Child Welfare Finance and Foster Care Outcomes

Journal of Public Child Welfare, Volume 9, 2015 – Issue 2

This article explores the association between state-level child welfare expenditures and state-level foster care outcomes (placements, lengths of stay, and reentries). Spending for each state was differentiated among federal, state, and local levels, using data from 2006 across all 50 states in the United States plus Washington, DC. The analysis found that expenditures did not consistently correspond to outcomes. For spending to be effective in helping achieve child welfare goals, agencies must apply cost analysis to their programs to explore how funding investments relate to outcomes in real-world settings.