The Survey of National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW) Adopted Youth, Young Adults, Adults, and Adoptive Parents (hereafter referred to as “The NSCAW Adoption Study”) seeks to understand the extent of post adoption instability events that occur in families who have adopted children who have exited the foster care system. Post adoption instability refers to situations in which children who exit foster care to adoptive homes no longer reside with their adoptive parents and includes formal events, such as a child’s reentry into the foster care system, or informal events, such as a child going to live with a grandparent or running away. A second objective is to understand risk and protective factors associated with post adoption instability. The study conducted web or telephone surveys with adopted youth, young adults, and adults as well as their adoptive parents who were participants in the first or second cohort of the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW I, II; OMB #0970-0202). Investigators: Heather Ringeisen, PhD RTI International Research Triangle Park, NC Rose Domanico, MA RTI International Research Triangle Park, NC Nancy Rolock, PhD Case Western Reserve University Cleveland, OH Kevin White, PhD East Carolina University Greenville, NC Stephen Tueller, PhD RTI International Research Triangle Park, NC Leyla Stambaugh, PhD RTI International Research Triangle Park, NC

The purpose of the Understanding Post Adoption and Guardianship Instability for Children and Youth Who Exit Foster Care project is to examine rates of instability, factors associated with instability, and the supports and resources that promote post-permanency stability. Ultimately, the project aims to support efforts to build the capacity of federal, state, and local agencies to get accurate information about instability for children who exit foster care to adoption or guardianship. In order to examine these issues, two separate studies were conducted 1.) The Contact After Adoption or Guardianship: Child Welfare Agency and Family Interactions Study and 2.) The Survey of National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW) Adopted Youth, Young Adults, Adults, and Adoptive Parents. This dataset contains data from The Contact After Adoption or Guardianship: Child Welfare Agency and Family Interactions Study. The Contact After Adoption or Guardianship: Child Welfare Agency and Family Interactions Study (hereafter referred to as “The Contact After Adoption or Guardianship Study”) seeks to understand child welfare agency processes and procedures to help obtain better information on post adoption and post guardianship instability. The study explores the intentional and unintentional ways public child welfare agencies contact or receive information about the well-being of children and youth (and in particular, their experiences of instability) who have exited the foster care system through adoption or guardianship. Additionally, this study investigates how child welfare agencies track children and youth who exit the foster care system to adoption or guardianship and what information they collect. The study used two web-based surveys of adoption program managers (APMs) in all 50-states. One web survey focused on adoption practices, which all AMPs received, and one focused on guardianship practices. Only APMs from the 38 states that have a federally subsidized guardianship program (i.e., Kin-GAP) were asked to complete the separate guardianship survey. Seventy-two percent of the 50 APMs responded to the adoption survey and 63% of the 38 guardianship APMs responded to the guardianship survey. Investigators: Nancy Rolock, PhD Case Western Reserve University Cleveland, OH Kevin White, PhD. East Carolina University Greenville, NC Heather Ringeisen, PhD RTI International Research Triangle Park, NC Rose Domanico, MA RTI International Research Triangle Park, NC Rong Bai, PhD Case Western Reserve University Cleveland, OH Leyla Stambaugh, PhD RTI International Research Triangle Park, NC

