The Reunification of Very Young Children from Foster Care

FamilY reunification is a central strategy for family preservation. Although child welfare services have arguably relied too heavily on family reunification to preserve families-and should more often prevent any separation of parent and child with in-home services-the incidence of children with a first entry into foster care has recently reached levels equivalent to those a decade earlier (Goerge, Wulczyn & Harden, 1994). The incidence rate for admissions to foster care among young children (ages 0-4) is now twice what it is for children 5-17 years of age, and infants now comprise nearly 25% of all entrances into foster care (Goerge, Wulczyn & Harden, 1994). Child welfare commentators often consider family reunification a necessary evil, indicating that "family reunification and reconnection are often efforts to undo iatrogenic damage that has been done to families and children by a failing socioeconomic system and by a child welfare system that has found it difficult to follow the principles of permanency planning" (Hartman, 1993; p. xxi). Most of the literature also addresses families with older children and explains ways to assist them in the transition back to living with their biological families (e.g., Folaron, 1993). This review will depart from earlier treatments in two ways: by not assuming that reunification is a strategy inherently second to in-home services in achieving permanency planning outcomes, and by focusing on very young children. This discussion is facilitated by the rapidly growing base of evidence about reunification of young children and the greater availability of administrative data that allows researchers to follow the movements of children in and out of care (e.g., Barth, Courtney, Berrick & Albert, 1994; Goerge, Wulczyn & Harden, 1995). trend has been toward shorter median stays. These shorter durations are particularly likely for white children. Foster care stays are also generally shorter in large urban regions than in outlying areas of the states. Infants have the longest spells, and African American children have median durations that are 40% greater than those for other children. -... " ......