Childhood poverty and foster care placement: Implications for practice and policy

Background: About 6 % of US children enter foster care (FC) at some point before age 18. Children living in poverty enter more frequently than non-poor children. Still, it is less clear if specific dimensions of poverty place a child at risk of FC entry. Objective: This study aids our understanding of the relationships between poverty and FC entry. Participants and setting: Data were drawn from a large linked administrative data study following low-income and/or children with maltreatment reports at baseline and followed them through 2010 ( n = 9382). Methods: Separate analyses compared low-income children and children reported for maltreatment. Cox regression analyses were used to account for clustering at the tract level. Poverty was measured at birth, receipt of income maintenance (IM) during the study period, and census tract poverty at baseline. Results: The results showed that within a low-income sample, both family poverty and community poverty measures were significant factors in predicting later FC entry. However, when analyses were run comparing children with maltreatment reports with and without baseline AFDC use, the various measures of poverty diminished in impact once the type of maltreatment and report dispositions were controlled. Furthermore, we found that children living in families with more spells on income maintenance were less likely to enter FC. Conclusions: Results indicate that specific dimensions of poverty during childhood are associated with later FC entry. The lowered risk associated with a number of spells suggests connections between time limits for income assistance and the risk of entering FC.