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The article discusses potential developments involving kinship care policies and practices which were addressed at the Kinship Summit event in Albany, New York in September 2016, and it mentions collaborative partnerships, the needs of children, youth, and families, and gaps involving child welfare services in America. Continuity in kinship care is examined, along with kinship caregivers, the U.S. Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program, and Voluntary Placement Agreements.

This paper applies the concept of racialization to an analysis of research on the child welfare system's racial disparities and its interactions with Black African immigrant families. This conceptual paper makes the argument that Black African immigrants are an important population of focus for U.S. child welfare system research, and that the use of a racialization lens is necessary to interpret the experiences of the increasingly diverse, Black-racialized population with the child welfare system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The disproportionally high rates of child abuse and neglect on Native American reservations are striking, demanding the interest and focus of child welfare advocates. This paper may benefit child welfare professionals who develop and administer federal and state policies and processes integral to Tribal child welfare (TCW) systems. It argues that an affirming and cursory approach to TCW by federal and state agencies contributes to ineffective engagement and inept system development/reform. Using a critical systems approach, the organizations, structures, and sentinel policy, or key system components, are discussed and explored to demonstrate how a change in perspective can improve the stewardship of federal resources, inform effective policy change, and advance federal and state agencies abilities to support TCW initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Latinx families in the United States who are undocumented face challenges that worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic and negatively impacted child development and well-being. The purposes of this paper are to present this community's experiences from an ecosystemic perspective and provide guidelines and implications for child welfare professionals. This paper urges child welfare professionals to develop models and initiatives that alleviate effects of barriers to access care and services experienced by this community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As scholars and practitioners, we need to invest more in understanding what makes a successful foster care placement for children from Central America who are unaccompanied immigrants. In this paper, we draw on the experiences of service providers (n = 79) to share lessons learned working with unaccompanied immigrant children from Central America served through the Office of Refugee Resettlement's Long Term-Foster Care Program. Our results indicate that culturally responsive service delivery includes: supportive and lasting relationships with foster parents, a welcoming home environment, cultural orientation, cultivating independence, bilingual/bicultural staff, and safety protocols. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The overrepresentation of Black children has been observed in the child welfare system for nearly 60 years yet persists as un unresolved problem. Efforts to address this overrepresentation have been hampered by a persistent debate in the child welfare field regarding the factors that contribute to this problem. This debate concerns the extent to which racial bias in child welfare systems contributes to the observed racial disparities, or whether poverty and "disproportionate need" are the stronger causal factors. Although research supports both of these views, the persistence of this debate points to a larger problem in the child welfare field regarding how evidence is constructed, the hierarchies placed on evidence, and the lens through which evidence is generated and interpreted. This paper reviews the history of this debate, the harmful consequences that result, and a call to reevaluate how we understand the problem of racism that exists in child welfare systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Child welfare, state educational, and local educational agencies are mandated to collaborate by (1) the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 (FSA) and (2) the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 (ESSA). A focus of these collaborative partnerships is to promote the educational stability of children in foster care. This paper uses the theory of collaborative advantage to provide a framework for developing and maintaining educational stability collaborations mandated by FSA and ESSA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary aim of this paper is to introduce practitioners to the mental health needs of children and families who are under the care and supervision of the child welfare system because of substantiated child maltreatment. Emphasis is placed on children and families who are receiving foster care services. The paper draws attention to the most prevalent mental health conditions that affect foster care children and their families based on type of maltreatment. Given that young children under age 5 are more likely to be placed in out-of-home placements and to spend a significant portion of their lives in foster care, their unique mental health needs are highlighted. Treatment approaches that are informed by both practice wisdom and evidence-based practice--such as ego-supportive intervention and trauma-focused, cognitive-behavioral therapy--are stressed. A case study is presented as a way of illustrating how mental health care may be delivered to families affected by the child welfare