Educational Outcomes for Youth in Foster Care: Key Research

Introduction: Foster Care Youth as an Educationally Vulnerable Population

The importance of this issue for social workers — with respect to the educational achievements of at-risk individuals and the ongoing need for an educated, productive society — is reflected in the fact that an estimated 800,000 youth are living in foster care environments annually in the United States, and of those, 16,000 leave their foster care homes as young adults (Williams et al., p. 500). Moreover, children in foster care are "one of the most educationally vulnerable populations" in U.S. schools (Zetlin et al., 2006, p. 268). Without a good education, foster care youth are too often destined for a life of poverty and hardship.

The opening pages of Zetlin, Weinberg, and Shea's (2006) article offer data that frame the current realities within the foster care environment and provide a usable foundation for this research. The education of foster care young people is no less important than the education of any child, but foster care students "tend to struggle academically and socially" (Zetlin, p. 268). Studies show children in foster care have "higher rates of absenteeism and disciplinary referrals" as well as "significant below-grade-level academic performance" (Zetlin). Data gathered by Zetlin also reflect studies showing that children in foster care have higher incidences of "grade retention" and "disproportionate rates of special education placement" (Goerge, Van Vooris, Grant, Casey, & Robinson, 1992; Leiter & Johnson, 1997; Parrish et al., 2001).

Among the reasons given for the lack of attention to education for foster care children is the fact that courts concentrate on "the crisis that brings the family to the court" in the first place and on "finding a safe haven" for the child — rather than on social or educational outcomes.

Reference: Zetlin, Andrea G., Weinberg, Lois A., and Shea, Nancy M. (2006). Improving Educational Prospects for Youth in Foster Care: The Education Liaison Model. Intervention in School and Clinic, 41(5), 267–272.

Williams, Jason, McWilliams, Alisa, Mainieri, Tina, Pecora, Peter J., and La Belle, Karin. (2006). Enhancing the Validity of Foster Care Follow-up Studies Through Multiple Alumni Location Strategies. Child Welfare, LXXXV(3), 499–520.

Locating Foster Care Alumni for Research: Methodology and Challenges

Important strategies for locating and interviewing "alumni" from past foster care situations — individuals who had spent at least 12 consecutive months or more in foster care — are reviewed in this scholarly journal article. In order to learn how alumni succeeded in education and in life, those individuals must first be found. In the "Casey National Study," as with most studies of adults who were placed in foster care, several methods are required to reach the adult in question, including mailings, field-level tracking, phone calls, and the hiring of professional search staff. The goal of this article is to present the tactics and strategies — the methodology — needed to locate foster care alumni, because without a strategy to find them, careful and thoughtful research cannot be conducted.

Admittedly, it is not easy to locate alumni; Williams asserts that 12% of alumni are homeless within a year of leaving care. Even so, in this particular study approximately 67.6% of those sought were actually interviewed. Specifically, the study involved researchers attempting to reach 1,609 foster care alumni: 62 (3.9%) had died; 55 (3.4%) were in prison; 11 (0.7%) were in a psychiatric facility; 331 (20.6%) could not be reached; 63 (3.9%) refused to be interviewed; and 1,087 (67.6%) were successfully interviewed (Williams, p. 506). The high number of deaths is attributed to the fact that many alumni in the Casey study had been in foster care as far back as 1966.

The authors offer several recommendations: offering each alumnus $200 (with a deadline for completing the interview) significantly improves cooperation; thoroughly mining foster care case records proves valuable; and rallying staff around the shared goal of understanding alumni success in education, business, and careers cannot be accomplished without adequate resources to find and interview those individuals.

Fernandez, Elizabeth. (2008). Unravelling Emotional, Behavioural and Educational Outcomes in a Longitudinal Study of Children in Foster-Care. British Journal of Social Work, 38, 1283–1301.

Longitudinal Outcomes: Emotional, Behavioral, and Educational Findings

Using data from a longitudinal study of children in Australia who had long-term experiences in foster care, the author explains that findings from this study "go some way in demonstrating the positive outcomes of care" (Fernandez, 2008, p. 1283). This is an important topic because recent studies reflect "a distressing level of placement instability" which often results in "elevated emotional and behavioural problems" (p. 1284). The value of the study lies in identifying strategies that work well for children so they can be replicated and shared more broadly.

Teachers and caregivers used the Achenbach Child Behaviour Checklist (CBCL) to assess competencies. Caregiver responses to the needs, struggles, and strengths of participants were assessed at four months following entry into a care home and then at two-year intervals thereafter. The subjects were 59 children (29 boys, 30 girls) between ages 8 and 18. Approximately one-third of these children had "more than five placements" in different homes (p. 1286). In the first assessment, upwards of 50 percent of the children were reported to have had attitude, motivational, and discipline problems in school and showed "poor academic performance." Sixty-two percent of the 59 children had attended three or more different schools (p. 1286).

The study used non-foster-care students as a control group. Children in foster care had higher scores on "aggressive behaviour" than the control group (p. 1290). Foster children scored highest for "working hard" and lowest for "behaving appropriately" (p. 1290). The second assessment showed that foster care children "improved in all areas of adaptive functioning" — including happiness, learning, good behavior, academic performance, and effort (p. 1293). The study concluded that "systematic gathering of foster caregiver perceptions early in placement" is vitally important, and that eliciting teachers' perspectives on the progress of foster children — compared with a non-foster child matched by age and sex — is also critical to effective assessment.

Weinberg, Lois A., Zetlin, Andrea, and Shea, Nancy M. (2009). Removing Barriers to Educating Children in Foster Care Through Interagency Collaboration: A Seven County Multiple-Case Study. Child Welfare, 88(4), 77–110.