted private services providers. We helped the state design and implement a performance- based contract that led to improved permanency for children and $20 million in savings to the state over five years. Read the fact sheet >

Fred Wulczyn, Kristen Brunner Hislop, Lijun Chen | 2005 Among all of the provisions included in the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA), those that relate to the termination of parental rights and adoption are perhaps most central to the law’s overarching purpose. This paper analyzes data from the Multistate Foster Care Data Archive to understand what effect, if any, the federal law has had on the proportion of children adopted from foster care and on the time needed to complete those adoptions. Download the PDF >

Fred Wulczyn, Linda Collins | 2010 In this report, the authors describe a model for projecting the number of children who will turn 18 while in foster care (i.e., will age out of foster care) in the coming five years. Taking into account changes in the number of children entering care, changes in the age distribution of children entering care, and changes in how long children stay in care, the model projects that the number of children aging out of foster care will most likely decline and then level off over the next 5 years. Download the PDF >

Fred Wulczyn, Michelle Ernst, Philip Fisher | 2011 Infants represent a distinctive subset of the out-of-home care population. In this Issue Brief, the authors discuss infants’ unique needs and strengths, distinguishing them from older children in terms of their experiences in out-of-home care, characteristics of the infants themselves and their birth families, and the developmental issues particular to infancy to which child welfare professionals must be attuned. Download the PDF >