system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attention to the need for a trauma-informed systems approach to child well-being has grown in the past decade. Technology has the potential to improve how child welfare agencies implement trauma-informed systems reform. As new technological innovations emerge to support and sustain the implementation of trauma informed practices, broad dissemination is imperative (Breyette, 2014). This paper describes the rationale for and details of technological solutions supporting and sustaining the implementation of trauma-informed interventions in three states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to describe the development and implementation of a longitudinal evaluation of a statewide intervention (Title IV-E Waiver Demonstration Program) in a statewide child welfare agency using multiple methods for data collection and analysis. This longitudinal evaluation design was developed using guidelines from the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) regarding outcomes, process and cost. The specific design and data collection procedures were developed over time by the evaluation team in collaboration with the state child welfare agency. Data were collected using electronic surveys with various samples, interviews with regional and executive managers, data downloaded from the state's Management Information System, and regional case evaluations. State child welfare agencies are constantly evaluated by the communities in which they are located. However, these evaluations are typically reactive without positive feedback. In our evaluation of the Title IV-E Waiver Demonstration Project, a trusting partnership developed between the state child welfare agency and our university-based evaluation team, which resulted in more efficient use of data by the child welfare agency and in research by the evaluation team on key issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses a three-phased service model assessed using Family Group Decision Making (FGDM) conferences with informal kinship caregivers and their families. Gain scores were compared between Phase 2 (case management only) and Phase 3 families (case management with conference). Phase 3 families had higher gain scores than the Phase 2 families on measures of parenting stress, social support, family needs and child well-being, but the differences were not statistically significant. Phase 3 families had superior consumer feedback scores. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will assert that quality assurance requires a new definition that is grounded in the philosophical values of anti-oppressive practices and the voices of children and families. Quality assurance practices need toe be connected to agency philosophy and mission/vision/values. We will introduce a concept of "Principled" Quality Assurance (PQA), and suggest that at least three critical factors be included when examining outcomes in order to ascertain that QA strategies are resulting in improved outcomes for children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Associated with extensive negative outcomes for children, parental substance use disorders are a major concern within the child welfare system. Obtaining actual prevalence rate data has been difficult, however, and there are no recent published reports on this issue. Using a systematic search, this paper examines: (1) Prevalence estimates of parental substance use disorders in the child welfare population; (2) the types of child welfare involvement for reported prevalence estimates; and (3) how prevalence information is being collected. Prevalence rates were found to have a wide range, from 3.9% to 79%, with regional prevalence estimates being higher than national estimates. Prevalence rates of parental substance use disorders varied by type of child welfare involvement of the family and method of data collection. This study points out the need for improvements in prevalence estimates in the United States and national data collection procedures to ensure that child welfare and substance abuse treatment systems are adequately responding to children and families with substance use disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is growing acknowledgement that housing can provide more than shelter, a basic need. Housing can also act as a foundation, helping families stay together. The provision of housing as a prevention or protective strategy against child maltreatment has not been widely used by child welfare agencies. A small subset of child welfare agencies across the country, however, is incorporating housing into their response to cases of child abuse and neglect. Using qualitative data from ongoing studies of HUD's Family Unification Program (FUP) and the Children's Bureau supportive housing demonstration for high-need child welfare involved families, we describe some of the promising practices agencies are implementing and testing. Though evaluations of these programs are not yet complete, there is a lot the field can learn from these approaches. This paper provides an overview of seven promising strategies: (1) partnering with public housing agencies and leveraging resources; (2) assessing the housing needs of child welfare involved families; (3) triaging and providing housing resources based on needs; (4) providing housing first, not last; (5) developing housing stability plans and shared case plans; (6) screening families into housing, rather than screening out; and (7) providing housing search assistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes Connecticut's Supportive Housing for Families (SHF) program, which is one of five national sites comprising a federallyfunded demonstration of housing and child welfare. Evaluations of supportive housing (SH) interventions are complicated by contextual factors that make it difficult to isolate their effects. These and other challenges