The Intergenerational Trauma Cycle: Examining the Disabling Effects of Foster Care and Family Separation

AI disclosure: No AI was used in the production of this article.

Executive summary

The Child Welfare System (CWS) claims to protect children and help families remain together. Yet, this claim comes into question when the child’s parent(s) have a disability. This article begins with a background on the CWS and its treatment of disabled parents, then turns to follow the parent’s removed child and their wellbeing throughout CWS involvement and foster care. 

Research shows that disability is overrepresented among parents and children in the child welfare system, including parents who have their children removed, children entering foster care, and young adults that age out of foster care without transitionary support. These findings suggest an under-researched generational cycle whereby foster children are separated from their disabled parent(s), these children navigate disabilities of their own throughout foster care, then those disabled young adults are more likely to be emancipated (“age out”) of foster care without transitionary support – resulting in poor socioeconomic outcomes that increase their risk of CWS involvement if they have a child of their own. This cycle of repeated, traumatic separation provides a new framework to help explain why disability is overrepresented at all stages of the foster care system.

This article also emphasizes that underfunding disability policy research prevents meaningful policy development and calls on advocates to support the National Research Center for Parents with Disabilities, which is facing an imminent risk of closure after the sudden removal of their primary grant. This Center is dedicated to breaking the cycle of trauma outlined in this article, and it is imperative that we support their work.

Background

The Child Welfare System (CWS) is a group of state entities governed by specific laws that respond to allegations of child maltreatment by investigating the family. These laws allow for children thought to be in immediate danger of abuse or neglect to be removed from their family’s home and placed in a group home, foster home, or kinship care with a relative. 

Reunification, the process that could reunite the child with their parent, requires the parent to follow a case plan and address any concerns identified by the caseworker. Yet, these plans are often on unrealistic schedules and fail to provide sufficient support or accommodations to parents with disabilities. If the case plan is considered unsuccessful and there are no relatives willing to support the child in kinship care, the child will enter foster care.

When a child has remained in a foster care setting for 15 of the 22 most recent months and a parent has been deemed as not making significant progress by the caseworker, a Termination of Parental Rights (TPR) hearing may be initiated to “free” them for adoption. The majority of states allow this hearing to be fast-tracked if the courts allege that the parent’s disability makes them “unfit” to parent.

TPR is a legal action that is only intended for extreme allegations of neglect, abuse, or abandonment. When a parent’s rights are terminated, their right to speak with or make decisions for their child vanish. The parent-child relationship is irrevocably severed and the parent might never see their child again.

Who this system fails

As a whole, the national TPR risk for disabled parents is triple that of non-disabled parents. This risk is further heightened for disabled Black and American Indian/Alaskan Native families. 

Although this system claims to protect children, many in BIPOC, low income, and disabled communities might feel that this “protection” is a systemic way to criminalize poverty. 

Indeed, these groups are all at a greater risk of neglect allegations – allegations better tied to poverty than intentional mistreatment.

An intellectually disabled mother who had her rights terminated on the basis of alleged “neglect,” rather than abuse, said the following about her children:

“It is not okay at all like there are people out there abusing their kids. I see them on the street, people smacking their kids, and it breaks my heart. I am like, they have their kids, and I do not have my babies. I do not do drugs. I do not drink. I do not abuse my kids. So, I feel like the state and the system is not fair. That is why I am so stressed. What did I do wrong to get them taken?… I did the stuff that they asked me to do. I go to parenting classes and stuff like that. I did that, and they just took them and adopted them.”

Foster Care’s Trauma Cycle: When children of disabled parents grow up to be separated from a child of their own.

Disability is overrepresented in all aspects of the child welfare system, including parents who have their children removed, children entering foster care, and youth that age out of foster care without financial or educational support to help their transition to adulthood. This section outlines a cycle that helps explain this throughline. 

This cycle begins with the disabled parent who is separated from their child, then quickly turns to the child’s experiences. The key points are (1) Disabled children are at a unique risk for entering the foster care system, (2) The system is disabling in and of itself, (3) Disabled foster youth are more likely than non-disabled foster youth to be emancipated without transitionary support, (4) This lack of support generally results in poor socioeconomic outcomes, (5) Emancipated young adults rarely receive pregnancy or parenting support if they have a child or children, (6) Disabled parents with poor socioeconomic conditions are more likely to be investigated by the CWS, (7) Disabled parents are overall more likely to be separated from their child than parents without disabilities – but the risk is higher if their child also have a disability. Then, the cycle repeats to point one. 

This alarming cycle suggests that disabled youth growing up in foster care disproportionately become the very individuals facing separations from their own children later in life. Separating a child from their parents, then separating them again from their loved ones as an adult repeats trauma and spreads it to the next generation. Our systems are broken and it does not need to be this way. This cycle is a severely under-researched topic, but an initial theory is outlined below. 

