The Effectiveness of Faith-Based Organizations Designed to Support Adoptive and Foster Care Families: A Systematic Review of the Literature

Caring for orphaned and vulnerable children (OVC) is an important characteristic of many major world religions. Historically, faith-based organizations have been heavily involved in providing services to OVC and recruiting families to participate in foster care and adoption. To receive federal funding, public policy has increasingly required more empirically rigorous evaluation of foster care and adoption programs to ensure that quality services are provided to OVC. The purpose of the current article is to provide a systematic review of empirical studies on outcomes of faith-based foster care and adoption organizations. In this review, it is clear that empirical literature on faith-based foster care and adoptive organizations is in an initial developmental stage. However, based on the existing evidence, we find that these agencies have provided key services to support the recruitment and retention of foster care and adoptive parents. We discuss areas for future research and implications for how psychologists can help expand the research base for faith-based foster care and adoptive organizations.