Why Matching Is the Most Undervalued Lever in Child Welfare

Part 2 of a Thought Leadership Series on Permanency, Matching, and Outcomes in Foster Care

The Moment Before Permanency Is Decided

Before a child is adopted, reunified, or placed in guardianship, there is always a quieter, less visible moment.

When a decision is made.

Sometimes it happens quickly – a family is available, a placement is needed, and the system moves. Sometimes it happens after a review of profiles, case notes, and logistics. On paper, it looks like progress.

But what often goes unexamined is this:

Was this the right match?

Because long before permanency is achieved … or lost … matching determines the outcome.

Matching Is Not Administrative. It Is Predictive.

In many systems, matching is treated as a logistical function: identifying an available home and moving a child into it. It is often driven by urgency, capacity, and compliance timelines.

But research and practice increasingly point to a different truth.

Matching is not administrative.

Matching is predictive.

It is one of the strongest indicators of whether a placement will stabilize, whether a relationship will form, and ultimately whether permanency will hold. Studies on placement stability show that mismatched placements significantly increase the likelihood of disruption, re-entry into care, and poor long-term outcomes [1].

Every disruption is more than a move. It is another loss. Another confirmation, for a child, that relationships are temporary. 

Note: One of the things I learned in my doctoral program at the University of Chicago’s Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work is that moving kids from school to school has detrimental effects.  While it is often said that a school change sets a child back academically, the research makes something even clearer: frequent school moves interrupt learning in cumulative ways, making it increasingly difficult for children … especially those in foster care … to keep pace with their peers. Add in special needs and the situation becomes even more complex. 

And over time, those losses accumulate.

What the Research Tells Us About Placement Stability

A growing body of research has made one finding clear: stability is directly linked to outcomes.

Children who experience multiple placements are more likely to face:

• Increased rates of anxiety and depression
• Behavioral and emotional dysregulation
• Lower educational attainment
• Difficulty forming secure attachments

A 2025 study on placement instability found that each additional placement change significantly increases the likelihood of adverse mental health outcomes and reduces the probability of achieving permanency [2].

In contrast, children placed in stable, well-matched homes early in their foster care experience are more likely to:

• Achieve permanency more quickly
• Experience fewer behavioral disruptions
• Develop stronger relational bonds with caregivers

The implication is clear.

Stability is not a byproduct of permanency. It is a prerequisite for it.

Why Traditional Matching Falls Short

Despite its importance, matching is often underdeveloped in child welfare systems. Too often, it is treated as a placement function rather than a permanency strategy. A child needs a home, a family has an opening, and the system moves quickly—often under real pressure and with good intentions. But speed and availability, while important, do not necessarily create stability.

Traditional matching often relies on basic demographic and logistical factors: the child’s age, the family’s location, the number of beds in the home, licensing status, and compliance with placement timelines. These details matter. They are necessary. But they are not sufficient. They can tell us whether a placement is possible. They cannot tell us whether a relationship is likely to hold.

What is often missing is a deeper understanding of the child’s emotional and developmental needs. A child is never just an age, a diagnosis, or a placement category. A child brings a full story: grief, loss, strengths, fears, attachments, cultural identity, school history, sibling relationships, trauma responses, and hopes they may not yet be ready to name. Matching that does not account for these realities risks reducing a child to a profile.

The same is true for families. A licensed family is not simply an available resource. Every family has a unique combination of experience, motivation, resilience, parenting style, support systems, flexibility, and limitations. Some families may have extraordinary capacity for medical complexity. Others may be especially strong with teenagers, sibling groups, or children who need patience before trust. Still others may be loving and committed, but not yet prepared for the particular needs of a specific child.

This is why placements can be technically appropriate but relationally misaligned. On paper, the match may make sense. The bed is open. The family is licensed. The geography is workable. The stated preferences appear to align. But if the emotional fit is weak, if the family does not understand the child’s needs, or if the child’s required relationships and routines cannot be supported, the placement may begin to strain almost immediately.

And when that happens, disruption becomes more likely—not because anyone failed to care, but because the match was never fully understood.

The Cost of Getting Matching Wrong

When a placement disrupts, the consequences extend far beyond logistics. To the system, a disruption may appear as a new placement search, a case staffing, a transport plan, a new school enrollment, or another urgent referral. But to the child, it is often experienced as another loss.

For children who have already been separated from parents, siblings, schools, neighborhoods, pets, teachers, and familiar routines, another move can reinforce the deepest fear of all: that relationships do not last. Even when a move is necessary, even when adults can explain the reasons, the emotional meaning for the child can be profound. Another bedroom. Another set of rules. Another adult to test. Another reason not to trust too quickly.

