Methodology

Methodology
Home/Placement Distances
To Report

This report examines the distance, in miles, between a child's removal address and placement address at 12 months. This analysis looks only at those children who are in a first foster care placement episode (or spell) and who are still in care one year after entry.

Frequencies and proportions of children placed less than 1 mile, 1-5 miles (i.e., from one mile up to but not including six miles), 6-10 miles (i.e., from six miles up to but not including eleven miles) and 11 or more miles, are stratified by kin or non-kin placement type.

Note: Cells containing a period (".") represent a value of zero. In cells representing quotients, a period may also indicate the indeterminate form 0/0.

Note: Caution should be used when examining the frequencies of children placed at different distances from their removal address. In a number of cases, a child's removal and/or most recent placement address was not entered into CWS/CMS. For these children, a distance could not be computed and was coded as ‘*Unknown’. We have included the frequencies with Unknown distances as a guide for counties as they work to improve the quality of data input to CWS/CMS. However, we have excluded them from the proportion calculations. That is, the proportion of children placed at different distances was based on only those cases which had both a removal and placement address.