Purpose: A rich and heterogeneous body of knowledge about adoption breakdown has accumulated in recent years. The goal of this article is to review the existing research literature on the topic. Method: A comprehensive review of journal articles, book chapters, and technical reports addressing the issue of adoption breakdown was conducted. Results: Terminological and methodological difficulties are discussed before the main findings about the incidence of adoption breakdown are presented. A detailed examination of the child, parent, and support and service characteristics associated with the breakdown experience follows. The review ends with the analysis of some policy and practice implications, as well as with suggestions about how to increase and improve the study of adoption breakdown. Discussion: Although research into adoption breakdown has achieved a considerable progress in recent years, improvements are still needed in both the basic research and the applied implications domains.

The original thinking behind permanency planning for foster children was to secure a caregiver's intention to provide a permanent home, not to guarantee it. Little is known, however, about how intentions change after permanence or what effect this change has on post-permanency continuity of care. This study examined the mediating effects of caregivers' thoughts about ending an adoption or guardianship, and how this mechanism may be contingent on primordial and bureaucratic factors that child welfare agencies rely on to ensure family continuity after legal permanence. In 2006, a sample of 346 Illinois caregivers who finalized an adoption or guardianship between 1998 and 2002 completed surveys about child behavior problems, the adequacy of financial assistance, and thoughts about maintaining the permanency relationship. Responses were linked to administrative data that tracked continuity of care through 2012. Simple mediation and moderated mediation hypotheses of the effects of caregiver thoughts on post-permanency continuity were tested. At last observation, 8% of caregivers were no longer living with the child or stopped receiving subsidies on the child's behalf. Thoughts expressed at survey time about ending the permanency relationship mediated the effect of child behavior problems on post-permanency discontinuity rates. This indirect effect was more pronounced among distantly related kin, lone caregivers, and caregivers who felt the subsidy was inadequate to cover their expenses. Our findings suggest that post-permanency services should target a narrow segment of caregivers who express weakened permanency commitments that arise from the challenges of parenting a child with multiple behavioral problems.

A new dynamic faces the U.S. child welfare system. Since 1998 there has been a simultaneous decrease in children in state custody and increase in children in subsidized adoptive and guardianship homes. In 2013 there were 2.8 children in federally assisted adoptive or guardianship homes for every child in a federally assisted foster home. While generally lauded as positive, little empirical research chronicles the post-adoption or post-guardianship outcomes of these children, and there is no agreed-upon terminology for children who leave their legally permanent homes prior to becoming adults. This study examined outcomes for 21,629 children adopted or taken into guardianship, and tracked for at least 10 years, or until age 18. Most (87%) did not reenter foster care or experienced another type of temporary or long-term interruption in care. Based on the experiences of the 13%, this study suggests new terminology, post-permanency discontinuity, to describe these experiences.