Reducing Foster Care Entry Rates for Children in Sacramento County: A Spotlight on Practice

AbstractBeginning in 2006, Sacramento County implemented multiple child welfare practices and policies to reduce high rates of foster care entries (e.g., early intervention family drug courts, differential response, team decision-making, a family-centered approach to safety and risk assessment). Those strategies were identified through interviews with County child welfare leaders; and then the strategies were placed chronically in a table to inform a longitudinal data analysis. Between 2000 and 2020, entry rates in Sacramento County declined at a faster rate than entry rates in California (when all state counties but Sacramento were combined), and by 2020 were statistically significantly lower than entry rates in California. Between 2000 and 2020, recurrence of maltreatment rates for children in Sacramento County were higher than California; however, those declined more rapidly than recurrence rates in California and were similar by 2020. Both foster care entry and child maltreatment recurrence rates for children in Sacramento County declined between 2000 and 2020, indicating that foster care entry rates were safely reduced but additional data about child safety and well-being are needed. In addition, although Black children less than one year old continue to enter care at higher rates within Sacramento County, their entry rates declined more rapidly than other ethnic and age groups. This suggests that Sacramento’s focus on the youngest children, with multiple services specially designed for Black children and families, may be contributing to these positive trends. Future studies should examine the individual impact of the multiple interventions and programs implemented in Sacramento County on the rates of entry into foster care. Further investigations could also help unpack the racial/ethnic group and age differences seen in Sacramento County foster care entry rates and inform the timing of future practice improvements.Keywords: Child welfareresearchfundingfederalphilanthropyfoundations Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.Funding sourcesCasey Family ProgramsRole of funding sourcesCasey Family Programs provided funding to conduct the study. A team of independent consultants and the Sacramento County staff collected, analyzed, and summarized the data. Casey Family Programs’ staff helped to design the study and write up the results.Notes1 The damage to the child could have occurred before foster care placement, and foster care itself may not be to blame. For example, when comparing youth in foster care with other groups, note that most studies do not control for factors like age, race and gender. Even fewer studies control for key variables such as family income, housing instability or insecurity, food insecurity, English language proficiency, child maltreatment that did not result in out-of-home placement, and other Adverse Childhood Experiences like parent divorce, substance abuse, emotional/behavioral health issues and incarceration. These factors can outweigh the negative or positive effects of placement and enrollment in a poor or high-quality school. See for example, Berger et al. (Citation2015) and Font and Gershoff (2020).2 Initially, the entry data analysis was conducted for the impact of multiple interventions performed using interrupted time series (ITS) methods and an intervention date of 2016. Because the analyses using ITS for the entry data proved to be not interpretable due to the overlap of interventions, ITS was not performed on the entry or recurrence data.3 A description of Structured Decision Making® can be found at http://www.nccdglobal.org/what-we-do/children-s-research-center.