Evidence shows that children who spend time in out-of-home care fare better when they experience fewer moves. Placement stability is one of the key desired outcomes for children and youth involved with the foster care system. In this section, find resources to assist professionals in maintaining and maximizing placement stability of families formed by adoption.
Achieving Placement Stability
Capacity Building Center for States
Presents a course designed to help States and territories build their capacity to achieve placement stability by providing children and youth in foster care with a stable, secure, and long-term family environment. The course consists of seven e-learning modules that take about 7 hours to complete. A free registration is required to access this content.
Adoption & Guardianship Enhanced Support (AGES) Intervention Implemented in Wisconsin for the QIC-AG Project (PDF - 513 KB)
National Quality Improvement Center for Adoption and Guardianship Support and Preservation (2017)
Discusses a program developed by the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families that provides support for adoptive and guardianship families. The AGES program helps families faced with escalating stress due to a variety of factors. The program provides enhanced case management services to families and links them with services.
Adoptive Families Need Ongoing Support
Smith & Howard (2017)
North American Council on Adoptable Children
Explores how adoption professionals can help children and adoptive families deal with special needs due to histories of deprivation and trauma. The article discusses preservation services, which can help parents identify problems, help parents learn to step back from power struggles, and help families learn new ways to solve conflicts.
Empowering Caregivers, Strengthening Families Video Series
Capacity Building Center for States
Offers a series of videos that demonstrate the importance of agency capacity along with community and caregiver networks to strengthen families and achieve positive outcomes for children. In the videos, caregivers discuss their roles in strengthening families.
Literature Related to Adoption and Guardianship, Permanency, and Well-Being (PDF - 639 KB)
National Quality Improvement Center for Adoption and Guardianship Support and Preservation (2017)
Analyzes risk factors contributing to instability following a finalized adoption as well as interventions that could be applicable to adoptive families.
Literature Review of Relative and Non-Relative Foster/Adoptive Parent Factors Related to Placement Stability and Permanence for Children and Youth (PDF - 2,519 KB)
Salazar, Vanderwill, De Larwelle, Jenkins, McMahon, Day, & Haggerty (2018)
National Training and Development Curriculum for Foster and Adoptive Parents
Presents a literature review and analysis of caregiver characteristics and proficiencies that are critical to successful foster or adoptive parenting.
Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics (NMT) Intervention Implemented in Tennessee for the QIC-AG Project (PDF - 553 KB)
National Quality Improvement Center for Adoption and Guardianship Support and Preservation (2017)
Outlines a program being used in Tennessee to help respond to families in crisis and stabilize, preserve the family, and maintain stability. The NMT approach provides a set of assessment tools that helps assess children who have experienced early trauma and match them with the correct therapeutic activities based on their specific needs.
Plan, Prepare, and Support to Prevent Disruptions
Riggs (2017)
North American Council on Adoptable Children
Reviews some of the issues around adoption disruption and how it can be prevented through placement matching, which requires preparation of children and families. The beginning of the article describes how to prepare children to live with a permanent family, while the next section discusses how to prepare families for adoption.
Protecting Adopted Children From Rehoming
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Children's Bureau (2015)
Children's Bureau Express, 16(8)
Highlights a publication that examines policy changes to prevent rehoming or unregulated custody transfers of adopted children. The recommendations include improving screening of prospective parents, increasing caregiver preparation and training, and increasing access to high quality postadoption services for adoptive families.
Protective Capacities and Protective Factors: Common Ground for Protecting Children and Strengthening Families (PDF - 232 KB)
Capacity Building Center for States (2016)
Illustrates, via an infographic, protective capacities and protective factors and how they work to reduce the risk of harm for children and promote healthy development and well-being.
Protective Factors
FRIENDS National Center for Community-Based Child Abuse Prevention
Examines protective factors and how they work to reduce the effects of risk, stress, and trauma. The webpage presents examples of protective factors and why they work, explores work being done in the field in terms of protective factors and child abuse prevention, and provides links to related resources on protective factors.
A Resource for Strengthening Adoptive Families With Older Kids
The Annie E. Casey Foundation (2017)
Describes the creation of a series of modules that help older adopted children and their families bond and integrate in a healthy way.
Safe and Sound: Responding to the Experiences of Children Adopted or in Foster Care: A Guide for Caseworkers (PDF - 20,117 KB)
American Academy of Pediatrics (2019)
Helps child welfare workers improve their skills to work with adoptive and foster families recognize and understand children who have experienced trauma.
Strengthening Families
Center for the Study of Social Policy
Describes the Strengthening Families approach, which aims to increase family strengths, enhance child development, and reduce the likelihood of child abuse and neglect. The program is based on engaging families, programs, and communities in building protective factors.