U.S. Child Welfare systems are involved in the lives of millions of children, and total spending exceeds $26billion annually. Out-of-home foster care is a critical and expensive Child Welfare service, a major component of which is the maintenance rate paid to support housing and caring for a...

In this paper, we examine whether county-level measures of poverty and social disadvantage are correlated with county-level variation in the black/white foster care placement gap. The black/white placement gap refers to the fact that when the rate of placement into foster care for black children...

This paper analyzes the performance of contract agencies in achieving timely permanency for children in foster care. Using the Cox regression model on administrative data of children admitted in three years, we examine the hazard rate of family reunification for each agency both relative to its...

Estimating costs in child welfare services is critical as new service models are incorporated into routine practice. This paper describes a unit costing estimation system developed in England (cost calculator) together with a pilot test of its utility in the United States where unit costs are...

Using a multi-level discrete time hazard model, this study examines whether county level social structural characteristics affect the rate of family reunification, after adjusting for child attributes. Children who were placed in foster care for the first time during 2004 from 945 counties in 17...