PARENTAL VISITING AND FOSTER-CARE REUNIFICATION

Parental visiting has long been a crucial factor in reunification deci sions for children in foster care. The purposes of the present study, part of a larger follow-up investigation of permanency planning for ch ildren in foster care, were to correlate parental visiting with perman ency planning outcomes and to develop a logistic regression model pred icting family reunification. Findings show that the majority of childr en with maternal and paternal visits at the level recommended by the c ourt were reunified, but no association was found between parental vis iting and recidivism of reunified children at a 12 month follow-up. Ma ternal visiting at the recommended level was the strongest predictor o f reunification among the five study variables included in the regress ion model, indicating that a child visited by the mother as recommende d was approximately 10 times more likely to be reunified. The paper al so includes information on parental visiting in traditional and kinshi p foster homes and across three ethnic groups. Implications of study f indings for child welfare practice and future research are discussed.