Placing teens with siblings

Sibling relationships are emotionally influential in childhood and over the course of a lifetime. For children in foster care, sibling relationships often provide a much-needed source of continuity and support during periods of instability. Keeping a sibling group together throughout their time in care has implications for the placement stability and permanency outcomes of the children in the sibling group. This brief uses four years of data from New York City(NYC)to examine how often siblings entering care are placed together. We found that larger sibling groups and sibling groups with at least one teen are separated more often than smaller sibling groups and those with only younger children. This has implications for removal and placement practice by NYC’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS), as well as areas for future research.

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