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Project Description

The Evaluation of Family Preservation and Reunification Services is intended to estimate the impact of family preservation and reunification services. The goal of these services is to prevent children from entering foster care and to reunify children who were placed out of the home with their families. The design of the evaluation was guided by the following objectives:

• To identify and describe the range of existing placement prevention, family preservation, and reunification programs;
• To determine the extent to which family preservation and reunification programs are effective in safely reducing unnecessary foster care placement;
• To determine the extent to which family preservation programs are effective in meeting the basic needs of children and in promoting improved family functioning;
• To explore the extent to which family preservation/reunification programs have varying degrees of success with different target populations;
• To determine the extent to which program variables, child welfare system variables, and other factors in the service delivery environment affect the success of family preservation and reunification programs;
• To identify the effects of each family preservation/reunification program on its related child welfare system; and
• To compare the costs of family preservation/reunification services to those of control groups.

Project duration: Sep 1994 - Dec 2002

Sites studied include Louisville, Kentucky
7 counties in New Jersey
Memphis, Tennessee

Sample Characteristics and Sites Studied

Random assignment of families to experimental or control group:
Kentucky: 174 cases, 175 controls
New Jersey: 275 cases, 167 controls
Tennessee: 98 cases, 49 controls

Recent Findings in Brief

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