Original title: Evidence of Non-Kin Out-of-Home Placement Outcomes
Kevin Campbell, Elizabeth Wendel · September 2026
When children cannot stay safely at home, governments often place them with strangers instead of relatives. This is called non-kin out-of-home placementWhen a child is placed in foster care with people who are not related to them.. Researchers reviewed studies published between 1965 and 2026 to see how these children fare long term. They also checked government budgets in four English-speaking countries. Fourteen rigorous studies show that children placed into care face higher chances of dying early, suffering physical and mental health issues, and earning less as adults. Sibling studies show about twice the risk of early death and about three times the risk of suicide. No reviewed study showed that non-kin care leads to better results than staying home or living with relatives. A review of 102 studies found kinship care brings fewer behavioral problems, fewer mental health disorders, better well-being, and less disruption. Yet, governments still spend most of their welfare budgets on placements rather than prevention.
Imagine you are responsible for a child who cannot live with their parents. You have to decide between placing them with a relative or with a family you don't know. The non-kin option costs much more, so you spend most of your budget on it. When you check years later, you find no evidence that children placed with strangers do better—they often have more problems. Here, the paper reviews decades of child welfare evidence and finds the same pattern: non-kin placements consume most budgets yet never show superior outcomes compared to keeping children with relatives or at home.
Every year, thousands of children are placed in non-kin foster care at great expense. This review finds no study showing better outcomes from such placements compared to keeping children with family or kinship carers. Meanwhile, most child welfare budgets go to these placements, leaving prevention and family support underfunded.
The abstract states this is a targeted, not systematic, review as a working paper. Budget comparisons use each country's own categories, limiting cross-national comparability. The paper acknowledges effect heterogeneity by age, placement type, and outcome, and notes some researchers argue observational findings are overstated. No causal mechanisms are established, and evidence on alternative pathways is mentioned but not exhaustively reviewed here.
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Evidence of Non-Kin Out-of-Home Placement Outcomes — Kevin Campbell, Elizabeth Wendel — SocArXiv — doi:10.31235/osf.io/b79u4_v2
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper. This is a preprint, so it hasn't necessarily been peer reviewed.