Changing laws for foster children

When President George Bush signed the Fostering Connections and Increasing Adoptions Act in the fall of 2008, laws governing the nation's 500,000 foster children changed — utterly.

The most significant part of the law is its provision for "subsidized guardianship." That means that the relatives who care for one-fourth of US foster children can now receive financial assistance. Previously, children had to remain in the foster-care system or be adopted by the relatives to receive assistance.

The foundational research was a 10-year study examining the effects of relatives' guardianship on Illinois foster children's well-being and adoptions rate. Mark Testa, director of the Urbana campus' Children and Family Research Center and a social work professor, led the study that offered foster families of relative children subsidies equal to those of licensed foster or adoptive parents.

Testa and his research partners found that at the end of the study's observation period, 25 percent of the Illinois foster children with subsidized guardianships found permanent homes. Testa described this as a "huge increase" that further studies in Wisconsin and Tennessee corroborated.

The study also found savings to the state of Illinois on subsidized guardianship due to reduced administrative and judicial oversight costs: almost $2,300 per child or about $90 million when multiplied by the 40,000 children in the intervention group.

The law also offers states the option of raising the guardianship age limit from 18 to 21 years old. Testa said this gives the children a better chance of finishing school, beginning college, finding a job and increasing access to medical care.

Created in 1996 at the School of Social Work, the Children and Family Research Center is a university-agency partnership with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. With offices in Urbana and Chicago, the center's mission is to conduct research and advance the safety, well-being and family stability of Illinois children.

That presidential signature was a win-win-win ... for children and families and states.

View all in the sampling of the articles in the 2008-09 Annual Report.