Intersectional Disparities In Length of Stay In Foster Care By Race and Disability Status

Background and Purpose

Foster care systems prioritize timely permanency because prolonged non-permanent care can harm children’s development and well-being. However, racially minoritized children with disabilities may experience compounded vulnerability to delayed permanency, reflected in extended stays in foster care. Prior studies suggest that racially minoritized children are more likely to experience prolonged stays or delayed permanency than White children. These disadvantages can interact with barriers in disability-related policies and services and with judgmental biases, amplifying delays in permanency processes beyond a simple additive sum of risks. Yet intersectional race–disability disparities in length of stay remain underexplored, particularly beyond Black–White comparisons and within multiracial categories. Multiple jeopardy arising from intersecting racialized and disability statuses is embedded in the decision-making ecology of child welfare systems.

Guided by Decision-Making Ecology and Multiple Jeopardy frameworks, this study examined whether intersectional race–disability status is associated with foster care length of stay and which intersectional groups experience longer stays. The study aims to clarify intersectional disparities in prolonged stays—an indicator of delayed permanency—and to identify policy and practice gaps that sustain them.

Methods

Using Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) data from fiscal year 2019, we estimated covariate-adjusted linear regression models with state fixed effects and robust standard errors clustered at the state level, followed by post-estimation comparisons of adjusted group means. Effect sizes were interpreted using standardized mean differences (SMD). The analytic sample comprised 521,387 episodes of children under age 21 across 51 states, including those who remained in care or exited through permanency placements or emancipation. The dependent variable was days in foster care since the most recent removal and was square-root transformed for model estimation; adjusted predictions (margins) were used to obtain covariate-adjusted mean days on the original scale. The primary predictor was a single intersectional categorical variable combining race and clinically diagnosed disability status (14 mutually exclusive groups). Race was classified into seven categories: White, Black or African American (Black), American Indian or Alaska Native (AI/AN), Asian, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander (NHPI), Multiracial (includes White), and Multiracial (no White). Multiracial children were disaggregated into those with any White ancestry and those without, rather than collapsed into a residual multiracial category.

Results

All racially minoritized children with disabilities had longer stays in foster care relative to White children without disabilities. Particularly, AI/AN (B=7.382, p<.001, SMD=.658), Multiracial (no White) (B=6.997, p<.001, SMD=.624), and Black (B=6.128, p<.001, SMD=.546) with disabilities showed substantial disparities among intersectional groups. Adjusted predictions (margins) indicated these groups spent roughly 300 additional days in care compared with White children without disabilities, and they also stayed longer than White children with disabilities and same-race peers without disabilities.

Conclusions and Implications

Results indicate pronounced intersectional disparities in prolonged foster care stays within institutional decision-making contexts. Findings underscore the need to strengthen timely permanency pathways and placement capacity for racially minoritized children with disabilities, including specialized foster care models and coordinated disability-related supports.