Adoptions Interrupted by the Child's Return to Foster Care
A Look at the 2022 "Broken Adoptions" Study by USA Today
How effective is adoption in meeting its minimum objective, incorporating a child into a permanent household and sustaining that child into adulthood as a functioning member of an intact adoptive family? The preponderance of evidence indicates that adoption is quite successful in achieving this fundamental goal.
In on May 19, 2022, USAToday released a massive study on the return of adopted children to foster care, entitled Far from the fairy tale: Broken adoptions shatter promises to 66,000 kids in the US. The investigation concentrated on cases in which adoptions were interrupted by the placement of the child outside the adoptive home, but in the process, also confirmed that the great majority of adoptions met the basic goal of permanency.
The USA Today study included a look at interrupted adoptions in 16 states. Ohio was not included. Researchers examined the records of children adopted between 2008 and 2010 in those state and then followed them over a ten year period. Of the 60,000 children who were adopted, 1,973 or 3% returned to the foster care system within ten years. The authors regarded the number of adopted children, they identified as returning to the system as an undercount. They could not track the adopted children who ran away or stayed with unidentified relatives, friends of the family or other adults in “unregulated custody transfers.” This last arrangement outside the child welfare system is also known by the pejorative term “re-homing".
The results of this study and others like it speak to issue of permanency, the aspiration that every child should have a family. We can and probably will argue to the end of time about what constitutes a healthy, successful family of any composition.
What did the USA Today Study tell us about adoptions that are interrupted by a return to foster care?
The USA Today study did not employ the traditional terms associated with unsuccessful adoptions.
Disruption: The adoptive placement ends before finalization.
Dissolution: The adoption is legally terminated.
Instead, the authors identified displacements after adoption, in which the child was placed back into foster care, as evidence of a broken, whether or not the child returned to his or her adoptive home. The study noted that some adoptive parents placed their children outside the adoptive home in order to access mental health treatment they could not otherwise afford. Forty percent of the adopted children who returned to foster care spent time in group homes or in some form of institutional care. According to the authors, a majority of the adopted children placed back into foster care never returned to their adoptive homes. The actual portion was not cited, nor was the percentage of adoptions that were legally dissolved.
Black children made up a disproportionate 51% of adoptees returning to foster care. The researchers did not discover any discernible trend that transracial adoptions were more likely to fail than same race adoptions.
Thirty-nine percent of adopted children returning to foster care were classified as suffering from some form of emotional disability. Unfortunately, the nature and severity of the children’s mental health problems were not identified in the data.
Age at adoption was the factor most closely associated with displacements in which adopted children returned to foster care. The study found that
Children adopted at age 10 were seven times more likely to re-enter foster care than children adopted at age 1.
Among children adopted at age six, return to foster care occurred after an average of seven years.
For children adopted at age 13, the average return to foster care occurred after an average of only three years. In Ohio, from 2012 through 2021 an average of 75% of foster children were adopted by their foster parents. This is higher than the national average of 61.7% over the same period.
Some Implications for Ohio
Although the percentage of adopted children who return to foster care appears to be rather low, it nonetheless represents thousands of traumatized and disrupted lives. Moreover, sustaining a child in an intact adoptive family hardly means that parents and their adopted children do not struggle with identity, adjustment and mental health problems.
Adoption of children by their foster parents, as we noted in a previous post has been on the rise. Nationally, among foster children who were adopted between 2012 and 2021, an average of 61% were adopted by their foster parents. In Ohio, the percentage was higher averaging 75% over the same period.
The finding of age at adoption as the key risk factor for an adopted child’s return to foster care, reflects the growing concern with improving adoption related mental health services for adolescents. The AFCARS Report of 2022 data for Foster Care and Adoption indicated that 94% of children adopted with public agency involvement across the country received some form of adoption subsidy. In Ohio, the rates have been even higher in recent years.
The USA Today study raises a number of pertinent questions for special needs adoptions in Ohio.
Is Ohio collecting data on that would help identify adopted children who are at significant risk for placement back into foster care?
Is Ohio collecting data that would help to better understand, prevent and treat problems that threaten children’s healthy adaptation as members of their adoptive families?
If adoption of foster children by their foster parents in Ohio has been over 70% and is actually increasing, is adoption assistance combined with Medicaid, PASSS (Post Adoption Specia Services Subsidy) and other services sufficient to prevent adopted children’s return to foster care in order to pay for treatment of mental health problems.
NOTE: USA Today’s study of interrupted adoptions, Far from the fairy tale: Broken adoptions shatter promises to 66,000 kids in the US,” is available behind a pay wall. The linked version above is an excerpt. The results discussed in this post also draw from other sources such as the May 23, 2022 Imprint News Podcast New Numbers on Broken Adoptions and Child Maltreatment Registries.