OBJECTIVE This study assessed the effects of unified family and drug treatment courts (DTCs) on the resolution of cases involving foster care children and the resulting effects on school performance. METHOD The first analytic step was to assess the impacts of presence of unified and DTCs in North Carolina counties on time children spent in foster care and the type of placement at exit from fo...

Institutional rearing of young children has been demonstrated to increase risk for a broad range of psychiatric disorders and other impairments. This has led many countries to consider or to invest in foster care. However, no study to date has explored potential differences in psychiatric symptoms in children placed in different types of foster care. We assessed internalizing disorders, externa...

A recent trend in state Medicaid programs is the transition of vulnerable populations into Medicaid managed care (MMC) who were initially carved out of such coverage, such as foster children or those with disabilities. The purpose of this article is to evaluate the impact of the transition of foster children from fee-for-service Medicaid coverage to MMC coverage on outpatient health care utiliz...

Foster care placement is among the most tragic events a child can experience because it more often than not implies that a child has experienced or is at very high risk of experiencing abuse or neglect serious enough to warrant state intervention. Yet it is unclear how many children will experience foster care placement at some point between birth and age 18. Using synthetic cohort life tables ...

Children in foster care experience higher levels and rates of psychosocial difficulties than children from the general population. Governments and child welfare services have a responsibility to identify those children in care who have need for therapeutic services. This can be achieved through systematic screening and monitoring of psychosocial difficulties among all children in foster care. H...