Research shows that placement disruption is associated with increased trauma symptoms, greater difficulty achieving permanency, and higher long-term system involvement [3]. This is not surprising. Stability is the platform from which healing occurs. When stability is repeatedly interrupted, children must use emotional energy to adapt rather than grow. They may become more guarded, more anxious, more oppositional, or more withdrawn—not because they are unwilling to attach, but because attachment has become risky.

The cost is also felt by families. A disrupted placement can leave foster or adoptive families heartbroken, ashamed, confused, or exhausted. Some families withdraw from the system altogether after a difficult experience. Others remain licensed but become more hesitant, narrowing the children they will consider. In this way, poor matching does not simply affect one case; it can reduce the overall capacity of the foster and adoptive family pool.

For agencies and systems, disruption creates additional workload, cost, and complexity. Caseworkers must locate another home, coordinate transitions, manage school changes, respond to crises, and attempt to rebuild trust with a child who may now have even less reason to believe adults will stay. The system becomes reactive rather than strategic.

But perhaps the greatest cost is relational. Each disruption teaches a lesson.

This won’t last.

That lesson is devastating because permanency requires the opposite belief. Permanency asks a child to believe that this relationship may be different. That this adult may stay. That this home may hold. Every mismatch makes that belief harder.

What Effective Matching Actually Requires

If matching is predictive, then it must be intentional. It must be treated not as a quick administrative step, but as one of the most important clinical, relational, and strategic decisions in the life of a child.

At its best, matching is both data-informed and deeply human. Data can help identify possible families. It can surface geography, licensing status, household composition, experience, preferences, and availability. It can make a large pool of families searchable and more useful. But data should narrow possibilities, not define the answer. The final work of matching requires discernment.

Effective matching begins with the child. It asks not only, “What placement does this child need?” but “What kind of family environment will allow this child to heal, grow, and belong?” That means understanding the child’s history, trauma, strengths, developmental needs, school experience, medical needs, sibling relationships, cultural identity, and existing attachments. It also means understanding what brings the child comfort, what triggers fear, what helps them regulate, and what kinds of adults they are most able to trust.

Effective matching also requires a clear and honest understanding of the family. What has this family experienced? What are they prepared to sustain? How do they respond to stress, grief, rejection, or difficult behavior? What is their parenting style? Who supports them? Are they flexible enough to meet the child where the child is, rather than where they hoped the child would be? Are they willing to maintain connections that matter to the child?

That last question is critical. Proximity to important and required visits with parents, siblings, relatives, mentors, therapists, schools, and community supports is not merely a logistical issue. It can deeply affect a child’s mental health. A placement that is physically safe but far from essential relationships may create additional grief, anxiety, and disconnection. For many children, sibling visits, family time, familiar schools, and trusted professionals are stabilizing forces. A good match considers whether those relationships can be preserved—not as an afterthought, but as part of the child’s wellbeing.

Effective matching also looks for relational fit, the part that cannot be captured in a checklist. Can this family tolerate slow attachment? Can they remain calm when a child pushes them away? Can they see behavior as communication? Can they support openness, identity, and connection? Can they love a child without demanding immediate gratitude or emotional return?

This is not faster work.

But it is better work.

And in the long run, better matching saves time. It reduces disruption. It protects children from additional loss. It supports families more honestly. Most importantly, it increases the likelihood that a placement becomes what every child deserves: a permanent relationship that holds.

Precision-Based, Relational Matching: A Different Model

At Let It Be Us, we have built our work around this principle: matching determines outcomes.

Through the Adoption Listing Service of Illinois, we use a precision-based, relational approach that combines technology with human insight. Our proprietary tools allow us to identify families whose strengths align with a child’s needs—but the match does not happen there.

It happens in conversation.

We spend time understanding families—their motivations, their flexibility, their readiness for complexity. We engage in dialogue, not just screening. Because the goal is not placement.

The goal is permanence.

This approach has led to measurable outcomes. For children in our adoption program—those with the goal of adoption or substitute care pending termination of parental rights—54% are matched with a permanent family.

That number reflects something critical:

When matching improves, permanency improves.

The Role of Conversation in Matching

One of the most overlooked tools in child welfare is also the most human: conversation.

In many systems, communication with families is brief, transactional, and focused primarily on eligibility. A family may be asked what ages they will consider, how many children they can take, whether they are open to siblings, or whether they can parent a child with certain diagnoses or behaviors. These questions matter, but they are only the beginning. They tell us what a family may be willing to consider on paper. They do not always tell us what a family truly understands, what they are prepared to sustain, or how they will respond when parenting becomes difficult.

Effective matching requires a deeper kind of conversation. It requires slowing down enough to understand not just the family’s stated preferences, but their lived experience, motivations, support system, flexibility, and emotional readiness. A checkbox can tell us that a family is “open” to an older child. A conversation can reveal whether they understand what grief, loyalty, trauma, fear, and attachment may look like in that child’s daily life.

