1. Objectifs

Intentions :
«The purpose of this study is to identify which children are most vulnerable to frequent placement changes and assist child protection authorities in implementing service interventions aimed at encouraging the stability of children’s out-of-home placements.» (p. 10)

2. Méthode

Échantillon/Matériau :
«Two different data sources were merged to create the provincial dataset used in this study: (1) anonymized longitudinal clinical-administrative child protection data from all sixteen mandated child protection jurisdictions across the province of Québec; and (2) provincial data extracted from the 2006 Canadian Census used to create a neighborhood area socioeconomic disadvantage composite index. The cohort consists of 29,040 children placed for the first time in Québec between April 1, 2002 and March 31, 2011.» (p. 11)

Type de traitement des données :
Analyse statistique

3. Résumé

«Consistent with the findings of Turcotte et al. (2011), the current study finds that the majority of children do not experience multiple placement changes. Indeed, 56% of children placed out of home in Québec in the last decade had, at most, one placement change throughout the follow-up period. An additional 16.0% changed placements twice and 28.0% changed placements at least three times within the follow-up period. Consistent with the work of Wulczyn, Kogan, and Harden (2003) and Connell et al. (2006), most placement changes tend to occur within the first year of initial out-of-home placement however, unlike Wulczyn et al. (2003) this study found that older children are equally at risk of initial change as infants. While 0 to 1 year olds and 14 to 17 year olds have the highest risk of changing placements immediately following their admission to out-of-home care, 10 to 13 year olds are at risk to experience the most placement changes over time.» (p. 17)