Placement Stability and Movement Trajectories

We discuss placement stability and movement patterns among children placed in family and group foster care. Although placement stability has been a focus of child welfare policy and practice, little research explores the actual patterns of movement while a child is in out‐of‐home care. We apply event count and movement trajectory models to unravel these patterns. The models were tested with a group of children placed out of home in New York City. We provide the results of these analyses, with a description of the latent movement trajectories that characterize the movement histories of the children in the study.