#1. Disabled children are uniquely at risk of entering foster care

An underdiscussed issue is the consideration of childhood disability as a removal reason by caseworkers. “Child behavioral issue” was at least one reason for removal 13,227 times and “medical neglect” was at least one reason for removal 8,678 times according to a 2024 federal dataset.

A child’s disability can be a removal reason on its own, but the risks seem to increase when the parent or parents are also disabled. For example, another analysis of a similar dataset found “child behavioral issue” to be a removal circumstance 21% of the time when the parent had a disability, but just 9% when the parent did not have a disability. 

The above suggests that disabled children sometimes enter foster care by way of factors related to their own disability. Yet, this does not explain the system’s extremely high disability prevalence on its own. 

31.8% of the foster care population aged 0-18 have a disability. That's nearly 1 in 3, so there must be more to this. That brings us to point two.

#2. Trauma from foster care is further disabling

Children don’t disappear when they enter the foster care system – they endure traumatic situations such as unpredictable home removals, restrictive group homes, and potentially abusive living conditions. This, often prolonged, exposure to trauma also results in many foster children developing mental health disabilities that contribute to the high prevalence of disability within the foster care system. Estimates vary from 32% to as high as 80% of foster youth receiving a mental health diagnosis while in foster care. 

Removal

The child’s removal from their birth family is likely one of their most significant hardships. A meta-analysis of multiple interview-based studies found that foster children frequently grapple with a sense of helpless confusion when removed from home. One child recalls the following:

“It’s like you’re being kidnapped and nobody wants to tell you nothin’...Even kids have come up to me and be like ‘guys, help me make some sense out of this!’”

Removing a child from their home does not erase the memories of their birth family, it complicates their understanding of what a family is and who can be trusted. Imagine being removed from your birth parent(s) as a child and being driven by strangers to an unknown town, to meet unknown people. You don’t know why you are going to live with these people or for how long you will be there. You don’t know how they’ll treat you or if you can ever return to your birth family. This uncertainty teaches a child to doubt the permanence of people in their life and can lead to attachment barriers throughout their life. 

Further, this sudden change in “home” is likely to severely upset neurodivergent youth that need time to mend rigid thinking and preferred patterns. Other children may reject this change in authority and show signs of Oppositional Defiant Disorder. This is significantly more common among the foster care population than the general population, likely as a response to the feeling that an authority figure has “chosen” the child’s family for them. 

Mourning

Though this is not always true, parents and children may see their bond as broken or erased once the child enters foster care. This can send both sides into a state of mourning through what has been called “ambiguous loss.” This refers to a lack of clarity about a loved one’s psychological or physical presence, resulting in a lifelong source of grief without closure. One foster child’s quote exemplifies this type of loss:

“I got taken away from my mom. That was really harsh … I just moved into my foster house and I was crying for my mom.”

This ambiguous loss may return through re-traumatization as youth move through different foster placements. Disabled foster youth experience this loss an average of four times and youth without disabilities experience this an average of 2.37 times, but there is high variability with some youth experiencing more than 15 placements throughout their time in foster care.

This instability increases the likelihood of Reactive Attachment Disorder, a frequent disability among foster youth that results in persistent rejection of a caregiver’s care or attention. This impacts roughly 1 in 4 foster youth and can create a life-long barrier to accepting a mentor for advice on topics necessary for young adults to learn, such as finances and career goals. 

Not having a stable role model or mentor on top of generally not having a connection with one's family can leave foster youth stranded without support. 

Group home abuse/neglect

Foster youth often navigate both mental and physical harm while in the system. In particular, group homes are often reported as being highly restrictive environments with overburdened staff that cannot properly care for the facility. These conditions are known to contribute to high anxiety scores among disabled foster youth, which also likely extends to the entire foster population. One disabled youth described the isolation she felt:

“[It was] the worst thing ev[er] in life…I feel like I'm this criminal that's in this prison. And, and now, and like cupboards are locked with food. And it's just, it was like this whole big thing and I hated it. I absolutely hated it.”

This institutional restrictiveness is a result of overburdened staff being unable, or potentially unwilling, to fully protect the youth in their care. Another consequence of this lack of supervision is that foster youth in group homes are especially vulnerable to exploitation and abuse in the form of sex trafficking. Depending on the state, the CWS claimed to be protecting between 60%-80% of reported sex trafficking victims in the United States at the time of their victimization(s). 

Foster abuse/neglect

Many foster families play a positive role in the lives of their foster children, but overburdened caseworkers cannot closely monitor every foster home to ensure that this is the case. Some cruel individuals may use this to their advantage. One disabled youth describes his experience with a neglectful foster family:

“They did it in the winter, too. They would be gone for three or four hours with nothing to eat.” His caseworker did not believe him but eventually the neighbors called and he was removed from that placement.

