Foster Care

This analysis demonstrates how Illinois' policies for funding foster care services may have a negative and unintended impact on the placement of children in state care. Findings from this exploratory study suggests that the combination of Illinois' managed care funding strategies, decreased funding for private child welfare agencies, and placement and permanency policies create pressure on private agency staff to make service decisions prioritizing the agency's business goal of financial health in important life decisions for the child. Among the challenges facing private child welfare agencies is that children exit out of care more quickly than they enter it, thus leaving fewer children needing placement in an Illinois foster home. Although
This message creates pressures that encourage self-interested decision-making. This, however, depends on the extent that relevant staff bend to the financial and contractual pressure to accept and place children into those foster homes they know that the necessary care cannot or will not be provided. Although this analysis provides an initial examination into this issue, a more detailed examination could strengthen understanding about organizational strategies for maximizing funding through child placement and the role of relevant staff in implementing
Agencies that decline a child referral not only lose the funding associated with the child but also place their contract and additional placements in jeopardy. The result of this pressure is that some agencies may take actions that hinder some children’s placement. Agencies may believe that the financial loss of not bringing a child into care and contractual consequences may be too much to risk to decline a referred child even if it means that the child is placed in a lacking placement. This policy may create a disincentive for agencies to prevent placements they believe inadequate for some children. To understand better this policy’s impact on children’s placements, the policy declaring “contractual consequences” for declining a child’s referral should be examined to determine if it is necessary and/or harmful to some children’s placement. This analysis suggests that agencies already have enough pressure to accept cases that, at a minimum, it is not necessary but, at its worse, it is harmful to some children’s