For Immediate Release: November 2005

Grace Hong, Research Associate at Optimal Solutions Group (Optimal), in collaboration with Dr. Marv Mandell from the University of Maryland Baltimore County, gave a poster presentation at the 2005 Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) Conference in Washington D.C. The presentation examined the effects of the availability of a guardianship subsidy on placement stability for children placed with unlicensed kinship caregivers. The guardianship subsidy was provided to one group of children who participated in the Maryland Guardianship Assistance Demonstration Project (GAP) to encourage relative caregivers to assume guardianship of children in their care and move children out of the child welfare system in a timelier manner.

The GAP demonstration, sponsored by the Maryland Department of Human Resources through a Federal waiver, adopted an experimental design where project participants were randomly assigned to the experimental group or the control group. The members of the experimental group were offered a monthly subsidy of $300 if the caregivers assumed guardianship. Members of the control group were not eligible for this subsidy. Ms. Hong presented the results of a subgroup analysis which examined the differential effects of the availability of the subsidy on placement stability for children who were initially placed with unlicensed relative caregivers among four distinctive groups of children:

• Those who would remain in unlicensed kinship care in the absence of the subsidy;
• Those who would move to licensed restricted foster care in the absence of the subsidy;
• Those who would exit through reunification in the absence of the subsidy; and
• Those who would exit through guardianship in the absence of the subsidy.

Optimal Solutions Group, LLC, is a minority-owned economic and policy analysis consulting firm in the Baltimore-Annapolis-Washington, DC area. We are committed to supplying insightful program evaluation, cost-benefit and effectiveness analyses, custom econometric modeling, and market analyses for decisionmakers in both the public and private sectors.

Optimal has served the needs of numerous governmental and commercial clients, including federal and state agencies, community-based organizations, business associations, and law firms.

For more information, contact Mark Turner, 443.451.7060 or mturner@optimalsolutionsgroup.com.