Social Work Commons^™

The Pennsylvania Adoption Exchange Improves Its Matching Process, Vincent W. Slaugh, Mustafa Akan, Onur Kesten, M. Utku Ünver

Vincent Slaugh

The Pennsylvania Adoption Exchange (PAE) helps case workers who represent children in state custody by recommending prospective families for adoption. We describe PAE's operational challenges using case worker surveys and analyze child outcomes through a regression analysis of data collected over multiple years. A match recommendation spreadsheet tool implemented by PAE incorporates insights from this analysis and allows PAE managers to better utilize available information. Using a discrete-event simulation of PAE, we justify the value of a statewide adoption network and demonstrate the importance of better information about family preferences for increasing the percentage of children who are successfully adopted. …