Placement Discontinuity for Older Children and Adolescents Who Exit Foster Care Through Adoption Or Guardianship: A Systematic Review

For over two decades, practitioners, advocates, and scholars involved with the U.S. child welfare system have engaged in coordinated efforts to increase the number of foster youth who find stable, permanent homes through adoption or guardianship, and these efforts have been shaped and guided by federal policies and directives. As a result, the number of children adopted or placed into guardianship out of foster care has increased significantly. This trend has significant implications for child welfare research, policy, and practice. However, the risk and protective factors for post-permanency discontinuity, or placement changes that occur after legal finalization of an adoption or guardianship, have received little attention in the literature. Also, many previous studies that investigated post-permanency adjustment for former foster youth have been limited by serious design and/or conceptual flaws. The purpose of this study is to investigate the peer-reviewed literature that examines risk or protective factors for discontinuity, or outcomes proximal to discontinuity, for older foster youth. A systematic search located 18 quantitative, quasi-experimental studies published in peer-reviewed journals that implemented multivariable methods. This review finds that the quality of the research evidence is generally weak, but previous studies do suggest several risk and protective factors for post-permanency discontinuity, including child, family, and service characteristics.