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Statistics on children, youth and families in Pennsylvania from the Annie E. Casey Foundation and Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children

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Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children

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Foster Care - Timely reunifications during reporting period in Pennsylvania

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Why This Indicator Matters

Foster care, also known as out-of-home care, is a court-monitored process that involves removing children from their families following a substantiated report of abuse or neglect. [1] All child maltreatment reports are investigated by either Child Protective Services (CPS) or General Protective Services (GPS), depending on the nature of the referral, to determine the child’s safety within the household as well as the level of risk for future harm.[2] Children are typically only placed in foster care after family preservation and in-home services fail to improve their safety and well-being in the home. Out-of-home placement is often viewed as temporary, as achieving and maintaining permanency is always the primary priority of child welfare agencies, whether that be in the form of reunification with their caregivers or finding new homes with relatives or adoptive families.[3] Family issues with substance use, mental illness, or domestic abuse are among the most common factors that lead to children entering the foster care system.[4]

 Factors such as reasons for removal, placement characteristics, duration in care, caseworker characteristics, and location have all been found to affect a family’s likelihood of reunification. Research has found that the probability of reunification decreases significantly the longer children are in foster care, with the greatest chance of reunifying being during the first 4 months of care.[5] This permanency option should therefore not take more than 12 months to achieve but timing depends on families proving to the court that they can keep their child safe, meet all their essential needs, and serve as responsible caregivers. To meet these criteria, agencies will develop case plans centered around family needs, strengths, current support systems, and long-term aspirations. Despite agencies’ emphasis on timely reunification, however, longer duration of care continues to negatively affect the number of children in Pennsylvania ever returning to their original homes after removal. By examining the annual rate of timely reunifications, researchers are able to track longitudinal trends and changes associated with how long children are typically in foster care before reunifying with their families. As shown in the following table, over the past decade, the rate of reunification within 12 months has been gradually decreasing. This is unfortunately consistent with overall decreases in the proportion of foster children exiting the system for reunification.

[1] Child Welfare Information Gateway. (2023). Overview: Out-of-Home Care. United States Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Children's Bureau. https://www.childwelfare.gov/topics/outofhome/overview/

[2] Rizvi, M. B., Conners, G. P., King, K. C., Lopez, R. A., & Rabiner, J. (2022). Pennsylvania Child Abuse Recognition and Reporting. In StatPearls. StatPearls Publishing. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33351411/

[3] Child Welfare Information Gateway. (2023). Achieving & Maintaining Permanency. United States Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Children's Bureau. https://www.childwelfare.gov/topics/permanency/

[4] Child Welfare Information Gateway. (2023). Achieving & Maintaining Permanency. United States Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Children's Bureau. https://www.childwelfare.gov/topics/permanency/

[5] Carnochan, S., Lee, C., & Austin, M.J. (2013). Achieving Timely Reunification. Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work, 10(3), 179-195. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15433714.2013.788948

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Definition and Source

PROVIDER

Definition

This indicator shows the number and percent of all children who entered foster care for the first time in a 12-month period and were discharged to reunification with their parents or other relatives in less than 12 months from the date of removal.  Children must have been in foster care eight days or more to be included in this indicator.

Data Source

PPC analysis of AFCARS longitudinal file produced by Public Consulting Group for Pennsylvania Department of Human Services, Office of Children, Youth and Families.

Notes

It is important when reviewing reunification data to recognize the interrelationship with re-entry data.  Ideally, children who must enter foster care will be reunified quickly and permanently with their birth parents or relatives – and not experience re-entry into foster care. Some county-level data is also not available for certain years.

S = Suppressed.  Statistics (rates, ratios, percents) are not calculated and displayed for counts less than 10 (or less than 3 for Bayesian/Nearest Neighbor rates). This is due to the unreliability of statistics based on small numbers of events.

Last Updated

May 2024