complicate efforts to conduct rigorous research and establish external validity, and to date, few studies examine the impact of SH interventions for childwelfare involved families. We describe retrospectively the development of SHF using six stages of implementation articulated within an implementation science framework, noting both the core components of the program and its expansion from a small pilot exploration, to a statewide initiative, and now to the center of a systems change effort with potential to influence national policy and implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research suggests that youth aging out of foster care may be at higher risk of experiencing homelessness than other youth. Among this already at-risk population there may be certain characteristics that further exacerbate the risk. This paper uses data collected from various local and state agencies to further examine significant predictors of homelessness among youth who have aged out of foster care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Qualitative data-mining (QDM), using the narrative data contained in child welfare case records, enables researchers to examine child welfare practice using relatively non-intrusive methods. QDM can increase our understanding of client populations and problems, child welfare worker actions, and case complexity. This paper reports on experiences from the Child Welfare Qualitative Data- Mining Project; outlines a seven-step guide to QDM methods; and describes how QDM can be used to enhance child welfare practice, research, and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses findings from an examination of court records in three U.S. dependency courts. They reveal that parents with disabilities are overrepresented and that the characteristics of both their families and their cases have a variety of implications for the field. The findings are particularly significant in that they are a preview of what may be found if formal requests for mandatory parental disability screenings are met. The call for screenings is largely the result of a newly minted federal policy position on the application of the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act within these systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United States Child Protective Services (CPS) system has received criticism from politicians, media, and the general public for a perceived propensity to make decisions that are detrimental to children and families. In this paper, we propose a management approach that, if implemented, could dramatically reform the way CPS conducts its daily operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior research suggests that homelessness is a significant problem among young people aging out of foster care. However, these studies have not attempted to identify potential risk or protective factors that might affect the likelihood of becoming homeless during the transition to adulthood. This paper uses data from a longitudinal study to examine both the occurrence and predictors of homelessness among a sample of young people from three Midwestern states who recently aged out of foster care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In July 2006, the American Humane Association and the Loyola University Chicago School of Social Work facilitated a roundtable to address the emerging issue of immigration and its intersection with child welfare systems. More than 70 participants from 10 states and Mexico joined the roundtable, representing the fields of higher education, child welfare, international immigration, legal practice, and others. This roundtable created a transnational opportunity to discuss the emerging impact of migration on child welfare services in the United States and formed the basis of a continued multidisciplinary collaboration designed to inform and impact policy and practice at the local, state, and national levels. This paper presents the results of the roundtable discussion and summarizes the emerging issues that participants identified as requiring attention by child welfare systems to facilitate positive outcomes of child safety, permanency, and well-being. Suggestions for further research and implications for policy and practice are also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Child welfare systems throughout the United States are being closely scrutinized as sensational cases appear in the media in nearly every state. At the federal level, with the Child and Family Service Review process, the government is documenting that states across the country are not conforming to federal child welfare requirements (DHHS, 2007) put in place to ensure the safety and wellbeing of children. One of the most crucial underlying causes of these inadequacies is a workforce that lacks the manpower for the tasks it confronts. To meet performance standards for the seven major Adoption and Safe Family Act child welfare safety outcomes, child protection agencies must stop the outward flow of staff from the workplace. This paper presents a study examining correlates related to retention. It was found supervisors and co-workers play a crucial role in the retention of workers. Strategies are presented aimed at assisting states in ways to slow the turnover rate of workers in child welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses how social work students can increase their use of collaboration in child and family settings in the U.S. The paper focuses on a teaching strategy adopted from training materials on family reunification. Every year, there is a reunification of a significant number of children in the country, placed in family foster care, group homes, or residential treatment centers, with their families. Collaboration among child care professionals and members of their families can result in a decline in the tension among child care providers.

