An article in The New York Times last week reported on a recent study done on the effects of child abuse investigations.    The study looked at interview data with 595 children who lived in families known to be at risk for child maltreatment.  The children were interviewed at age 4 and again at age 8; and 164 of the 595 subjects were in families investigated by CPS (Child Protective Services) for possible child maltreatment during that time period.  The researchers looked for differences between the investigated and uninvestigated subjects in seven known risk factors for child maltreatment:  poverty, family functioning, social support, maternal depressive symptoms, maternal education, child anxious or depressive behavior and child aggressive behavior.  They found no significant differences in these factors between those families that had been investigated during the four year period and those families that had not been investigated during that time.  The sole exception was maternal depression: mothers in investigated families had more depressive symptoms than mothers whose families were not investigated.  To put it plainly, these children were at high risk of being maltreated when the study began, and they remained at high risk four years later, whether or not they had experienced CPS investigation.

The authors comment that the results are not surprising, given that many of the risk factors that were studied are not usually addressed by the interventions that follow child protective services investigations. 

The editorial section of last Sunday’s Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel included two articles under the heading “Foster Care’s Failure to Launch.”  Both pieces address the situation of teenagers in foster care and the difficulties they face when they “age out” of the system: in other words, they are forced to leave foster care at age 18, even though they are still young, vulnerable, and lacking functioning families.

One article, written by Kathy Markeland, describes current efforts in Wisconsin to try to address the problems of young people who “age out” of foster care without ever returning to their families or being legally adopted into a new family.   Wisconsin has made “modest steps” to help kids – and they are in many ways still kids – who must leave foster care, including funding individual post-foster-care planning, extended health care and some college scholarships.  Markeland argues persuasively that Wisconsin should follow Illinois’s lead, and give foster kids the option of remaining in foster care until age 21.  She cites statistics showing that 50% more young adults are living with their parents now than in the 1970s, and argues that failing to provide a similar option for foster kids means that they will be forced into adulthood before they are ready.

The other article, written by Greta Anderson describes the author’s own experience of aging out of foster care.