The fear that too many children threatened by child neglect or abuse are moved from their homes into foster care when the family might have been helped to stay together has prompted Illinois and many other states to spend millions of dollars on intensive social services targeted at these families.
But a University of Chicago professor now involved in the largest-ever study of such efforts said preliminary evidence drawn from an examination of Illinois` Family First Program shows that the state`s efforts have not reduced the number of children who are eventually placed into foster care after an initial report of abuse.
The study of 1,200 Illinois families showed that six months after the initial report of abuse, those who receive special services and those who did not receive those services each had children placed into foster care at the same rate-20 percent.
The services, provided for 90 days, include parenting education, homemaker training, substance abuse treatment, counseling, day care and housing aid. Family First has been been in effect since 1989.
In Illinois, the services are provided through private agencies hired by the Department of Children and Family Services, which contracted the study. Family First was budgeted for $21.3 million this year, and it served 2,902 families considered to be at risk of foster-care placement. An additional 287 families were helped to be reunited with children already in foster care.
”The program has not affected foster-care placement rates,” said Tina Rzepnicki, associate professor at U. of C.`s School of Social Service Administration.
Speaking at a luncheon to a group of social service providers and researchers, Rzepnicki said Family First may not have been serving the broadest population for which the services were intended-possibly because it is extremely difficult to predict the families most likely to be at risk of such serious problems that a child might have to be removed.
”The ability to predict is quite limited,” she said.
The number of children in foster care in Illinois has risen to about 22,000 from about 13,000 in 1985.
Rzepnicki said, however, that there is ample evidence that families receiving the special help have benefited from the intensive services, whether or not their children were at risk of placement.
Craig Bailey, the in-home services specialist for the Family First program, said DCFS agrees with the study`s findings and will consequently redirect one-third of its funds now spent on family preservation toward helping families to be reunited with children who are already in foster care. DCFS will concentrate its efforts on faster assessments of those parents most likely to be capable of taking their children back.
”We may have overestimated the need for those at high risk of foster-care placement, but there are other measures that matter most from the human and financial standpoint,” he said.
Bailey said families who received the special services had a 15 percent rate of subsequent reports of abuse or neglect 10 months after their participation in the program had ended.
For those families who did not get special assistance, there was a 55 percent rate of subsequent problems just two months after an initial report.
