Child and Family Research Roundup from October 2025
Translating the latest research for decision-makers in child and family policy.
From the Director’s Desk
We’re excited to bring you the November edition of our monthly Children & Family Research Roundup.
This is our chance to cut the time it takes for the latest academic research to help you take action to improve children and family services. The best of academic research, liberated from the paywall and free from technical jargon and quant-speak.
This edition of the Roundup digs through the over 50 academic studies on child welfare published in October 2025.
This edition grabs the studies that we want to make sure are top of mind for you. We’ve got studies on concrete supports, trauma and grief, and more new data on home visiting.
As always, the Roundup isn’t a one-way communication from us to you.
Research is most useful when you engage with it, probe into the details, question the assumptions, and draw connections to your own work.
Send me a note and let’s engage together: robin@childwelfarewonk.com.
- Robin Ghertner, MPP, Founding Director of Strategic Policy Intelligence
New Research for Policymakers to Drive Decisions
Youth exiting foster care face systemic barriers to health care and housing stability—even as policy levers exist to address them.
Smith and colleagues reviewed studies on persistent health care access challenges for youth leaving foster care. The review synthesized findings across multiple studies examining health care utilization patterns.
Barriers cluster around poor health literacy, provider inconsistency, insurance coverage gaps, stigma, transportation instability, and housing instability.
Universal policies implementing warm handoffs and adult-care navigation starting before youth exit foster care, paired with Medicaid continuity, help youth access the needed health care.
Courtney and colleagues analyzed data on youth in California's foster care system to examine homelessness rates and associated risk factors.
Nearly one in five youth in California foster care experienced homelessness.
Youth who exited before age 19 had triple the homelessness risk compared to those who remained in care longer.
Staying in extended foster care and transitional housing can reduce risks.
Why this matters: Policy levers exist to support transition-age youth. Implementation infrastructure may not always be present for these policies to be successful.
Extended foster care provides structural protection, yet many states either don't opt into federal reimbursement for care beyond age 18, or can't spend allocated federal dollars for transition-aged youth, according to a recent Government Accountability Office report.
States face budget tradeoffs between extending services and managing caseloads, while federal Medicaid creates coverage cliffs at age 26. Budget savings in one area—unspent funds or foregone federal reimbursement—may create greater costs in health care and housing systems downstream.
New Insights on Practices in Child and Family Services
Placement breakdowns inflict lasting psychological damage—and youth want input in what happens next.
Ben-Shlomo and colleagues conducted qualitative interviews with youth in Israel who experienced disruptions in their foster care placement - that is, their placement setting terminated abruptly and unexpectedly.
Youth described acute psychological distress and lasting damage to self-worth, trust, and capacity for attachment following placement breakdowns.
Youth wanted input in post-disruption planning.
Why this matters: Multiple placements aren't just administrative events—decades of evidence demonstrate that they compound trauma. Though outside of the U.S. context, these findings convey how youth experience multiple foster care placements, particularly when they are unplanned and unexpected. This insight can inform case planning and specialized service provision for children with multiple placements.
Parents whose children enter foster care experience intense, prolonged grief—often without recognition or support.
Lalayants and Saitadze interviewed parents after their children were removed and documented their experiences of loss and grief. Prior research has often focused on the loss experienced by children in foster care and by foster parents themselves. Few studies look at parents whose children enter foster care.
Parents described intense loss, prolonged grief, stigma, and disrupted daily functioning.
Unrecognized grief responses complicate service engagement and reunification efforts.
Parents want informal and formal support for parents in case plans and staff training on grief-related challenges.
Why this matters: Child welfare policy and practice often have expectations from parents that don’t reflect the unprocessed trauma they’re experiencing
Though not examined in this study, grief from foster care placement can compound existing risk factors or trigger new ones, which in turn can affect permanency outcomes. Grief support can be foundational to reunification work.
--- # Data Corner: New Data Sources to Know and Updates in Research Approaches
The Maternal Infant & Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) Dashboard now offers real-time program performance data—useful for both advocacy and accountability.
Last month we highlighted successes of the MIECHV Program. The MIECHV Dashboard is an interactive tool displaying program reach, participant characteristics, and benchmark performance data at national and awardee levels. It’s another valuable tool that builds on the insight from the recent HHS randomized control trial on home visiting that we talked about in last month’s roundup.
ChildTrends used the data this month to show that MIECHV is on track to provide 1 million home visits in 2025, with increases in both developmental screenings and maternal depression screenings for served families.
What to use the data for: Previously accessing national MIECHV data was challenging, and required relying on existing reports or compiling data from individual grantees.
The dashboard can help states with planning, allocation of other funding streams, and opportunities to coordinate services in specific areas.
The data are useful for leaders and advocates at the federal level to understand how MIECHV dollars are touching communities, where funds are most concentrated and where gaps may be.
Studies discussed in this roundup
Annie E. Casey Foundation. (2025a, September 17). Foster Care Education Outcomes: New Research Challenges the 3% Myth. The Annie E. Casey Foundation. https://www.aecf.org/blog/foster-care-education-outcomes-new-research-challenges-the-3-myth
Annie E. Casey Foundation. (2025b, September 17). South Carolina Pilot Helps Teens Stay With Families and Out of Foster Care. The Annie E. Casey Foundation. https://www.aecf.org/blog/south-carolina-pilot-helps-teens-stay-with-families-and-out-of-foster-care
Ben-Shlomo, S., Levin-Keini, N., & Meir, Y. (2025). “Still in Transition”: Young adults’ retrospective accounts of foster care breakdown during adolescence. Children and Youth Services Review, 177, 108478. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2025.108478
Collins, M. E., Hall, M., Chung, P. J., Bettenhausen, J. L., Keys, J. R., Bard, D., & Puls, H. T. (2025). Spending on public benefit programs and exposure to adverse childhood experiences. Child Abuse & Neglect, 168, 106717. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2024.106717
Courtney, M. E., Park, S., & Harty, J. S. (2025). Foster care policy and homelessness among youth transitioning to adulthood from foster care. Child Abuse & Neglect, 169, 107638. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2025.107638
Ferreira, S., Magalhães, E., Pinto, V. S., & Graça, J. (2025). Why do people become foster parents and how to recruit new families? A multi-informant study. Children and Youth Services Review, 177, 108460. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2025.108460
Lalayants, M., & Saitadze, I. (2025). Separation and psychosocial challenges of parents with children in foster care. Children and Youth Services Review, 171, 108180. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2025.108180
McLennan, J. D., Gonzalez, A., MacMillan, H. L., & Afifi, T. O. (2025). Routine screening for adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) still doesn’t make sense. Child Abuse & Neglect, 168, 106708. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2024.106708
Racine, N., Bellis, M. A., & Madigan, S. (2025). An introduction to twenty-five years of adverse childhood experiences: A special issue. Child Abuse & Neglect, 168, 107224. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2024.107224
Smith, N. L., Adams, A., Abshire, A., & Cheatham, L. P. (2025). Barriers and facilitators to healthcare access among youth transitioning out of foster care: A scoping review. Children and Youth Services Review, 173, 108317. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2025.108317
