Child Welfare Information Gateway
Skip to main content
  • U.S. Department of Health & Human Services
  • Administration for Children & Families
  • Children's Bureau
Child Welfare Information Gateway
REPORT ABUSE OR
NEGLECT
FIND HELP WITH A
PERSONAL SITUATION   

Home Topics Publications Library State Resources More Tools & Resources News & Events
REPORT ABUSE OR
NEGLECT
FIND HELP WITH A
PERSONAL SITUATION   
  • About Us
  • Contact
  • Chat
  • Free Subscriptions
  • Resources in Spanish
  • About Us
  • Contact
  • Chat
  • Resources in Spanish
  • Shopping Cart
  • Home
  • Topics
    • Family-Centered Practice
      • Philosophy and Key Elements of Family-Centered Practice
      • Family-Centered Practice Across the Service Continuum
      • Engaging Families
      • Family-Centered Casework Practice
      • Family Group Decision-Making
      • Engaging Communities to Support Families
      • Creating a Family-Centered Agency Culture
    • Child Abuse & Neglect
      • Definitions of Child Abuse & Neglect
      • Identification of Child Abuse & Neglect
      • Risk Factors That Contribute to Child Abuse and Neglect
      • People Who Engage in Child Abuse or Neglect
      • Impact of Child Abuse & Neglect
      • Child Abuse & Neglect Fatalities
    • Preventing Child Abuse & Neglect
      • National Child Abuse Prevention Month
      • Overview: Preventing Child Abuse & Neglect
      • Promoting Child & Family Well-Being
      • Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Programs
      • Public Awareness & Creating Supportive Communities
      • Developing & Sustaining Prevention Programs
      • Evidence-Based Practice for Child Abuse Prevention
      • Evaluating Prevention Programs
    • Responding to Child Abuse & Neglect
      • Introduction to Responding to Child Abuse & Neglect
      • Reporting Child Abuse and Neglect
      • Assessment in Child Protection
      • Differential Response in Child Protective Services
      • Child Protection Casework Practice
      • Responding to Child Maltreatment Near Fatalities and Fatalities
      • Trauma-Informed Practice in Child Welfare
      • Collaborative Responses to Child Abuse & Neglect
    • Supporting & Preserving Families
      • Supporting Families With Mental Health and Substance Use Disorders
      • Introduction to Family Support and Preservation
      • In-Home Services Involved With Child Protection
      • Family Support Services
      • Resources for Managers of Family Support and Preservation Services
      • Family Preservation Services
    • Out-of-Home Care
      • National Foster Care Month
      • Overview: Out-of-Home Care
      • Foster Care
      • Group and Residential Care
      • Kinship Care
      • Casework Practice in Out-of-Home Care
      • Transition to Adulthood and Independent Living
      • Placement Decisions
      • Resources for Foster Families
    • Achieving & Maintaining Permanency
      • Overview: Achieving & Maintaining Permanency
      • Reunifying Families
      • Recruiting and Retaining Resource Families
      • Permanency With Relatives and Kin
      • Guardianship
      • Permanency for Specific Youth Populations
      • Legal and Court Issues in Permanency
      • Interjurisdictional Placements
      • Working With Children, Youth, and Families in Permanency Planning
      • Working With Children, Youth, and Families After Permanency
      • Resources for Administrators and Managers About Permanency
      • Resources for Families About Permanency
    • Adoption
      • National Adoption Month
      • Children's Bureau Adoption Call to Action
      • All-In Foster Adoption Challenge
      • Adoption and Guardianship Assistance by State
      • Introduction to Adoption
      • Ethical Issues in Adoption
      • For Adopted People
      • For Adoption Program Managers & Administrators
      • For Expectant Parents Considering Adoption and Birth Parents
      • How to Adopt
      • Laws Related to Adoption
      • Parenting After Adoption
      • Postplacement Adoption Casework Practice
      • Preplacement Adoption Casework Practice
      • Search & Reunion in Adoption
    • Management & Supervision
      • Administering & Managing Child Welfare Agencies & Programs
      • Child Welfare Practice Improvement
      • Disaster Preparedness & Response
      • Ethical Practice & Client Rights
      • Evaluating Program and Practice Effectiveness
      • Funding
      • Information Systems & Data
      • Supervising Child Welfare Services
      • System Reform
      • Training
      • Workforce
    • Systemwide
      • Assessment
      • Behavioral Health & Wellness
      • Courts
      • Cultural Responsiveness
      • Diverse Populations and Communities
      • Domestic Violence
      • Human Trafficking
      • Laws & Policies
      • Service Array
      • Statistics
      • Well-Being
      • Youth
  • Publications
    • Publications Series
    • Browse by Topic
    • Browse by Title
    • índice de Títulos en Español (Spanish Title Index)
  • Library
    • Library Search Help
    • Library Services
  • State Resources
    • State Statutes
    • National Foster Care & Adoption Directory
    • State Guides & Manuals Search
    • State-Related Organizations Lists
    • Adoption and Guardianship Assistance by State
  • More Tools & Resources
    • Related Organizations
    • Learning Center
    • Resources From the Children's Bureau
      • Children's Bureau Discretionary Grants
      • The Story of the Children's Bureau
      • Children's Bureau Video Series
    • Child Welfare Information Gateway Podcast Series
      • Episode 84: What Does an Effective Support System Look Like?
    • Multimedia
      • Videos
      • Webinars
  • News & Events
    • Free Subscriptions
    • Adoption Triad
    • Children's Bureau Express (CBX)
    • The Grantee Connection
    • New on Information Gateway
    • New From the Children's Bureau
    • Event Calendar
  • Home
  • Topics
  • Adoption
  • Postplacement Adoption Casework Practice
  • Maintaining/Maximizing Placement Stability

