Placement Patterns in Foster Care

Abstract

The notion of “foster care drift” is ingrained in the conventional wisdom of child‐welfare policy and practice, yet the sparse literature on this topic provides little empirical support for it. This article illustrates the advantage of using longitudinal data based on cohorts of children entering out‐of‐home care for the first time. Simple frequency distributions of placement patterns effectively portray both quantitative and qualitative dimensions of children's pathways through out‐of‐home care. Future research concerning placement disruption should give greater consideration to the representativeness of study samples and move beyond simply counting the number of placements children experience.