There are no reliable nationwide studies on the topic, but a notable case review from Washington state found that 32.8% of foster children had some form of alleged maltreatment from a foster parent between 2000 and 2002. 

Again, plenty of foster and adoptive parents genuinely care about their child’s wellbeing. Yet, it is also true that abuse and neglect can persist throughout foster care placements, and this may partially explain the high prevalence of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) among foster youth. In fact, the aforementioned Washington study estimates that 25.2% of foster care alumni have PTSD. This is slightly higher than the Veterans Association’s estimate of PTSD among Iraq war veterans – 23%.

#3. Disabled foster youth often “age out” of foster care without support

At this point it is likely that many foster children entered the system with a disability and/or developed a mental health disability due to the traumatic nature of foster care. Unfortunately, for many disabled foster youth, this trauma is prolonged and does not end in an adoptive family or reunification with the birth family.

Instead, it ends in emancipation. Emancipation, also known as “aging out,” occurs between the ages of 18 and 21 when a young adult in foster care will no longer be considered a ward of the state, but does not have an adoptive family either. 

A shocking study found that 53% of all emancipated, or “aged out,” youth have one or more disabilities. Explanations for this are not clear, but the high rates of Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Reactive Attachment Disorder, and PTSD among foster youth may play a role. These conditions are marked by the child antagonizing or rejecting a foster family as a trauma response. Many foster families may not be able to navigate these conditions well, hence disabled youth go through more placements and have a smaller chance of an adoptive family than non-disabled foster youth.

#4. “Aged out” foster youth with disabilities have poor socioeconomic outcomes

Emancipation is associated with extremely high risks of homelessness, incomplete high school education, poverty, unemployment, and incarceration. Looking at the outcome of emancipated youth with disabilities specifically, 29% report homelessness and 19% report incarceration within three years of their emancipation.

Transitional supports are meant to provide monetary support, healthcare access, and social services to emancipated foster youth. Unfortunately, transitional supports are rarely built into foster care services. 

Emancipated youth, especially those with disabilities, often report feeling confused and overwhelmed as they transition to adulthood. In a study of more than 400 emancipated youth, only one third reported having a driver's license or $250 saved upon their exit. Although most states have educational resources available, there is a critical lack of material support for youth as they age out of foster care. 

The poor socioeconomic outcomes from this lack of transitional support will likely increase the risks of CWS involvement if these young adults have a child later in life. 

#5. Disabled foster youth rarely receive pregnancy and parenting supports

It turns out that many disabled young adults transitioning out of foster care between ages 18 to 21 already have a child. A longitudinal study between 2002 and 2004 found that half of all women in foster care had at least one pregnancy by age nineteen; this likelihood is similar for disabled women in foster care. Ideally, the system would include both empathetic, accessible family planning services to reduce unintended pregnancies, and childcare support for those who have a child. 

In reality, young adults emancipated from foster care rarely have access to housing, healthcare, or employment – let alone child support or daycare services. Nobody could overstate the compounded stress of navigating poor socioeconomic conditions and a lack of familial support, all while trying to care for a child and one's own disability or disabilities.

#6. Disabled parents with poor socioeconomic outcomes are more likely to be investigated by CWS

At this point, many emancipated youth with disabilities are navigating early parenthood and extremely difficult material situations. 

Due to a scarcity of studies, the aforementioned 29% that report homelessness could be used to estimate the minimum prevalence of poverty among this group – though the reality is almost certainly much higher.

This is crucial to approximate because poverty is one of the strongest predictors of CWS involvement for a family. A staggering 85% of families investigated by the CWS for “neglect” have incomes below 200% of the poverty line.

More research is needed into this topic, but the cycle outlined so far makes it reasonable to suspect that the socioeconomic conditions resulting from emancipation are key risk factors leading to CWS involvement for the children of disabled foster care alumni.

#7. Disabled parents face scrutiny from the CWS based on socioeconomic factors and child’s disability status - increasing the risk of separation [...the cycle repeats]

While emancipation contributes to a difficult socioeconomic situation that increases the risk of an opened CWS case, the foster care alumni’s CWS trauma and disability status are what is likely to increase the risk of their case ending in separation.

The role of disability in CWS decisions is certain. A nationwide dataset found that 19% of foster children had parental disability as one removal reason and 5% had disability as the sole removal reason, despite only 9% of children in the U.S. having a disabled parent. As a whole, the national TPR risk for disabled parents is triple that of non-disabled parents.

Removal rates where parents have a psychiatric disability have been found to be as high as 70 percent to 80 percent; where the parent has an intellectual disability, 40 percent to 80 percent. This is particularly notable due to the prevalence of psychiatric disabilities among foster care youth that navigate traumatic environments within the system. 

Disabled parents have an increased risk of losing their children as is, but this further increases if the child has a disability themself. In particular, foster youth with a disability are 44% more likely to have parental disability as a removal reason than non-disabled peers. 

