Does the demonstration result in fewer children remaining in long-term foster care with ongoing administration oversight?
Comparing the permanency rate for the control group4 with the experimental group rate suggests that the availability of guardianship boosted net permanence by 6.1 percent, statistically significant at the .02 level. For age-eligible children assigned to the demonstration prior to January 1, 1999, the combined permanency rate (reunification, adoption, and guardianship) achieved as of March 2002 was 71.8 percent in the control group (3,470) and 77.9 percent in the experimental group (3,287). Because key indicators from administrative and survey data show that statistical equivalence was successfully achieved through randomization, the only substantive difference between the two groups is the intervention. Thus, the higher permanency rate in the experimental group may be attributed to the availability of subsidized guardianship. Analysis of differences among individual permanency options found that virtually all of the difference in legal permanence was accounted for by subsidized guardia
