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.
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.