Quality Improvement Center for Adoption and Guardianship Support and Preservation

The Children’s Bureau, Administration for Children and Families, Department of Health and Human Service established the National Quality Improvement Center for Adoption and Guardianship Support and Preservation (QIC-AG). In October 2014, the QIC-AG was awarded to Spaulding for Children in partnership with The University of Texas at Austin, The University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, and The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The QIC-AG was designed to promote permanence, when reunification is no longer a goal, and improve adoption and guardianship preservation and support.

For five years, the QIC-AG team worked with eight sites across the nation, with the purpose to implement evidence-based interventions or develop and test promising practices which, if proven effective, could be replicated or adapted in other child welfare jurisdictions. However, for the NDACAN archive, data from only 6 of the sites are included. These sites are from the following jurisdictions: Catawba County (NC), Illinois, New Jersey, Tennessee, Vermont and Wisconsin.

The six sites included in the NDACAN archive all served the following broad TARGET POPULATION, defined by the funder as: “Children and youth and their adoptive or guardianship families who have already finalized the adoption or guardianship and for whom stabilization may be threatened will also be targeted for support and service interventions. The children and youth in this target group may have been adopted through the child welfare system or by private domestic or intercountry private agency involvement.”

The primary RESEARCH QUESTION was: Do families with a finalized adoption or guardianship have increased post-permanency stability and improved well-being if they receive post permanency services and support compared with similar families who receive services as usual?

The THEORY OF CHANGE suggests that predictors of post-permanency instability can include: (1) caregivers’ assessment of child or youth behavior problems and (2) caregivers’ self-report of their caregiving commitment (Testa, et al, 2015). Site-specific interventions should target families most at risk of post-permanency instability. Post-permanency stability can be maintained by checking-in with families after finalization to identify needs and assess permanency commitment. By providing post-permanency services and support, the capacity of caregivers to address the needs of the children in their care will increase and reduce the needs of these children. Families who are provided with services and support will have increased capacity for post-permanence stability and improved well-being.

The project’s short-term outcomes varied by site and included, for example, increased level of caregiver commitment; reduced levels of family stress; improved familial relationships; and reduced child behavioral issues. The project had three long-term outcomes: increased post-permanency stability, improved behavioral health for children, and improved child and family well-being.