The Impact of Child Welfare Involvement on Kindergarten Readiness

Introduction: Child well-being is an important focus for children involved in the child welfare system and education (including Kindergarten readiness) is an important component of well-being. Parental involvement has been found to positively impact readiness and there is general agreement that children are more ready to enter Kindergarten if they have participated in some type of pre-K program, either private or public. One area that is less understood is the impact of early childhood trauma on Kindergarten readiness. This study links administrative data between the Department of Education and the Child Welfare system to understand the impact of involvement in the child welfare system on Kindergarten readiness.

Method: Administrative data was linked at an individual level using a multi-step process moving from exact matches across all matching variables into other high-confidence matching strategies. Descriptive statistics were used to examine the differences between overall Kindergarten readiness and readiness for the population of children found to have some type of prior child welfare experience (either an investigation, in-home services, or out-of-home services). A multi-level model predicting Kindergarten readiness, was used to understand the impact of individual level (demographics, presence and type of pre-K program, poverty); system level (jurisdiction, school catchment area) and type of child welfare involvement on being ready for Kindergarten.

Results: Of the over 64,500 valid observations, over 10% were found in the child welfare data system. Children with child welfare experience were less likely to be ready for Kindergarten then the population of youth who were eligible for free and reduced meals. Having any type of child welfare experience decreased the odds of being found ready for Kindergarten: an out-of-home placement (OR=.52); being a victim in an investigation (OR=0.57); or having ancillary child welfare experience (OR=0.67), compared to youth without such experiences holding constant child and family characteristics and type of prior care.

Conclusion: Children who have experienced early childhood trauma, as identified through experience with the child welfare system, are less likely to be ready for Kindergarten. However, when looking specifically at these children there is a strong positive impact of pre-Kindergarten programs in moving these children toward readiness. Early identification and enrollment of these vulnerable children into pre-Kindergarten programs will most likely alleviate some of the gap in Kindergarten readiness. The impact of the different types of pre-care and the importance of these programs for vulnerable populations will be discussed.