The Effects of Multiple Placements

Children placed into the foster care system, often come from broken, unstable backgrounds. As such, they have little experience with a permanent environment in which they can learn and grow. While the foster care system aims to create such an environment for the children, it is far too often the case where the children are bouncing around from home to home with little time to commit to a single foster family. At times this may be due to respite care (homes where the child can go for very short amounts of time, e.g. the weekend or a week) wherein the placement is in definition temporary, but too many times homes that are supposed to be a more permanent situation for the child end up becoming a quick placement.

What effects do multiple placements have on the foster child? In a study performed in the year 2000 by Newton, Litrownik, & Landsverk titled "Children and Youth in Foster Care" a correlation was found between problem behavior and the number of placements a child had. The study was taken from a group of 415 youth that had entered foster care in San Diego, CA. They used the Child Behavioral Check List (CBCL) created by Achenbach in 1991 to measure the behaviors that each child experienced and they then compared that to how many placements they had in the first 18 months after being introduced to the foster care system (as taken from case records). 

They found that having multiple foster placements contributed negatively to internalizing and externalizing behaviors in the children. It is important to note that they divided the participants into two groups, those that have had 5 or more placements and those that have had less than 5 placements. The number of participants in these groups were 98 for those that have had 5 or more placements and 317 for those that had 4 or less placements. This shows that, at least in this study, the vast majority of children will experience less than 5 changes in placement, although, I would argue that 4 placements is still pretty high in the space of 18 months. The researchers noted that the relationship between behavior problems and placements may in fact be the other way around, however: Having more problem behaviors could in fact cause a child to experience multiple placements because it makes that child more difficult to take care of. Thus we see a continual downward spiral for those children that have behavioral problems as they are placed in multiple placements because of their behavior which in turn only makes that behavior worsen.

It is therefore doubly important that the children in the foster system, especially those that come into the system with severe behavioral problems, are placed into the homes of foster parents that are in it for the long haul. We need foster parents that can take these troubled children, give them a stable environment, realize the difference that they are making to the child without expecting gratitude or recognition, and turn these behaviors around so that the child can better survive in society. Sadly, these foster parents are few and far between. If only we could better educate future foster parents and give them the skills that they need to stick through the bad and the ugly of fostering troubled children. I believe that if we could that the foster care system would work more efficiently and that children and parents would both benefit immensely.

Sources

Achenbach, T. M.  (1991).  Manual for the Child Behavior Checklist. Burlington VT: University of Vermont Department of Psychiatry.

Newton, R. R., Litrownik, A. J., & Landsverk, J. A.  (2000). Children and youth in foster care: Disentangling the relationship between problem behaviors and the number of placements. Child Abuse & Neglect 24(10), 1363-1374.