Custody relinquishment occurs when children enter foster care primarily to receive behavioral health or disability services, not because of maltreatment. Parents may relinquish custody for a variety of reasons. Entering foster care could provide children with access to services that are otherwise unavailable due to limited capacity. Custody relinquishment could also occur to receive services not otherwise covered by the child’s health insurance because children in foster care are automatically eligible for Medicaid. Alternatively, parents may relinquish custody because they fear their child is a danger to themselves or others in the home, or because they feel they have reached a breaking point and exhausted all other options. This research sought to estimate how many children enter foster care in this manner nationally and by state, and to understand the characteristics of children who enter foster care through custody relinquishment. While there is no way to know for certain which foster care entries involve actual custody relinquishment, this research uses two administrative data sources to explore these issues.
Analyses focused on children:
- Ages 3 to 17;
- Who entered foster care with indications that the child’s behavioral health or disability was a factor in their foster care placement;
- But who had no indication that physical or sexual abuse was a placement factor;
- And whose initial foster care placement was in congregate care.
- In two states for which data were available we also confirmed that there had been no report of physical or sexual abuse in the two months prior to foster care placement and that the child had a behavioral health or disability-related diagnosis in their Medicaid records in the year after foster care entry.
Nationwide, between February 2017 and February 2019, as many as 25,000 children entered foster care under circumstances that resembled custody relinquishment (5 percent of all foster care entries). Across states, the share of foster care entries that might have been custody relinquishment ranged widely from less than 1 percent to 18 percent. In eight states, 10 percent or more of foster care entries looked like instances of custody relinquishment.
Among cases that resembled custody relinquishment, the vast majority of children were ages 13 to 17, and majorities were also White and male. Based on linked child welfare and Medicaid data available in only Florida and Kentucky, nearly all children in cases that resembled custody relinquishment (98 percent) were diagnosed with a behavioral health condition in the year after entering foster care, although the most common diagnoses varied between the two states.
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