This is where real matching begins.

A meaningful conversation allows professionals to ask better questions: What draws this family to adoption or foster care? What kinds of children have they successfully parented or supported before? How do they respond to rejection, anger, withdrawal, or testing behaviors? Who will stand beside them when the placement is hard? What expectations do they have of the child … and are those expectations realistic, flexible, and trauma-informed?

It also allows us to listen for nuance. A family may initially say “no” to a particular need because they are afraid, uninformed, or unsure. With education and conversation, that “no” may become “maybe,” and eventually “yes.” Another family may say “yes” too quickly, without fully understanding the level of support a child will require. In both situations, the conversation matters because it helps move beyond surface answers into discernment.

This is especially important in adoption and permanency work because families are not static. Their capacity can grow when they are educated, supported, and invited into honest dialogue. But capacity can also be overestimated if the system relies only on forms, profiles, or initial enthusiasm. Conversation helps identify the difference between willingness and readiness.

Research on family engagement consistently shows that stronger relationships between agencies and families lead to better placement stability and permanency outcomes [4]. This makes intuitive sense. Families who feel known, respected, and prepared are more likely to stay engaged. They are more likely to ask for help before a crisis. They are more likely to trust the professionals walking alongside them. And trust is essential when the goal is not simply placement, but permanency.

Conversation also reveals what data alone cannot. Data can identify a family within a geographic radius. It can show licensing status, household composition, prior experience, and stated preferences. But it cannot fully capture tenderness, resilience, humility, humor, patience, or the ability to repair after conflict. It cannot reveal the tone in a caregiver’s voice when they speak about a child’s fear. It cannot show whether a family is willing to keep showing up when attachment is slow.

Those qualities matter.

In fact, they may matter most.

The best matches are rarely made by information alone. They are made when information is paired with insight. A strong matching process uses data to find possibilities, but conversation to understand them. It treats families not as slots to be filled, but as partners to be known. It treats children not as profiles to be matched, but as whole human beings whose futures depend on the quality of the adults around them.

In child welfare, conversation is not small talk. It is assessment. It is preparation. It is trust-building. It often can look like intervention.

And when done well, it can be the bridge between an available home and a permanent family.

Matching as a Strategy for Permanency

If we are serious about improving permanency outcomes, we have to be willing to move upstream – well before adoption finalization, and even before a child is physically placed in a home. Permanency is not secured at the end of the process. It is shaped at the beginning.

And the beginning is matching.

Too often, matching is treated as a step in the workflow rather than a strategy in itself. It happens after recruitment, after licensing, after a child is already waiting. But by that point, many of the most important variables have already been set in motion. The pool of available families may not reflect the needs of the children. The urgency of placement may override the quality of fit. Decisions are made under pressure, rather than with intention.

If we shift our thinking … if we treat matching as a primary lever for permanency … then the entire system begins to organize itself differently.

It starts with recruitment. Not broad, generalized recruitment, but targeted, child-specific recruitment that is aligned with the actual profiles of children waiting. If a system knows that it has older youth, sibling groups, or children with complex medical or developmental needs, then recruitment must be shaped accordingly. Otherwise, we create a structural mismatch between who is waiting and who is available.

From there, data becomes a powerful tool … but only if it is used correctly. Data can help narrow possibilities, identify patterns, and surface families who may be a strong fit. But data alone cannot define a match. It cannot capture nuance, motivation, flexibility, or the capacity to grow. Those elements emerge through conversation, through relationship, through time spent understanding who a family really is … not just what they have checked on a form.

This is where relational matching becomes essential. It requires slowing down just enough to ask better questions. What has this family experienced? Where have they shown resilience? How do they respond to stress? What kind of support system surrounds them? And equally important: what does this child need, not just clinically, but relationally? What kind of environment will allow them to feel safe enough to attach?

Prioritizing relational fit does not mean ignoring urgency. Children need timely placements. But speed without alignment often leads to disruption, and disruption ultimately delays permanency even further. When we prioritize fit alongside timeliness, we increase the likelihood that a placement will hold … and that permanency will follow.

Equally important is what happens after the match is made. Matching is not a moment; it is the beginning of a relationship that must be supported. Families need preparation before placement, guidance during transition, and sustained support afterward. Without this, even well-matched placements can falter under the weight of unaddressed challenges.

What becomes clear, over time and across cases, is that matching is not simply about connecting a child to a family. It is about setting the conditions for a relationship to succeed.

When matching is treated as a central strategy … when recruitment, data, conversation, and support are all aligned around it … outcomes begin to change. Placements stabilize. Disruptions decrease. Children experience fewer moves. And permanency is achieved not just more often, but more durably.

This is the shift the field must make.

