Post adoption and guardianship instability, when children who have exited foster care to adoption and guardianship no longer live with their adoptive parent or legal guardian, occurs between 5% and 20% of the time.
The Post Adoption and Guardianship Instability Tracking Toolkit is designed to help child welfare agencies develop a systematic way to track instability for children who exit foster care through adoption or guardianship. Tracking instability over time can help agencies better understand how many families struggle after adoption or guardianship. Better tracking may also help agencies identify and respond to challenges early and intervene before crises and instability occur.
The Toolkit includes:
- A User Guide (PDF): This guide explains how to use the tools available in the tracking workbook. It also includes an example letter that agencies can send to families with questions that ask about the whether the child still lives with their adoptive parent or guardian and child well being.
- A Tracking Workbook (Excel Workbook): This workbook includes tools that use information that child welfare agencies may already have about children who exited foster care through adoption or guardianship to determine if they have experienced instability.
A webinar (PDF) that describes how to use the Toolkit is also available.
Purpose
The purpose of the Toolkit is to:
- Provide tools that child welfare agencies can use to help track post adoption and guardianship instability.
- Provide a range of tracking tools that fit different levels of agency readiness.
- Spark ideas about how agencies might use data differently to help track post adoption and guardianship instability, even if an agency is not able to use the Tracking Workbook.
Method
This toolkit was informed by conversations with Adoption Program Managers from across the United States, prior literature, and the results of the Contact after adoption or guardianship: Child welfare agency and family interactions study conducted by the project.
Citation
Rolock, N., White, K., Ringeisen, H., Domanico, R., & Stambaugh, L., (2022). User Guide for Tracking Post Adoption and Guardianship Instability, OPRE Report # 2022-249. Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Rolock, N., White, K., Ringeisen, H., Domanico, R., & Stambaugh, L., (2022). Post Adoption and Guardianship (PAGI) Toolkit Webinar, OPRE Report # 2022-324. Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Glossary
- Administrative Data Flag:
- This is a field in child welfare administrative data used to identify when a child enters foster care, if they previously exited foster care through adoption or guardianship, and when they are reentering care after their adoption or guardianship. Administrative data flags are most effective if they are a mandatory field that agency staff are required to complete before moving ahead with other data entry about the child.
- Adoption:
- Adoption is the social, emotional, and legal process through which children who will not be raised by their birth parents become full and permanent legal members of another family while maintaining genetic and psychological connections to their birth family.
- Adoption and guardianship finalization:
- This finalization is the legal act that establishes a family connection between the adopting person and the adopted person, or the guardian and a child. Usually done in a courtroom setting, this act grants rights and responsibilities to the adoptive parent and child equal to the rights and responsibilities granted to families created by birth.2 For guardianship, some rights are transferred to the caretaker (see Guardianship).
- Age of adulthood (or age of majority):
- The age of adulthood varies by state. Depending on a state’s age of adulthood definition, youth who are in foster care when they turn 18 may be allowed to extend that placement and continue receiving services from the child welfare agency.
- Guardianship:
- Guardianship is a judicially created relationship between a child and caretaker intended to be permanent and self-sustaining. The caretaker receives the following parental rights with respect to the child: protection, education, care and control of the person, custody of the person, and decision-making.
- Foster care:
- Foster care is a 24-hour substitute care for children placed away from their parents or guardians and for whom the state agency has placement and care responsibility. This includes placements in foster family homes, foster homes of relatives, group homes, emergency shelters, residential facilities, childcare institutions, and pre-adoptive homes.
- Post Adoption and Guardianship Instability:
- This instability includes situations when children who exit foster care to adoptive and guardianship homes no longer reside with their adoptive parent or legal guardian. Children might reenter foster care or otherwise experience instability in their living arrangements.
- Permanence:
- A child in foster care achieves legal permanence when (1) the child is discharged from foster care to reunification with their family, either to a parent or other relative; (2) the child is discharged from foster care to a legally finalized adoption; or (3) the child is discharged from foster care to the care of a legal guardian (see Child Welfare Information Gateway glossary).