‘A Strong Focus On Family’: Wisconsin’s Guardianship Rates Are Rising

More kids are being adopted from foster care nationwide but the same doesn’t hold true for Wisconsin, the most recent data show. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, according to a state adoption official.

According to the Child Trends for the KIDS COUNT Data Center, nationwide 24 percent of children leaving the foster care system were adopted in 2017, up from 23 percent in 2016.

In Wisconsin, the adoption rate was 15 percent in 2017, down 1 percentage point from the year before.

But guardianship is on the rise in Wisconsin, and that’s a good thing for the state, said Wendy Henderson, administrator for the Division of Safety and Permanence in Wisconsin’s Department of Children and Families.

In 2016, 16 percent of children exiting foster care were placed in a guardianship. In 2017, it increased to 18 percent. That exceeds the national guardianship rate, which was at 10 percent in 2017, according to the updated data released this fall.

Henderson said guardianship is when another member of the child’s extended family takes responsibility for the child but does not officially adopt them. She said this is a recent trend Wisconsin has seen in the past few years.

“Which can be really complicated in families,” Henderson said of guardianship. “It makes sense that families are interested in looking into guardianship as an alternative option to provide the child with permanency but not to disrupt family relationships.”

Nationally, more than 690,000 kids spent time in the foster care system in 2017. In Wisconsin, that number was more than 12,500 kids. The number of children spending time in what is also called out-of-home care has ticked up steadily each year in Wisconsin since 2012.

In Wisconsin in 2017, more than 2,500 kids were reunited with their parents, 828 were taken in by a guardian, and 692 were adopted, according to the data.

Henderson said Wisconsin’s adoption rates are slowly decreasing but not at the same rate guardianship is increasing.

“Wisconsin as a state does a really nice job of engaging relative caregivers,” she said. “I think that’s why we’re seeing those guardianship numbers go up.”

Nationally, the rate of children being reunited with their parents decreased by 1 percentage point in 2017, to 49 percent. In Wisconsin, the reunification rate in 2017 was 55 percent compared to 57 percent in 2016.

Wisconsin’s reunification rates are holding steady, never dropping below 50 percent, Henderson said.

She said the rate of kids aging out of the system remains low with around 350 kids total aging out over the past couple years.

“Those kids are getting a lot of attentive support and services because that’s not optimal outcome for kids,” Henderson said.

She said their goal is finding a forever family for every kid in the system.

“I feel like this is a good news story for Wisconsin because it just has such a strong focus on family which is where we are at right now as a state,” she said.

The data was provided by National KIDS COUNT, a project of the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The center keeps track of the well-being of children in the United States. The foundation declined a request for comment.