The article presents information related to a new department of the September 1995 issue of the journal called International Perspectives. The periodical "Child Welfare" has always published useful papers regardless of country of origin. Initiative and leadership in international child welfare cohesiveness of the Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) led to an international movement and even to an international journal decades ago. The proceedings of the international conference of CWLA held in Washington, D.C. in 1988 were published in the March/April 1989 issue. The "International Initiative" of CWLA was launched with the creation of an International Child Welfare Advisory Committee, chaired by Stephen A. Joffe.

Questions whether parents are allowing economic demands to dictate the development of children by demanding a level of maturity from them that they are physically, emotionally, and intellectually incapable of delivering. The changing economic and cultural context of families suggests a shift from child-oriented toward adult-oriented lifestyles for children in their everyday experiences. (Author/BB)

Despite repeated calls for evidence-based practice to address the co-occurring needs of families referred to the child welfare system for parental substance use disorders and child neglect, limited attention has been given to the rigorous evaluation of such interventions. This paper describes the initial testing of an intervention developed to meet the complex needs of such families. The Families Actively Improving Relationships (FAIR) program and preliminary outcomes are described. The need for integrated interventions is highlighted.

Child Protective Services Agencies (CPSAs) share many characteristics with other organizations operating in high-risk, high-profile industries. Over the past 50 years, industries as diverse as aviation, nuclear power, and healthcare have applied principles from safety science to improve practice. The current paper describes the rationale, characteristics, and challenges of applying concepts from the safety culture literature to CPSAs. Preliminary efforts to apply key principles aimed at improving child safety and well-being in two states are also presented.

Fatal child maltreatment is a compelling problem in the United States. National estimates of fatal child maltreatment, based largely on child welfare data, have fluctuated around 1,500 deaths annually for the past ten years. However, the limitations of child welfare and other mortality data to accurately enumerate fatal child maltreatment are well documented. As a result of these limitations, the true magnitude of fatal child maltreatment remains unknown. Public health surveillance has been proposed as a mechanism to improve estimation of fatal child maltreatment, as well as to collect and analyze relevant risk factor data for the ultimate goal of developing prevention strategies. This paper describes public health surveillance efforts undertaken to improve estimation of fatal child maltreatment, and presents the unique challenges of identifying fatal child neglect. The strengths and limitations of existing sources of child maltreatment fatality data are reviewed and broad recommendations for strategies to advance public health surveillance of fatal child maltreatment are presented.

Child maltreatment prevention is traditionally conceptualized as a social services and criminal justice issue. Although these responses are critical and important, alone they are insufficient to prevent the problem. A public health approach is essential to realizing the prevention of child abuse and neglect. This paper discusses the public health model and social-ecology framework as ways to understand and address child maltreatment prevention and discusses the critical role health departments can have in preventing abuse and neglect. Information from an environmental scan of state public health departments is provided to increase understanding of the context in which state public health departments operate. Finally, an example from North Carolina provides a practical look at one state's effort to create a cross-sector system of prevention that promotes safe, stable, and nurturing relationships and environments for children and families.

This paper presents process and outcome results from 24 federally-funded grants designed to reconnect family members with children in or at risk of entering foster care. Authors used local evaluation designs, data collection, analyses, and grantee reporting, along with site visits and interviews, to implement a cross-site evaluation. Target populations; service models; parent, child, and family-level outcomes; and organizational and system-level outcomes are summarized. Limitations of the evaluation and recommendations to the field are discussed.

Because of the complexity and depth of problems facing children and families today, child protection can be best accomplished through a community effort--not simply through the efforts of the traditional child welfare system and other child- and family-serving agencies. Community-based initiatives supporting families and individuals are promising mechanisms through which to efficiently reach a wide range of community members consistent with a public health model. This conceptual paper describes the principles of community-based approaches for the prevention of child maltreatment and briefly describes four initiatives that are providing comprehensive, community-based prevention.

This study describes predictors of secondary traumatic stress and burnout in a national sample of helping professionals, with a specific focus on the unique responses of child welfare (CW) workers. Specific worker and exposure characteristics are examined as possible predictors of these forms of occupational distress in a sample of 669 professionals from across the country who responded to mailed (e-mail and post) invitations to participate in an online survey. E-mail and home mailing addresses were secured from licensure boards and professional membership organizations in six states from across the country that had high rates of child related deaths in 2009. Respondents completed the Professional Quality of Life IV (Stamm, 2005) to ascertain compassion fatigue (CF) and burnout symptoms. Being male, young, Hispanic, holding rural residence, and endorsing a lack of religious participation were significant predictors of secondary traumatic stress. Similarly, being male and young predicted high burnout rates, while actively participating in religious services predicted lower burnout. CW worker job status as a professional was significantly more likely to predict CF and burnout compared to all other types of behavioral healthcare professionals. Based on the findings from this study, this paper proposes strategies for enhancing self-care for CW workers, and describes the essential elements of a trauma-informed CW agency that addresses secondary traumatic stress and burnout.

The goal of this paper is to synthesize available data to help guide policy and programmatic initiatives for families with substance abuse problems who are involved with the child welfare system, and identify gaps in the research base preventing further refinement of practices in this area. To date, Family Treatment Drug Court and newly developed home-based substance abuse treatment interventions appear the most effective at improving substance abuse treatment initiation and completion in child welfare populations. Research is needed to compare the efficacy of these two approaches, and examine cost and child well-being indicators in addition to substance abuse treatment and child welfare outcomes.

