Fall 2017 - Winter 2018 MSU School of Social Work Newsletter MSU-Social-Work-2017-2018-Newsletter | Seite 6

FACULTY RESEARCH
Head Start may protect against
foster care placement
P
Dr. Sacha Klein
“Head Start
may protect
against foster
care because of
its focus on the
entire family.
Services go
beyond providing
preschool
education
to include
supporting
parental goals
such as housing
stability,
continued
education, and
financial security.”
6
articipating in Head Start may help prevent young children from being
placed in foster care, finds a national study led by a Michigan State
University researcher.
“Kids up to age 5 in the federal government’s preschool program were 93
percent less likely to end up in foster care than kids in the child welfare system
who had no type of early care and education,” said Sacha Klein, MSU assistant
professor of social work.
Klein and colleagues examined multiple forms of early care and education—
from daycare with a family member to more structured programs—and found
Head Start was the only one to guard against foster care placement.
“The findings seem to add to what we already know about the benefits of
Head Start,” Klein said. “This new evidence suggests Head Start not only helps
kids develop and allows parents to go to work, but it may also help at-risk kids
from ending up in the foster care system.”

Klein and colleagues studied the national survey data of nearly 2,000 families
in which a child had entered the child welfare system for suspicion of abuse or
neglect. Those children were either pulled from the home or were being overseen
by a caseworker.
Klein said Head Start may protect against foster care because of its focus on
the entire family. Services go beyond providing preschool education to include
supporting parental goals such as housing stability, continued education, and
financial security.
There are more than 400,000 children in foster care in the United States,
about a third of them under age 5, according to the most recent report from
the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. All children in foster care
automatically qualify for free Head Start services, regardless of income level.
Klein said the findings suggest policymakers should consider making all
children in the child welfare system, including those living at home, automatically
eligible for Head Start. That could help prevent more kids from ending up in
foster care.

While foster care can be a vital resource for protecting children from abusive
and neglectful parents, it is rarely a panacea for young kids, the study notes.

“Indeed, young children who are placed in foster care often have compromised
socio-emotional, language, and cognitive development and poor early academic
and health outcomes,” the authors write. “Trauma and deprivation experienced
before removal may largely drive these developmental deficits, but foster care
often fails to alleviate them and sometimes can worsen them.”
Klein’s co-authors are Lauren Fries of MSU and Mary Emmons of the
Children’s Institute Inc. in Los Angeles.
The study is published online in the journal, Children and Youth Services
Review.
—Story by MSU Today
Fall 2017/Winter 2018 SSW NEWS