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What is the ideological direction of the judges appointed by President Donald Trump during his first four years in office? To answer this question we analyzed 395 U.S. district court decisions handed down by 87 judges appointed to the federal trial court bench by President Trump. These decisions were studied along with over 117,000 opinions by over 2,400 judges published in the Federal Supplement from 1932 through 2020. We find that judges appointed by Trump are significantly more conservative than judges appointed by other Republican presidents in recent decades. In particular, the Trump judges are much more conservative in the areas of civil liberties/rights and labor/economic regulation than judges appointed by any previous Republican or Democrat dating back to JFK.

While there are many studies that examine the adverse effects of behavior problems among children in out-of-home care, evidence to understand the cumulative evidence of factors that may change such behavioral paths is limited. Research indicates that children in out-of-home care tend to have higher levels of internalizing and externalizing symptoms, conduct disorders, depression levels, and suicidal behavior compared to children in the general population. To effectively mitigate the risk of behavioral maladjustment, it is important to determine variables that may change behavioral paths, and lead to better outcomes. To address this evidence gap, this study presents a narrative systematic review to examine the quantitative evidence on factors associated with behavioral development of children in out-of-home care. Findings from a total of 146 studies were extracted to investigate what the longitudinal trajectories of behavior problems for children in out-of-home care look like and what variables are associated with particular developmental paths. Results indicated that various individual and ecological variables significantly influence the level of problem behavior that developed over time. Evidence gaps, implications and recommendations for researchers, policy makers and practitioners are presented.

Multidimensional treatment foster care (MTFC) is a specialist foster care programme specifically designed for children and young people who display emotional or behavioural difficulties. Developed in the US at the Oregon Social Learning Centre the programme has since been introduced in a number of countries around the world. The focus of this paper is on the implementation of the adolescent programme in England (MTFCE-A) and the development of a research methodology to estimate the child welfare unit costs of the programme. A ‘bottom up’ approach to estimating unit costs is introduced and the costs of the MTFCE-A programme are compared to other placement types. The paper compares the costs of MTFCE-A placements with placements prior to and following MTFCE-A for a small sample of children and young people. The findings show a reduction in costs during the time spent in MTFCE-A placements. Comparisons are also drawn with the costs of alternative placements identified for the children and young people had they not been placed with MTFCE-A carers.