The purpose of the Understanding Post Adoption and Guardianship Instability for Children and Youth Who Exit Foster Care project is to examine rates of instability, factors associated with instability, and the supports and resources that promote post-permanency stability. Ultimately, the project aims to support efforts to build the capacity of federal, state, and local agencies to get accurate information about instability for children who exit foster care to adoption or guardianship. In order to examine these issues, two separate studies were conducted 1.) The Contact After Adoption or Guardianship: Child Welfare Agency and Family Interactions Study and 2.) The Survey of National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW) Adopted Youth, Young Adults, Adults, and Adoptive Parents. This dataset contains data from The Contact After Adoption or Guardianship: Child Welfare Agency and Family Interactions Study. The Contact After Adoption or Guardianship: Child Welfare Agency and Family Interactions Study (hereafter referred to as “The Contact After Adoption or Guardianship Study”) seeks to understand child welfare agency processes and procedures to help obtain better information on post adoption and post guardianship instability. The study explores the intentional and unintentional ways public child welfare agencies contact or receive information about the well-being of children and youth (and in particular, their experiences of instability) who have exited the foster care system through adoption or guardianship. Additionally, this study investigates how child welfare agencies track children and youth who exit the foster care system to adoption or guardianship and what information they collect. The study used two web-based surveys of adoption program managers (APMs) in all 50-states. One web survey focused on adoption practices, which all AMPs received, and one focused on guardianship practices. Only APMs from the 38 states that have a federally subsidized guardianship program (i.e., Kin-GAP) were asked to complete the separate guardianship survey. Seventy-two percent of the 50 APMs responded to the adoption survey and 63% of the 38 guardianship APMs responded to the guardianship survey. Investigators: Nancy Rolock, PhD Case Western Reserve University Cleveland, OH Kevin White, PhD. East Carolina University Greenville, NC Heather Ringeisen, PhD RTI International Research Triangle Park, NC Rose Domanico, MA RTI International Research Triangle Park, NC Rong Bai, PhD Case Western Reserve University Cleveland, OH Leyla Stambaugh, PhD RTI International Research Triangle Park, NC

This survey provides nationally representative estimates on the characteristics, living arrangements, and service accessibility of noninstitutionalized children who were living apart from their parents (in foster care, grandparent care or other nonparental care) and who were aged 0 to 16 years in 2011-2012. Data on the well-being of the children and of their caregivers are also available. The children’s nonparental care status was identified in a previous SLAITS survey, the 2011-2012 National Survey of Children’s Health. Units of Response: Caregiver Type of Data: Survey Tribal Data: No Periodicity: One-time Demographic Indicators: Disability;Ethnicity;Household Income;Household Size;Housing Status;Race;Sex SORN: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/09/19/2022-20139/privacy-act-of-1974-system-of-records Data Use Agreement: No Data Use Agreement Location: Unavailable Granularity: Household Spatial: United States Geocoding: Unavailable

The study was funded to explore the changes in mental health service use as older youth leave the foster care system. The data, however, examine many parameters of the lives of older youth in the foster care system, from their perspective. Four-hundred six youth in the Missouri foster care system were interviewed in person near their 17th birthday. They were re-interviewed when possible every three months until their 19th birthday. Eighty percent of the youth were interviewed at age 19. Thus, the study includes nine data points. Domains of instrumentation include psychiatric history, substance use, child maltreatment history, mental health service use, attitudes toward mental health service use, residential history, religious involvement, reading level, dating violence, trauma history, stress, perception of neighborhood, psychopathy, employment, legal involvement, childbearing, sexual activity, and much more. Few variables were assessed at each interview time point. Investigators: Curtis McMillen, Ph.D. Washington University St. Louis, MO Lionel D Scott, Ph.D.Huntsville, AL Wendy Fran Auslander, Ph.D. Washington University ST. Louis, MI

Most foster children are not living with their fathers at the time they are removed from their homes. While in foster care these children may experience even less contact with their nonresident fathers. This study examined child welfare practices with respect to identifying, locating, and involving fathers of children in foster care including whether child support resources were used. Local agency caseworkers were interviewed by phone about nearly 2,000 foster children in four study states. The study found that nonresident fathers are not often involved in case planning and nearly half were never contacted by the child welfare agency. The study was conducted in four states, Arizona, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Tennessee, using three methods of data collection-interviews with child welfare administrators, case-level data collection through interviews with caseworkers, and data linkage between child welfare and child support systems. Of the three components, only the case-level data collected through interviews with caseworkers was contributed to the Archive. Investigators interviewed local agency caseworkers about particular cases between October 2004 and February 2005 to examine front-line practices related to nonresident fathers. Cases were selected from among children who had been in foster care for at least 3 months but no more than 36 months. Children in the sample were all in foster care for the first time (first placement episode), and the child welfare agency's records indicated that each of the children's biological fathers were alive but not living in the home from which the child was removed. Additionally, only one child per mother was eligible for the study. Data on 1,958 eligible cases (83% response rate) were collected through telephone interviews with 1,222 caseworkers. The nonresident fathers of the children sampled represent a varied group. While most caseworkers, at the time of the interview, knew the identity of the fathers of children in the study's sample (88%), paternity had not yet been established for over one-third of the total sample's children (37%). A comparison with mothers found that demographic characteristics of identified nonresident fathers are similar to those of the resident mothers though fathers are slightly older (36 vs. 32 years old, on average) and more likely to have been married at some point. As expected, caseworkers appear to know less about nonresident fathers. The percent of "don't know" responses is much higher for nonresident fathers than for similar questions about resident mothers. Investigators: Urban Institute- Karin Malm, Robert Geen, and Timothy Triplett

