Methodology:
FOSTER CARE ENTRY COHORTS
First Entries to Care

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This report provides information on all children who entered child welfare-supervised foster care for the first time during a given analysis year.  The summary table is organized around the out-of-home care setting (placement facility type) a child is placed into:

  1. Foster Family Home [Kinship]

  2. Foster Family Home [Foster]

  3. Foster Family Home [FFA]

  4. Court Specified Home

  5. Group Home

  6. Shelter

  7. Guardian

  8. Other

For each placement facility type, entries are presented in two ways:

  1. Based on each child’s first actual placement episode that lasted for 4 days or less

  2. Based on each child’s first placement episode that lasted for 5 or more days (even if this was not the child's first actual placement episode).

Finally, data are stratified by both First Placement Type and Predominant Placement Type. First Placement refers to the first out-of-home care setting into which a child was placed.  Predominant Placement refers to the placement where a child spent at least half of their time while in care.  A placement type of "Mixed" is assigned if no particular placement type accounted for at least half of a child's time in care.   

An assignment of Missing is made if no placement facility type exists.  Children with a "relative non-guardian" assignment are categorized as Foster Family Home [Kinship] regardless of the code of their out-of-home placement.

Breakouts by age, ethnicity, gender, and reason for removal are also provided as described below:

Age - Child age is organized by the following intervals:  < 1 yr, 1-2 yrs, 3-5 yrs, 6-10 yrs, 11-15 yrs, and 16-17 yrs. Children with missing birth date information, or those whose ages are computed to be less than 0 or greater than 17 years, are categorized as Missing.

Ethnicity – Child ethnicity is collapsed into five categorical variables based on 31 codes (i.e., 30 primary ethnicity type codes and a Hispanic origin indicator):

  1. Black (in CWS/CMS, Black, Ethiopian)

  2. White (in CWS/CMS, White, White-Armenian, White-Central American, White-European, White-Middle Eastern, and White-Romanian)

  3. Hispanic (in CWS/CMS, Hispanic, Mexican, South American, Caribbean, Central American, or those coded as being of Hispanic Origin)

  4. Asian/PI (in CWS/CMS, Asian Indian, Cambodian, Chinese, Filipino, Guamanian, Hawaiian, Japanese, Korean, Laotian, Other Asian, Other Pacific Islander, Hmong, Polynesian, Samoan, and Vietnamese)

  5. Native American (in CWS/CMS, Alaskan Native and American Indian)

    6.

Children for whom ethnicity is not coded are categorized as having a Missing ethnicity.

Gender - Child gender is categorized as Female, Male, or Missing. 

Removal Reason - Reason for removal is organized into five groups:

  1. Neglect (in CWS/CMS, Caretaker Absence/Incapacity, General Neglect, Severe Neglect)

  2. Physical Abuse (in CWS/CMS, Physical Abuse)

  3. Sexual Abuse (in CWS/CMS, Sexual Abuse)

  4. Other (in CWS/CMS, Child's Disability or Handicap, Disrupted Adoptive Placement, Emotional Abuse, Exploitation, Law Violation, Relinquishment, Status Offense, Voluntary Placement)

  5. Missing (in CWS/CMS, Conversion, or if no information on removal reason was available)

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