Measuring the quality of care in kinship foster care placements

•Among out-of-home care settings, kinship care is an increasing and often preferred placement option.•Kinship care differs from traditional care in many ways, including caregiver factors.•There are currently no validated measures of the quality of care specifically for kinship care placements.•We di...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Children and youth services review 2020-09, Vol.116, p.105136, Article 105136
Main Authors: Stene, Katherine L., Dow-Fleisner, Sarah J., Ermacora, Dylan, Agathen, Jean, Falconnier, Lydia, Stager, Megan, Wells, Susan J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Caregivers
Child placement
Child welfare
Children
Clinical assessment
Cronbach's alpha
Evaluation
Foster care
Kinship care
Matrices
Protection
Quality of care
Reliability
Social workers
Workers
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Summary:•Among out-of-home care settings, kinship care is an increasing and often preferred placement option.•Kinship care differs from traditional care in many ways, including caregiver factors.•There are currently no validated measures of the quality of care specifically for kinship care placements.•We discuss a promising measure with 5 subscales related to the quality of care in kinship placements.•It is essential that caseworkers are screening and evaluating the quality of care for youth in kinship placements. Kinship foster care placements have become significantly more prevalent in both Canada and the United States. However, there are limited resources for child protection services (CPS) workers to assess the quality of the kinship caregiver placements. Although several measures exist to screen caregivers for general foster care, there are no instruments available for the assessment of quality in kinship foster care. Thus, the current study reexamined a kinship caregiver assessment using data from a study conducted at the Children and Family Research Center (CFRC). Inter-item and item-scale reliability coefficients were calculated for caregiver responses (N = 37) using Cronbach’s alpha and ordinal alpha through polychoric correlation matrices. Analyses revealed five distinct scales with good internal consistency (ordinal α > 0.75), suggesting a useful assessment tool. With the continuing shift to increased kinship placements, it is important that CPS workers have access to validated measures for this placement setting. Findings provide an innovative kinship caregiver measure to be used in the field of child welfare, and support further research in this area.
ISSN:0190-7409
1873-7765
DOI:10.1016/j.childyouth.2020.105136