Maintaining/Maximizing Placement Stability

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. Find resources to assist professionals in maintaining and maximizing placement stability for foster and adoptive families.

  • Preventing disruption/dissolution

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 support children and adoptive families who have 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
Capacity Building Center for States
Offers a series of videos that demonstrate the important roles agency capacity and community and caregiver networks play in strengthening families and achieving positive outcomes for children. In the videos, caregivers discuss their roles in strengthening families.

How Can We Improve Placement Stability for Children in Foster Care
Casey Family Programs (2018)
Discusses strategies child welfare agencies can consider when seeking to improve placement decision-making and to reduce the number of placements that a child has while in out-of-home care.

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.

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 and preserve them. 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.

Placement Stability: What Role Do the Different Types of Family Foster Care Play?
Chateauneuf, Poitras, Simard, & Buisson (2022)
Child Abuse & Neglect, (130)3
Discusses the effects that the type of out-of-home placement has on relationships between children and youth in foster care and their families and on placement stability. It also explores the characteristics of the children and parents involved.

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 second section discusses how to prepare families for adoption.

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 regarding protective factors and prevention, and provides links to related resources on protective factors.

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 caseworkers improve their skills to better work with adoptive and foster families. It also helps caseworkers 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.

Treehouse: Intergenerational Community as Intervention (PDF - 2,011 KB)
Spong & Homstead (2019)
The Future of Adoption
Reviews an organization model that involves partners who collaborate for children and families within communities to encourage permanency and lifelong connections for youth.

Understanding and Supporting LGBTQ Foster and Adoptive Parents 
Bailey (2021)
Adoptalk, 2
Discusses the unique types of services and supports that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) foster and adoptive parents may need while caring for their children and families.

(Back to Top)

Spotlight On

Post Adoption and Permanency Support Services
Series Title: Related Organizations Lists
Author(s): Child Welfare Information Gateway

Helping Families Adjust After Adoptive Placement

Child Welfare Information Gateway (2021)

Episode 70: Preventing Placement Disruption [Podcast]

Child Welfare Information Gateway (2021)

Related Content

Promoting Child & Family Well-Being

Placement Decisions

Assessment and Placement Decisions in Group and Residential Care

Court Hearings for the Permanent Placement of Children

Children's Bureau - An office of the Administration for Children and Families

Child Welfare Information Gateway is a service of the

  • Children’s Bureau
  • Administration for Children and Families
  • U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
↑ Back to top
  • HOME
  • TOPICS
    • Family-Centered Practice
    • Child Abuse & Neglect
    • Preventing Child Abuse & Neglect
    • Responding to Child Abuse & Neglect
    • Supporting & Preserving Families
    • Out-of-Home Care
    • Achieving & Maintaining Permanency
    • Adoption
    • Management & Supervision
    • Systemwide
  • National Initiatives
    • National Adoption Month
    • National Child Abuse Prevention Month
    • National Foster Care Month
  • Publications
    • Publications Series
    • Browse by Title
    • Browse by Topic
    • Índice de Títulos en Español
  • Library
    • Search the Library
  • State Resources
    • State Statutes
    • National Foster Care & Adoption Directory
    • State Guides & Manuals
    • State Related Organizations Lists
    • Adoption Assistance by State
  • More Tools & Resources
    • Related Organizations
    • Learning Center
    • Children's Bureau Resources
    • Information Gateway Podcast
    • Multimedia
  • NEWS AND EVENTS
    • New on Information Gateway
    • New From the Children's Bureau
    • Event Calendar
  • ABOUT US
    • How to Report Child Abuse or Neglect
    • Find Help With a Personal Situation
    • Frequently Asked Questions
    • Glossary
    • Search A to Z
  • Contact Us
    • 1-800-394-3366
    • info@childwelfare.gov
    • Subscribe to Free Updates
    • Chat With Us
  • Follow us on Facebook
  • Follow us on Twitter
  • Follow us on YouTube
  • POLICIES & HELPFUL LINKS
    • Disclaimer and Policies
    • Privacy Policy
    • Accessibility
    • FOIA requests
    • No FEAR Act data
    • Office of the Inspector General
    • Performance reports
    • Vulnerability Disclosure Policy
    • USA.gov
    • Download Acrobat Reader
    • Login
  • ↑ Back to top