Document Type
Article
Publication Date
9-10-2026
Abstract
Child welfare intervention in the United States continues to operate distinctly different in each states and community without a full picture of the overall system’s efficacy. While federal and state agencies collect extensive information on children’s movement in and out of the foster care system and related adjudication, there lacks a nationwide understanding of how kids fare after exiting the system. This note argues that Departments of Correction (DOC) nationwide should collect child‑welfare history from incarcerated individuals as part of existing intake procedures and regularly communicate the data for the federal Children’s Bureau to aggregate for longitudinal analysis of foster care permanency planning.
This note proceeds in three parts. Part I traces the historical development of the United States child welfare systems and its norms. Part II examines contemporary child-welfare structures, the persistence of the residual model, and failures in national data collection. And Part III proposes a federal data collaboration model using the Department of Corrections intake forms to generate longitudinal data for policy planning purposes.
Recommended Citation
Zehring, Maggie, "Child Welfare History of Prison Inmates Would Provide Meaningful Data for Foster Care Policy Research and Planning" (2026). Student Scholarship. 16.
https://open.mitchellhamline.edu/stusch/16
Included in
Family Law Commons, Legislation Commons, Social Welfare Law Commons