Journal of Children's Services: 'A guide through the knowledge base on children in out-of-home care'.

Thoburn, June ; Courtney, Mark E.

6:4, 2011, pp 210-27

Formal out-of-home care for children includes care provided, arranged and/or funded by statutory agencies. This article reviews the historical, cultural and political contexts in which studies on children's out-of-home care have been conducted, and the English-language descriptive and process research on the different placement options. It concentrates on research-based publications, policy and research syntheses and conceptual analyses, aiming to provide an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the available research and care services themselves. The article covers foster family care and formal kinship care, including short-term or task-centred foster care and residential group care settings, and routes out of care, including reunification, adoption as a route out of care, and ageing out of care. It reports that there is an extensive knowledge base to inform decisions about out-of-home care, but that the findings show different outcomes for different groups of children receiving different placement services, and that policy makers and commissioners need to take care not to oversimplify the evidence about processes and outcomes.