Not later. Not incrementally.

But at the point where everything begins.

A System-Level Opportunity

Illinois, like many states, has invested heavily in foster parent recruitment. That investment matters. No child welfare system can achieve permanency without families willing to open their homes and lives to children who need them. Recruitment is essential because it creates possibility. It expands the pool of caregivers. It invites new people into the work. It gives the system more options when children need families.

But recruitment, by itself, is not enough.

A larger pool of families does not automatically produce better outcomes for children. If the families being recruited are not aligned with the children who are waiting, the system may become busier without becoming more effective. More inquiries, more applications, and more licensed homes are meaningful only if they translate into stable placements, durable relationships, and permanent families.

This is where child welfare has an opportunity to mature. The field has often measured recruitment by volume: how many people attended an event, how many forms were completed, how many families entered the licensing pipeline. Those measures are useful, but they are incomplete. The deeper question is whether recruitment is producing the kinds of families children actually need.

For example, if the children waiting for permanency are older youth, sibling groups, children with medical complexity, or children with significant trauma histories, then general recruitment may not be enough. A campaign that produces many families interested only in infants or very young children may increase activity, but it will not solve the permanency challenge for the children who are actually waiting. That is not a failure of those families. It is a mismatch between recruitment strategy and child-specific need.

At Let It Be Us we have evolved the process in Illinois to connect recruitment directly to matching. Recruitment should not simply ask, “Who is willing?” It should ask, “Who is prepared for these children?” Matching should not simply ask, “Who has an open bed?” It should ask, “Who has the strengths, capacity, support, and commitment this child needs in order to heal and belong?”

This is the move from volume to precision.

It is the move from availability to alignment.

And ultimately, it is the move from placement to permanence.

When recruitment and matching are integrated, the system becomes more intentional. Data can show where the gaps are. Relationship-based practice can help families understand what children need. Caseworkers can make referrals with greater confidence. Families can be prepared for the realities of the children they hope to parent. And children can experience fewer failed connections on the path to permanency.

This is not just a program improvement. It is a philosophical shift. It asks the system to stop treating families as interchangeable resources and to stop treating children as placement needs to be solved. Instead, it recognizes that permanency is built through fit, readiness, relationship, and support.

Illinois has the opportunity to lead in this work. With strong statewide infrastructure, a deep base of licensed families, committed agencies, and tools such as the Adoption Listing Service of Illinois, the state can move beyond recruitment as a standalone function and toward a more sophisticated permanency strategy.

Because the goal is not simply to recruit more families.

The goal is to find the right families for the children who are waiting – and to support those relationships until they become permanent.

A Final Reflection

A child enters a home.

The first night is quiet. The second night is uncertain.

Weeks pass.

And then something small happens.

The child leaves a door open.
They fall asleep more easily.
By now, the dog has begun to stay in their room.
They begin to believe, just slightly, that this might last.

That belief does not come from a placement.

It comes from a match.

What Comes Next in This Series

Part 3: Measuring What Matters: Outcomes, Accountability, and the Future of Permanency
→ How we redefine success in child welfare—and build systems that are accountable to children, not just processes.

References

1. Child Welfare Information Gateway. Placement stability and permanency outcomes.
2. Ferraro, A.C. et al. (2025). Placement instability and mental health outcomes.
3. Rubin, D.M. et al. Research on placement disruption and child outcomes.
4. Casey Family Programs. Family engagement and permanency outcomes.

About Let It Be Us:
Let It Be Us is a nonprofit organization dedicated to recruitment, matching and placement within foster care and adoption across the State of Illinois. Through innovative programming and strategic partnerships, Let It Be Us aims to improve outcomes for children in the child welfare system. Learn more at www.letitbeus.org.

Daisy Taylor

Marketing and Technology Specialist & Recruitment Event Manager 

Daisy holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Public Relations from DePaul University. She has experience as a creative strategist specializing in social media management, content creation, and digital marketing. She is equipped with cutting-edge knowledge in Google Analytics and consumer behavior used to develop visionary marketing campaigns that drive brand growth. Daisy’s strong marketing background will support the Let It Be Us Adoption Listing Service leadership in Illinois child welfare.

Let It Be Us is an Illinois 501(c)3 and licensed child welfare agency. The mission of Let It Be Us is to provide collaborative, innovative solutions of effective recruitment and placement within Illinois foster care and adoption. The Let It Be Us platform manages the Adoption Listing Service of Illinois and the Heart Gallery of Illinois, engines of success for Illinois foster care adoptions. The Let It Be Us vision is for all children in the Illinois child welfare system to achieve educational equity, employment equity, and overall well being through the incorporation of Let It Be Us Programming into statewide advancements in foster care and adoption recruitment and placement. For more information about Let It Be Us, visit www.letitbeus.org.