This paper, the second in a series of two guideline papers emerging from the 2007 Best Practices for Mental Health in Child Welfare Consensus Conference, provides an overview of the key issues related to parent support and youth empowerment in child welfare and presents consensus guidelines in these important areas. The paper also discusses some of the implications these guidelines have for the child welfare field.

The Best Practices for Mental Health in Child Welfare Consensus Conference focused on developing guidelines in five key areas (screening and assessment, psychosocial interventions, psychopharmacologic treatment, parent engagement, and youth empowerment) related to children's mental health. This paper provides an overview of issues related to the first three areas, presents the guidelines developed in these areas, and discusses the implications these guidelines have for the field of child welfare.

Despite the recognized importance of mental health concerns among youth in the child welfare population, data suggest a significant gap between children who need services and children who receive services. This paper aims to address this problem by focusing on the ways in which the system identifies--or fails to identify--children as needing mental health services. The paper reviews current guidelines, policies, and practices for mental health screening and assessment of youth in child welfare including available evidence-based screening instruments that have been evaluated in child welfare or other settings. It is concluded that the use of evidence-based screening and assessment instruments will improve the identification of children needing mental health services and offer the opportunity to provide appropriate care to children who are currently being overlooked.

This paper reviews the research on youth empowerment in seven child welfare programmatic areas. A lack of studies specifically focused on the empowerment of youth in foster care was found. Conceptual perspectives and existing data, however, suggest that the empowerment of youth in and transitioning out of care is essential and should be overtly facilitated through policy and program development.

Calls for expanded use of tested child mental health interventions in child welfare practice add new urgency to the longstanding question of how to enhance parent engagement in child welfare services, where low and uneven levels of engagement are pervasive, and services to parents and children tend to be separated, leaving important opportunities for parent-child interventions underutilized. Tackling these issues requires both expanded understandings of what engagement entails and the incorporation into child welfare practice of systematic, research-based strategies for supporting parental involvement. Drawing on a review of factors that shape (and often confound) efforts to engage parents in child welfare, and on relevant research, this paper lays the initial foundation for such an approach by identifying and describing six core dimensions of engagement and related intervention strategies.

Meeting the needs of families involved with the child welfare system because of a substance abuse issue remains a challenge for child welfare practitioners. In order to improve services to these families, there has been an increasing focus on improving collaboration between child welfare, treatment providers, and the court systems. This paper presents the results from qualitative interviews with 104 representatives of these three systems that explore how the collaborative process works to benefit families, as well as the barriers and supports for building successful collaborations. Results indicate that collaboration has at least three major functions: building shared value systems, improving communication, and providing a "team" of support. Each of these leads to different kinds of benefits for families as well as providers and has different implications for building successful collaborative interventions. Despite these putative benefits, providers within each system, however, continue to struggle to build effective collaborations, and they face such issues as deeply ingrained mistrust and continued lack of understanding of other systems' values, goals, and perspectives. Challenges that remain for successful collaborations are discussed.

The Multiethnic Placement Act of 1994 and the Interethnic Adoption Provisions of 1996 (MEPA-IEP) require states to develop plans that "provide for the diligent recruitment of potential foster and adoptive families that reflect the ethnic and racial diversity of children in the state for whom foster and adoptive homes are needed." This paper explores the background of MEPA-IEP, describes the disparate outcomes for minority children in the child welfare system, and identifies agency challenges in finding permanent families for African American children. Tools are provided for successfully recruiting families while following MEPA-IEP and avoiding potentially discriminatory practices in placement decisionmaking.

Homeless adolescents are at extremely high risk for acquiring HIV infection, as the literature reviewed in this paper documents. Sexual and drug use behaviors that put these adolescents at risk are described, and new models of service for these youths are outlined.

Despite increasing evidence that even a young child can be a competent witness in a court of law, there is one factor that is often used to impeach the credibility of a child in a sexual abuse case, and that is the nature and timing of the child's disclosure of the sexual victimization. This paper examines the impact of developmental variables on that disclosure and suggests that when those variables are recognized, the credibility of the young child as a witness increases.

This paper reports on the first segment of a longitudinal study of the effects of transracial and transcultural transplantation into American families.