Outcomes for children with disability in out-of-home care: Evidence from the pathways of care longitudinal study in Australia

Background: Children with disability are over-represented in out-of-home care (OOHC) in Australia and internationally. Yet we know little about their circumstances, placement types, support needs, and the outcomes of their trajectories and wellbeing through care. Objective: We examine the wellbeing and outcomes of children with and without disabilities in OOHC. Participants and setting: We use panel data from waves 1-4 of the Pathways of Care Longitudinal Study (POCLS) collected between June 2011 and November 2018 by the New South Wales (NSW) Department of Communities and Justice (DCJ), Australia. The POCLS sampling framework covers all children aged 0-17 years who entered OOHC in NSW for the first time between May 2010 and October 2011 (n = 4126). A subset of these children (n = 2828) had final Children's Court orders by 30 April 2013. Among these, caregivers of 1789 children agreed to participate in the interview component of the POCLS. Methods: We employ a random effects estimator to analyse the panel data. This is standard practice to exploit a panel database when some of the key explanatory variables are time invariant. Results: Children with disability have poorer wellbeing than children without disability across the three domains of physical health, socio-emotional wellbeing, and cognitive ability. However, children with disability have fewer difficulties at school and better school bonding. The type of placements - namely relative/kinship care, restoration/adoption/guardianship, foster care and residential care - have little or limited association with wellbeing of children with disability. Conclusions: Children with disability tend to have lower levels of wellbeing in OOHC than children without disability, and this is driven mainly by their disability status rather than care factors.