Looked after children

Introduction There were 27 quality studies on looked after children as determined by the project categorisation. Studies included children who were placed with non-related foster parents as well as those in kinship care; these are currently the placements of choice in Anglophone jurisdictions (Ainsworth and Thoburn 2014). Surveys have compared children’s material resources in different forms of care including foster and residential care (Janssens and Deboutte 2010; Sallnas et al., 2012). However the majority of highly rated studies in this review of poverty, institutional care and looked after children are concerned with kinship care and foster care and there is a serious lack of studies that evaluate the situation of looked after children in institutional care especially in Europe. The overwhelming majority of the studies were from North America, specifically the USA, which may not be easily generalisable to the UK or other European countries. Many studies within the USA are state-specific, with each state having its own welfare and social service rules and regulations. For example, federal welfare reform allows for someone to remain on government assistance for 60 months, while Ohio only allows 36 months. The average length of stay in foster care in the USA is two years, whereas in Illinois it is four years (Doyle Jr 2007).