The purpose of the National Survey of Current and Former Foster Parents was to collect and analyze data from a nationally representative sample of current and former foster parents that would provide direction for future policy development. This study used a multistage stratified design where probability sampling was employed at each stage of the design. A mail/telephone survey was conducted of current and former foster parents in 16 counties in nine states. Based on lists provided by the counties, 1,572 current foster parents and 362 former foster parents received a questionnaire in the mail. Follow up post cards and telephone calls were made. The survey was designed to identify foster parent characteristics, the types of children for whom they provided care, the types of children they would be willing to care for in the future, and their interactions with the child welfare system. An overall response rate of 71% was achieved. Investigators: Cook, Ronna

The passage of the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980 (P.L. 96-272) significantly reoriented child welfare services from a system which focused on foster care placement to one which was intended to provide the services necessary to maintain children in their own homes. In response to the provisions of the law, state and county child welfare agencies developed new social service programs and sought new avenues for coordinating with other components of the human service delivery system.The purpose of the National Study of Protective, Preventive, and Reunification Services Delivered to Children and Their Families, 1994, is to provide a reliable national picture of the children and families in the ìnewî child welfare system. The study is designed not only to describe the current delivery system in terms of the number and characteristics of the children and families served by service type, but also to examine how agency, service, and client characteristics relate to case status. The dataset consists of three files. The main case file includes 2,109 observations and 1,205 variables. It includes information about the number, types and services provided to children and their families, with an emphasis on differences in annual and point-in-time data, case duration, in-home and out-of-home services, race and kinship care. Two additional files are provided to separate out the repeating records. These files augment the main case file and contain 11,335 observations and 25 variables about household members and their characteristics and delineation of children receiving services. Investigators: Maza, Penny