There are important social components to this finding. Stereotypes about a disabled parent's ability to provide for their child often worsens the perception of a difficult socioeconomic position. In other words, parents face a layer of disability-based scrutiny for their parenting skills, then another layer of scrutiny based on their perceived ability to “provide” for their child financially. 

These compounding layers of scrutiny impact all disabled parents, but may deepen when the child in question has a disability. This is because CWS inherently assumes the child needs extra care that the parent cannot provide. Rather than addressing material needs, CWS is likely to initiate TPR based on “neglect.”

This may result in yet another traumatic separation for disabled foster care alumni, and it risks pushing their child to step one – repeating this cycle of trauma once again.

This cycle in literature 

The phenomenon of intergenerational child welfare involvement exists in literature; it's known that half of all children born to mothers in foster care will also enter the child welfare system by their second birthday.

Little research has been done into the intergenerational nature of disability-based CWS involvement, however. There are only two studies that allude to this incredibly under-researched cycle. 

First, an analysis of interviews with disabled young adults who were formerly in foster care found that three became pregnant in high school and at least two struggled to keep their parental rights. One youth, a 19 year old multiracial Native American woman with PTSD, mentions that she “had to fight” to keep her son with her during her time in foster care. Another interviewee shared that she was reported to the CWS while living in a women’s shelter with her son. 

Second, an analysis of interviews with intellectually disabled women who lost their children to TPR found that the majority of interviewees experienced foster care or adoption early in their life. Although this point was not elaborated upon much, one mother made an interesting comment that supports the concept of an intergenerational cycle – “I was in foster care and children’s homes as well. That's why the social workers are saying it’s to do with my background.”

Although the literature is scarce, these sources are a small introduction into how this cycle may be playing out in communities. The first study reflects points of the cycle: a disabled parent leaves foster care as a young adult with extremely limited resources and tries to support herself and her son’s wellbeing, but has to prove herself to the CWS. The second study also highlights how a history of CWS involvement can count against foster care alumni, particularly those navigating disability and a stressful socioeconomic position. 

Overall, neither source fits the proposed cycle perfectly, but these fragments do align with a few of its key points. Putting the pieces together necessitates further research in order to fully understand the connection between disability and intergenerational family separations.

Policy implications

If the CWS wants to address its disproportionate impact on disabled foster care alumni and their children, engaging with policy researchers and those with lived experience is paramount. This article has outlined a cycle in which the foster care system exposes disabled youth to the emotional and socioeconomic struggles that place them at a higher risk of child welfare involvement if they choose to have children. Policy interventions must be made to disrupt this intergenerational cycle, which requires additional investment into research. 

The National Research Center for Parents with Disabilities (NRCPD) at the Lurie Institute for Disability Policy has published a wealth of research on the CWS, much of which has been hyperlinked throughout this article. This center publishes research and provides assistance that aims to help inform policymakers, legislators, and empower disabled parents and advocates. As it stands now, too little is known about the cycle outlined in this article to address it properly – this means more hurt for disabled children and their families. Unfortunately, the only center positioned to address this crisis is facing imminent closure after their funding opportunity was suddenly removed from government websites. 

This article cannot confidently outline policy suggestions with the knowledge that there may soon be no center left to examine their feasibility. Hence, it is urgent that those who are alarmed by the intergenerational cycle of disability-based separations advocate against the closure of the only center in the United States that regularly sheds light on disability’s role in family policy. Learn more about the NRCPD’s funding crisis and contact your representatives before their funding lapses on August 31st. 

Conclusion

Learning about the trauma that disabled youth endure while in the foster care system can help policymakers address their unique needs as they age. This article outlined a potential cycle in which disabled children are disproportionately removed from their families and face further disabling trauma; then, when they grow into disabled adults, they face higher rates of emancipation and are denied the support they need to parent their own child. 

Perhaps the most harmful part of the CWS is that it both removes a child from their family, then impairs their material ability to build a family once they become an adult. In many cases, this cycle restarts with yet another separation. This trauma cycle has gone unaddressed for decades. 

It is time that the phrase “child’s best interest” regains value and considers the reality of many disabled foster children once they grow up. They have been removed from family in their childhood and are too often denied family in their adolescence – policy must support the right of disabled foster care alumni to build a family of their own. And the only center that researches these policies is under threat. 

Take action now to support the National Research Center for Parents with Disabilities. For parents, children, and families.

About the author

Christina Melendez-Waring is an autistic and physically disabled woman of color who prioritizes the application of a disability justice lens to all of her work. She is pursuing a Masters of Public Policy degree from the Heller School for Social Policy and Management. She hopes to use her academic, professional, and personal background to further research how disability intersects with family law and carceral systems.

All views expressed in this piece are Christina’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Research Center for Parents with Disabilities.

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