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When used appropriately, congregate care placements can provide children in foster care with the structure and treatment services they need. However, children are often placed in congregate care when their needs can be met in family settings, a practice that contradicts the child welfare mandate to place children in the least restrictive environment possible. In 2000, a class action lawsuit filed against the State of Tennessee highlighted that the state routinely placed children in congregate care settings contrary to their best interests. Since then, the state''s Department of Children''s Services (DCS) has been extremely successful in reducing its use of congregate care. This paper presents major findings from a qualitative research study that explored how DCS accomplished this critical system change. Fifty-one Tennessee child welfare stakeholders were interviewed using an open ended protocol. DCS administrative data, performance monitoring data, and official policy documents were also analyzed to provide context for the interviewees'' comments. Analysis of interview transcripts revealed three main change agents that helped set the stage for deinstitutionalization, as well as three types of systemwide reforms that were undertaken to ensure a successful reduction in congregate care use. Implications for jurisdictions embarking on similar reforms are discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Today, child welfare agencies widely endorse a family-centered approach to foster care casework. This approach centers on a collaborative parent—caseworker relationship as a mechanism for maintaining parents' engagement in services and presumes that continued engagement will propel parents toward reunification. However, despite the importance of engaging parents, parents of children in foster care are understudied. The existing literature offers little insight into parents' experiences of the foster care process, and even less in terms of quantitative analysis of parent engagement. The present study addresses this research gap by testing a new measure of parent engagement. The 46 parents of children in foster care in the study sample were mostly female, either black or Hispanic, and at the time of study had an average open case length of 30 months. The piloted measure showed good reliability. Results suggest that parent engagement is significantly negatively related to distance from the parent's home to the child welfare agency and length of time the parent spent working with his or her longest running caseworker. Implications for further measure development and directions for future research on parents of children in foster care are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large body of child protection literature focuses on termination of parental rights, family reunification, and children's re-entry into care as outcomes for children in foster care. Studies have investigated child, placement, family, and parent variables as predictors of case outcome. However, one important group of variables remains largely unstudied: factors related to parents’ service experience. Parents’ service experience includes parents’ perceptions of and involvement in the various services in which they must participate in order to recover their children from foster care (e.g. mandated treatment programmes such as substance abuse rehabilitation, parenting skills classes, etc.). The parental perspective on the foster care process is a critical element in the life of a child protection case, and its influence on case outcome must be explored. A brief review of the current literature on case outcome predictors is provided and parents’ service experience is highlighted as an area in need of investigation. Suggestions for the measurement of parents’ service experience are also offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we make an argument for the importance of policy education for marriage and family students as a way of promoting critical thinking and engagement in science translation or advocacy. Several relevant active pedagogical approaches to teaching about law/policy are reviewed. We then describe the objectives and assignments from a class on Child Welfare, Law, and Social Policy, including written policy briefs and amicus curiae (friend of the court) legal briefs, and subsequent oral presentations. Student feedback is presented from eight classes with undergraduates and graduate students over a five-year period. We end with some conclusions about the approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent concerns regarding permanence for foster children have inspired child welfare agencies to re-focus more of their efforts on biological parents as permanent resources for children in care. The social work field has responded to this situation with family-focused training for frontline staff; one such curriculum is the Family Development Credential (FDC). Tools exist for evaluating FDC trainees' retention of material and ability to integrate FDC concepts into practice. However, the transformative nature of the program (i.e., the way in which FDC training is associated with participants' family-focused attitudes towards clients) has not previously been measured. FDC-trained and non-FDC-trained child protection workers (N = 251) in one state completed a vignette study that tapped their attitudes toward the parents of children involved in child protective services. No difference in family-focused attitudes emerged between the two groups. Implications for practice and suggestions for further research are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]