Cost analysis of a rural family treatment court: Is this enhanced approach “worth it”?

Abstract

The rate of children entering foster care due to parental substance use continues to climb, particularly in rural areas. States and localities grappling with how to best serve these cases may be interested in implementing family treatment courts (FTC) but unsure of the return on investment for this enhanced approach. The few existing cost analyses of FTC focus primarily on large programs in urban settings. We present findings from a 4-year quasi-experimental study of a Midwestern rural FTC and conduct a cost analysis of observed effects on time in foster care. Using survival analyses to capture daily differences in permanency rates between groups and calculating the integral of the difference between survival curves, we observed that treatment group children spent, on average, 361 fewer days in care compared to children in the traditional system. The difference between FTC implementation costs and daily foster care costs avoided for the 91 treatment group children was estimated at over $26,000 per child served.