Subsidized guardianship: Testing an idea whose time has finally come

This article presents third-year findings from the Illinois Subsidized Guardianship Waiver Demonstration. The study blends an experimental design to test the efficacy of the intervention with an observational component to assess the generalizability of the experimental findings. Three inferences were drawn from the study: (1) subsidized guardianship significantly boosted permanence under conditions of controlled experimentation; (2) the selection of subsidized guardianship may be even greater under ordinary conditions of service delivery; and (3) the stability of kinship and foster home placements was unaffected by the availability of subsidized guardianship as a supplementary permanency option to adoption. Key words: experimental design; kinship care; permanence; subsidized guardianship ********** It has been 65 years since Taylor (1935) introduced the field to the concept of private guardianship as a child welfare resource. More than 30 years have elapsed since she first called for a federal demonstration to test the benefits and costs of providing financial subsidies to families who assume private guardianship of dependent and neglected children (Taylor, 1966). In the succeeding three decades, scholars and advocates have echoed her basic recommendations (Appelberg, 1970; Leashore, 1984-85; Williams, 1991). Finally these calls have been heeded. During the past five years, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) has granted waivers to eight states to mount demonstrations in the use of Title IV-E funds to finance subsidized guardianship programs for foster children who otherwise would have remained in public custody. The purpose of this article is to present findings from the third year of one of the largest of these federal waiver demonstrations--the Illinois Subsidized Guardianship Waiver Demonstration. Since its inception in May 1997, Illinois courts have transferred (as of June 30, 2000) almost 5,000 foster children from public custody to the private guardianship of relatives and foster parents. To evaluate the efficacy of this intervention, the Office of the Research Director of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (IDCFS) designed a random assignment field experiment that the department implemented in three evaluation sites across the state. This study compared the experimental and control groups to test whether the availability of subsidized guardianship significantly improved the legal permanence and stability of placements with relatives and foster parents. To assess the generalizability of the experimental findings, IDCFS secured permission to offer subsidized guardianship in locations outside the evaluation sites. The addition of this observational component provides a check on the reproducibility of the results when subsidized guardianship is offered under more typical conditions than a controlled experiment. By combining the strengths of both field experimentation and naturalistic observation, this study provides empirical evidence of the internal and the external validity of the efficacy of subsidized guardianship as a permanency option. BACKGROUND The reason that subsidized guardianship appears to be an idea whose time has finally come has largely to do with the growth of kinship foster care (American Bar Association, 1999; Child Welfare League of America, 1994; National Council of State Human Services Administrators, 1997). As of 1998 kinship care accounted for approximately one-third of all children in the formal foster care system nationwide (DHHS, 2000). Although research shows that kinship foster care is as safe as (Garnier & Poertner, 2000) and often more stable than licensed foster care (Scannapieco, Hegar, & McAlpine, 1997; Testa, 2001), there are advantages to both families and the state from converting these temporary foster placements into legally permanent homes (Leashore, 1984-85; Williams, 1991). …