EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This exploratory study attempts a preliminary investigation of out-of-home placement patterns of children after the start of concurrency planning in St. Louis County, Minnesota. Part of the purpose is to establish a method of analysis for later studies. Out-of-home placement patterns of children were compared for the first six months after concurrency planning began in St. Louis County with a baseline period in 1996. Dependent variables measured were percentage of days of care, restrictiveness of placement, number of placements, number of vendors, and age at first placement. Comparisons were investigated by race, sex, and location of families.
The study found patterns quite different for Caucasian and American Indian children. Numbers of children entering placement for the first time increased 18.9% in the study period compared to the baseline period. Numbers of American Indian children increased 44.8% while 't numbers of Caucasian children increased 2.2%. Measurement of the dependent variables showed very little change for between the two periods for American Indian children while there was a drop in most measurements for Caucasian children. Patterns by sex of child were more similar during the study period as compared with the baseline period with boys still placed more than girls. In patterns based on location of family, North and south county patterns became more similar in the study period compared with the baseline period except in percentage of days of care.
The study's greatest limitation is the short time frames of six months for the study period. That was the only data available at the time of the study and it seemed sufficient to establish research methods and preliminary results. Succeeding studies will be based on one and two year time periods. Other limitations are the number of records with unknown race codes.
The first recommendation for further study is examination of the causes and
implications of different placement patterns for American Indian children. A
second recommendation regarding method for studies similar to and succeeding
this one is to compare dependent variables by length of time from the initial
placement using a year's worth of placement data on each child. This would allow
a picture of what happens in the first month and succeeding months from first
placement.
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