Nonkinship Foster Care

Kinship care verses foster care for children

The study conducted by Eun Koh and Mark Testa compared the differences in characteristics between children who were put into kinship care verses nonkinship foster care from March 1998 to September 2007. The researchers used the states of Illinois Adoption and Foster Care Analysis Reporting Systems (AFCARS) data to complete the study. The two null hypothesis were: “children initially placed in kinship foster care during their first removal episode are no less likely to achieve legal permanence through reunification, adoption, and guardianship than are children initially placed in nonkinship foster care during their first removal episode; children initially placed in kinship foster care during their first removal episode are no more likely to experience placement stability than are children initially placed in nonkinship foster care during their first removal episode” (Koh 2008). The method they used to overcome limitation and keep the two

groups balanced was propensity score matching.

They used a cross-tabular chi square analysis to compare reunification, guardianship, or adoption between the two groups when looking at the placement stability. Finally, the accelerated failure time model was used handle the data being interval-censored. The study found that kinship care has more likely to experience stability than those who were in nonkinship care. The legal permeance for the child in nonkinship care has significant difference over those who are in kinship care only during the first year. However, after the first year there is no significant difference between the two. In conclusion, the study proved that children in kinship care feel more stable during the first year and that nonkinship care is more likely to gain legal

permeance of the child sooner than kinship care.
Strength
There are a few strengthens about this study. First, the expended period that the data was collected provided more information and could provide more knowledge on this topic. Second, Enu Koh and Mark Testa confronted the limitations from the source the data was collected with the various methods the used to analysis the data. Finally, when using the cross-tabular chi square they analyzed both the match sample and the unmatched sample. Overall, the researchers did what they could to prevent biases when analyzing the data.
Weaknesses
The first weakness the researchers pointed out at the end of the article was that the data only including the state of Illinois. This could impact the results because every state is different and Illinois has one of largest kinship care populations in the nation according to the article. Another weakness they illuminated is the possibility that the propensity score matching not completely taking away the selection bias from the data. If there is still selection bias then that could affect if the outcomes were statistically significant or not.
Improvements
I would improve this research article by collecting data from each states AFCARS. Thus, making the research more representative of the entire nation. It would also be interesting to connect this research to other research looking at the different legal obstacles kinship and nonkinship go through to obtain legal permeance of the child and if they differ from one another. Overall, this article was very informative about the various impacts kinship verses nonkinship care has on the child.