The Effect of Out-of-Home Placement on the School Engagement of Child-Welfare-Involved Children

Objective: Children in child welfare face numerous challenges following maltreatment, including poor educational outcomes. Child-welfare-involved children often struggle in school compared to children who have not experienced maltreatment. However, estimates of the impact of out-of-home placement on educational outcomes reveal mixed findings. Thus, this study explores the effect of out-of-home placement on child-welfare-involved children’s school engagement, an important indicator of educational success. Method: Data are from a subsample of 1,490 children from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being, including 1,024 child-welfare-involved children who remained in their homes and 466 who experienced out-of-home placement at baseline. We used nearest neighbor propensity score matching on a final sample of 717 children (466 in out-of-home placements and 251 who remained at home at baseline) to isolate the effect of out-of-home placement on school engagement. Results: School engagement at 18-and 36-month follow-up did not differ based on out-of-home placement after controlling for child, caregiver, and case characteristics. Conclusions: Child-welfare-involved children who experienced out-of-home placement were statistically no more or less likely to report different levels of school engagement than children who did not experience placement. Efforts to support the educational outcomes of all children involved with child welfare are needed.