A new study published in the Journal of Child Development looked at foster care entry and later academic achievement among infants involved with child protective services.
“Prior research has shown that early experiences of maltreatment are linked to delays in children’s social and cognitive development,” study author Kierra Sattler told us. “At this same time, infants are at the highest risk of maltreatment, especially for neglect.”
Child Protective Services (CPS) is responsible for responding to allegations of maltreatment, and in some cases determining whether foster care is necessary. However, there is a limited understanding of how the timing of first entering foster care is related to children’s academic outcomes for infants who are the subject of a CPS report.
“To address this knowledge gap, we used linked state administrative data on a sample of children referred to CPS in the first year of life in Wisconsin and examined how the timing of first foster care entry was related to 3rd grade standardized test scores,” Sattler told us.
There are some theories that suggest that early life experiences are particularly important for later development, but less clear on whether to expect a positive or negative association between early foster care intervention and academic outcomes for very young children involved in CPS.
“We chose this topic in particular because infants are at the highest risk of experiencing maltreatment and coming into contact with CPS, and therefore, thought these results would be useful for practitioners and policymakers,” study author Sarah Font told us. “We used linked, longitudinal administrative data of a cohort of infants involved with child protective services by age one and logistic regression models in which academic outcomes were regressed on age of first removal and our covariates. In addition, we did subgroup analyses to focus on certain groups.”
The researchers found that 57% of children demonstrated basic or above reading skills, 62% of children demonstrated basic or above mathematics skills, 8% of children experienced punitive school discipline, and 19% experienced chronic absenteeism, however, there were significant differences across racial groups (e.g., 68% of White children demonstrated basic or above reading skills compared to 34% of Black children).
“Our results also demonstrated that foster care placement during infancy or toddlerhood were associated with a higher likelihood of demonstrating basic or above reading skills and a lower likelihood of chronic absenteeism at third grade compared to never experiencing foster care prior to age five,” Font told us.
“We were surprised that many of the benefits of foster care placement were concentrated among Black children and there were more limited benefits for White children,” study author Carlomagno Panlilio told us. “We think these findings require cautious interpretation and may be due in part to structural inequities that started long ago and continue currently.”
The researchers believe important next steps involve understanding how the quantity, duration, type, and quality of services that parents and children receive at home or in foster care relate to children’s outcomes. The current study cannot speak to how services or other home environments may influence the association between the timing of foster care placement and children’s academic outcomes.
“It’s important to understand that our data were only from the state of Wisconsin and may not apply to other areas,” Panlilio told us. “Future work should investigate whether these associations vary across different state and policy contexts.”
