Are the Average Effects of Foster Care Placement Really Close to Zero?. (July 2022)
- Record Type:
- Journal Article
- Title:
- Are the Average Effects of Foster Care Placement Really Close to Zero?. (July 2022)
- Main Title:
- Are the Average Effects of Foster Care Placement Really Close to Zero?
- Authors:
- Wakefield, Sara
Wildeman, Christopher - Abstract:
- In their provocative article, Barth and colleagues interrogate existing research on a series of claims about the child welfare system. In this reply, we focus on just one of their conclusions: that foster care placement does little, on average, to cause the poor outcomes of children who are ever placed in care. Our argument proceeds in three stages. In the first, we dispute the claim that the average effects of foster care placement on children are "settled" in any scientific sense. In the second, we note that the lack of agreement about what constitutes the appropriate counterfactual makes the idea of average effects of foster care placement in this area problematic. In the third, we problematize the idea that near-zero average effects equate to unimportant effects by showing how different types of effect heterogeneity may lead us to think differently about how the system is working.
- Is Part Of:
- Research on social work practice. Volume 32:Number 5(2022)
- Journal:
- Research on social work practice
- Issue:
- Volume 32:Number 5(2022)
- Issue Display:
- Volume 32, Issue 5 (2022)
- Year:
- 2022
- Volume:
- 32
- Issue:
- 5
- Issue Sort Value:
- 2022-0032-0005-0000
- Page Start:
- 499
- Page End:
- 503
- Publication Date:
- 2022-07
- Subjects:
- foster care -- effect heterogeneity -- multi-system youth -- Child Protective Services
Social service -- Periodicals
361.3205 - Journal URLs:
- http://journals.sagepub.com/home/rsw ↗
http://rsw.sagepub.com/ ↗
http://www.sagepublications.com/ ↗ - DOI:
- 10.1177/10497315211065418 ↗
- Languages:
- English
- ISSNs:
- 1049-7315
- Deposit Type:
- Legaldeposit
- View Content:
- Available online (eLD content is only available in our Reading Rooms) ↗
- Physical Locations:
- British Library DSC - BLDSS-3PM
British Library HMNTS - ELD Digital store - Ingest File:
- 21141.xml