Examining the Protective Role of Community Social Capital In Foster Care Re-Entry Following Family Reunification amid Community Structural Risks

Background/Purpose:
Ensuring stable family reunification following foster care discharge is critical for reducing avoidable strain on children, families, and child welfare systems. However, facilitators and barriers to reunification stability remain understudied. Prior research has identified community structural risks, including poverty rates, income inequality, and demographic vulnerabilities, as salient contextual factors shaping key child welfare outcomes, but few studies have examined whether such risks are associated with reunification stability. At the same time, communities are not only spaces of risk; they also contain protective resources in the form of community social capital (CSC), including civic participation and community connectedness, which may support family functioning and alter how families and service systems manage structural risks. This study examined whether community structural risks were associated with foster care reentry rates following reunification and whether CSC buffered those associations.

Methods:
County-level foster care reentry rates following reunification were derived from linked data from the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System and the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System. Case-level reentry was observed within 365 days after reunification during fiscal years 2013 through 2017. Community structural risks were measured using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) and county-level income inequality from the U.S. Congress’s Social Capital Index (SCI) dataset. CSC was operationalized using the SCI Community Health Subindex, reflecting county-level civic engagement and the density of nonprofit and religious organizations. Given Children’s Bureau suppression rules, the final sample included 1,197 identifiable counties. Weighted hierarchical linear regression models with state-clustered standard errors were estimated. Based on multivariable functional-form testing, nonlinear terms for community structural risks and their interactions with CSC were included in the models. Moderation was evaluated by comparing the main-effects model with a model including interaction terms.

Results:
In the main-effects model, SVI was significantly associated with reentry rates, showing a U-shaped pattern in which reentry rates were lowest near the mean of SVI and higher at values below and above the mean (B=.132, p<.01). Income inequality was also significantly associated with reentry rates, with an inverted-U pattern in which reentry rates increased up to somewhat above the mean of income inequality and then declined at higher levels (B=-5.202, p<.001). In the final model, income inequality and CSC significantly interacted in a nonlinear pattern (B=-4.925, p<.01), whereas SVI and CSC did not interact significantly. At higher levels of inequality, counties with higher CSC showed a steeper decline in predicted reentry rates.

Conclusions/Implications:
Community structural risks may have complex, nonlinear relationships with reunification stability, and CSC may not function as a uniform buffer. Instead, this study suggests that its protective role is conditional and nonlinear, becoming more consequential at higher levels of income inequality. This study offers an initial assessment of how structural risks and CSC may jointly shape reunification instability across medium- and large-sized counties. These findings also highlight the importance of strengthening community conditions that support families during the post-reunification period and of examining these processes in ways that account for their dynamic interplay.