The major efforts mandated by the authorizing Adoption Opportunities program legislation, section 205 of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment and Adoption Reform Act of 1978, as amended (P.L. 95-266) are developing and implementing a national adoption and foster care data gathering and analysis system; developing and implementing a national adoption information exchange system; developing and implementing an adoption training and technical assistance program; increasing services in support of the placement in adoptive families of minority children who are in foster care and have the goal of adoption with a special emphasis on the recruitment of minority families; increasing post-legal adoption services for families who have adopted children with special needs; studying the nature, scope, and effects of the placement of children in kinship care arrangements and pre-adoptive or adoptive homes; and studying the efficacy of States' contracting with public and private non-profit agencies (including community-based and other organizations). In these areas, research and demonstration grants are awarded through a competitive process to States, local government entities, Federally recognized Indian tribes and tribal organizations, colleges and universities, public or private non-profit licensed child welfare agencies, adoption exchanges and community-based organizations with experience working with minority populations. This section of the Compendium describes the 16 Adoption Opportunities projects funded in FY 2001 under the following priority areas: 2001A.1: Achieving Increased Adoptive Placements for Children in Foster Care 2001A.2: Field Initiated Demonstration Projects Advancing the Sate of the Art in the Adoption Field 2001A.3: Quality Improvement Centers on Adoption 2001A.4: Evaluations of Existing Adoption Programs Through this grant, the New York State Office of Children and Family Services/New York State Adoption Service (OCFS/NYSAS), in collaboration with New York City Administration for Children's Services (ACS), intends to address the hardest of New York State's adoption cases by finding permanent adoptive homes for 65 of New York State's "Longest Waiting Children." Many of these children are in therapeutic foster boarding homes, group homes, and residential treatment centers and are seen as having multiple barriers to finalization. In addition to finding homes for these children, OCFS/NYSAS will identify, analyze, and develop strategies to address the barriers that have kept these children without adoptive homes for an average of 8.6 years after freeing. These strategies will be incorporated into training for caseworkers. The Missouri Department of Social Services' Division of Family Services endeavors to increase the number of children adopted from foster care through the Missouri Adoption Continuum project. This project provides unique pre-placement and post-adoption support services that complement existing programs and that are designed to strengthen the adoption process. In doing so, it endeavors to work collaboratively with public and private agencies to expedite permanency for 500 children from foster care. Specifically, the Missouri Adoption Continuum, through innovative recruitment and marketing services, plans to collaborate with public and private agencies and foster/adoptive parent associations to forge a 20% increase in the number of adoptive families for children embodied in foster care. In addition, the program will develop and implement a statewide training program for 40 adoptive parents to mentor prospective adoptive parents from initial inquiry through placement of a special needs child. The Missouri Adoption Continuum will also initiate a respite network by recruiting and training 70 respite providers who will serve adoptive families throughout the state. The project will conduct a comprehensive, outcome-based evaluation of its program and will disseminate the results. The grantee will establi

The second National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW II) is a longitudinal study intended to answer a range of fundamental questions about the well-being, functioning, service needs, and service use of children who come in contact with the child welfare system. The study is sponsored by the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). It examines the well-being of children involved with child welfare agencies; captures information about their families; provides information about child welfare interventions and other services; and describes key characteristics of child development. Of particular interest to the study are children's health, mental health, and developmental risks, especially for those children who experienced the most severe abuse and exposure to violence. The NSCAW II study design essentially mirrors that of NSCAW I. The NSCAW II cohort includes 5,872 children, aged birth to 17.5 years old, who had contact with the child welfare system within a 15-month period that began in February 2008. Children were sampled from investigations closed during the reference period. The cohort of 5,872 children was selected from 81 of the original NSCAW 92 Primary Sampling Units (PSUs) in 83 counties in 30 states that agreed to participate in NSCAW II. Retaining most of the NSCAW I PSUs will allow researchers to assess the change in context from the late 1990s, and enable longitudinal analysis of organizational measures such as staff turnover, climate, and work environment. The sample of investigated/assessed cases includes both cases that receive ongoing services and cases that are not receiving services, either because they were not substantiated or because it was determined that services were not required. The sample design-with oversampling of infants and children in out-of-home placement, and undersampling of cases not receiving services to ensure appropriate representation among subgroups-allows in-depth analysis of subgroups of special interest (e.g., young children, adolescents in foster care) while providing national estimates for the full population of children and families entering the system. Like NSCAW I, NSCAW II is a longitudinal study with multiple informants associated with each sampled child, to get the fullest possible depiction of that child. Face-to-face interviews or assessments were conducted with children, parents, and nonparent adult caregivers (e.g., foster parents, kin caregivers, group home caregivers), and investigative caseworkers. Baseline data collection began in March 2008 and was completed in September 2009. The second wave of the study, 18 months after the close of the NSCAW II index investigation, began in October 2009 and was completed in January 2011. At Wave 3, children and families were reinterviewed approximately 36 months after the close of the NSCAW II index investigation. The NSCAW II cohort of children who were approximately 2 months to 17.5 years old at baseline ranged in age from 34 months to 20 years old at Wave 3. Data collection for the third wave of the study began in June 2011 and was completed in December 2012. NDACAN's dedicated NSCAW User Support page contains a video and several documents to assist researchers with these data. Investigators: Research Triangle Institute