Placement Stability

It is important that children who are removed from their homes experience stability while they are in out-of-home care. To monitor the stability of children in out-of-home placement, DCYF monitors the number of placement moves per 1,000 days in out-of-home care for children and youth entering care during a 12-month cohort period (federal measure) and during the first 90 days (state measure). The federal target is 3.98 moves or fewer; in state fiscal year 2023, Washington had an overall rate of 5.20 on this measure, 1.22 percentage points higher than the federal target. Disaggregation by placement setting however, shows that the kinship care stability rate meets the federal target, while rate for non-kin foster care does not. The state measure of stability is typically greater than the federal measure because a high proportion of the moves that children and youth experience occur in the first 90 days.