Overview of Out-of-Home Placements and Placement Decision-Making in Child Welfare

Abstract

Child welfare literature emphasizes heavily on the bi-directional relationship between out-of-home placements and outcomes. To provide a new perspective on this critical topic, this literature overview addresses: (1) the significance and challenges of out-of-home placement decision-making, (2) the need to standardize placement criteria, and (3) matching children's needs to appropriate placements. This overview will also examine viable models of out-of-home placement decision-making such as multidisciplinary teams and decision support algorithms. Further, decision-making mechanisms from other disciplines that can be modeled after are distilled. To assist practitioners and researchers as decision-makers of out-of-home placements, relevant policy and research recommendations are presented.

KEYWORDS:

• child welfare
• out-of-home placement
• decision-making
• outcome
• decision support
• state