Digital Commons Network^™

Bio Family 2.0: Can The American Child Welfare System Finally Find Permanency For 'Legal Orphans' With A Statute To Reinstate Parental Rights?, Meredith L. Schalick

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The American child welfare system terminates parental rights for thousands of children each year even though adoptive families have not yet been identified for the children. Every year, there are more than 100,000 of these “legal orphans” waiting for new families. Given the lower rates of adoptions for children of color and older children, and the poor outcomes for most youth who age out of the foster care system, the American child welfare system must start to think differently about permanency options for children. This Article proposes a model statutory provision to reinstate parental rights under certain circumstances to give …

Parental Substance Abuse And Child Welfare Outcomes: A Study Of Biological Mothers And Their Children In Out-Of-Home Placement In Allegheny County, Courtney Lewis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study uses logistic regression to examine whether parental substance abuse makes biological mothers more or less likely to have their children returned home if the children have been removed by the Office of Children, Youth and Families (CYF). CYF handles the executive branch child welfare responsibilities for Allegheny County, which includes the city of Pittsburgh, PA. The sample in this study included children who had been removed from the home for the first time in 2012, and was split by age, creating two models. Parental drug abuse was found to make the child less likely to reunify in both …

Self-Efficacy In Newly-Hired Child Welfare Workers, Donna Cherry, Bruce Dalton, Angela Dugan

ETSU Faculty Works

Child abuse and neglect in the United States resulted in 676,569 reports in 2011 (U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, 2012). Workers in this field struggle with low pay, high caseloads, inadequate training and supervision, and risk of violence, all of which contribute to worker burnout and poor worker retention rates. Worker self- efficacy is predictive of worker retention, job performance, and persistence in this difficult field. This paper reports the development of a new measure of self-efficacy from a sample of 395 child welfare workers. Factor analysis revealed two domains of self- efficacy, direct practice and indirect practice, …

Agenda And Reports, Finance Committee Meeting, Juvenile Welfare Board, October 24, 2013, Juvenile Welfare Board Of Pinellas County

Juvenile Welfare Board Agendas, Minutes, and Historical Audits

Agenda for the October 24, 2013, meeting of the Finance Committee of the Juvenile Welfare Board. Also included are previous meetings' minutes and documents to review before the meeting.

Minutes, Juvenile Welfare Board, October 10, 2013, Brian Aungst

Juvenile Welfare Board Agendas, Minutes, and Historical Audits

Minutes from the October 10, 2013, meeting of the Juvenile Welfare Board. Attached as supplemental files are an agenda, previous meetings' minutes, and documents to review before the meeting.

Exploring The Benefits Of A Parent Partner Mentoring Program In Child Welfare, Robin Leake, Laricia Longworth-Reed, Natalie Williams, Cathryn Potter

Journal of Family Strengths

Parent partner mentoring programs are an innovative strategy for child welfare agencies to engage families in case planning and service delivery. These programs recruit and train parents who have been involved in the system and have successfully resolved identified child abuse or neglect issues to work with families with current open cases in the child welfare system. Parent partner mentors can provide social and emotional support, advocacy, and practical advice for navigating this challenging system. Insofar as parent partners share similar experiences, and cultural and socioeconomic characteristics of families, they may be more successful in engaging families and building trusting …

The Children’S Bureau’S Role In Promoting Parent Engagement And Family Support: A Brief History And Current Efforts, Melissa Brodowski, Liliana Hernandez, Angelique Brown, Christine Lamble

Journal of Family Strengths

Over the years, federal child welfare policy has supported parent engagement and family support strategies through various Children’s Bureau funded state formula grant programs, research and demonstration discretionary grants, and technical assistance. This article highlights programs funded by two federal laws, Promoting Safe and Stable Families and the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, and Children’s Bureau’s efforts to test innovations and disseminate knowledge about promising and evidence-based practices regarding parent engagement and family support. The article begins with a brief legislative history and then describes several grant programs that are supported by the legislation. The article concludes with lessons …

Professional Social Workers In The Child Welfare Workforce: Findings From Nasw, Tracy R. Whitaker

Journal of Family Strengths

The U.S. Children’s Bureau has historically recognized the significance of the child welfare workforce in improving the lives of children, youth and families, as well as the important role of social work within that workforce. Although the public may perceive the child welfare workforce as being predominantly comprised of social workers; in fact, fewer than half of child welfare workers have a social work degree. This discrepancy has been attributed to professional shortages, workplace conditions, caseload size and complexity, and low salaries. However, studies initiated by the National Association of Social Workers have found that the profession continues to successfully …

Agenda And Reports, Juvenile Welfare Board, May 10, 2012, Juvenile Welfare Board Of Pinellas County

Juvenile Welfare Board Agendas, Minutes, and Historical Audits

Agenda for the May 10, 2012, meeting of the Juvenile Welfare Board. Attached as supplemental files are previous meeting minutes and documents to review before the meeting.

"Indifferent [Towards] Indifference:" Post-Deshaney Accountability For Social Services Agencies When A Child Is Injured Or Killed Under Their Protective Watch, Carolina D. Watts

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Effect Of Risk Assessment On Racial Disproportionality In The Child Welfare System, Joseph Martin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Minority children are involved in the child welfare system at rates disproportionate to their numbers in the overall population. Prior research argues that risk assessments conducted by child welfare agencies may be racially biased, and thus contribute to disproportionality. This study seeks to explore the effect of different risk assessment models on racial disproportionality. This is done by examining the relationship between race/ethnicity and various child welfare outcomes in three states that utilize the consensus-based model and three states that utilize the actuarial model of risk assessment. Results were similar for both groups of states, suggesting that one model is …

The Connection Between Permanency And Education In Child Welfare Policy, Kele Stewart

Articles

No abstract provided.

Child Welfare Cases Involving Mental Illness: Reflections On The Role And Responsibilities Of The Lawyer-Guardian Ad Litem, Frank E. Vandervort

Articles

Child welfare cases involving mental illness suffered either by a child or his parent can be among the most difficult and perplexing that a child’s lawyerguardian ad litem (L-GAL) will handle. They may present daunting problems of accessing necessary and appropriate services as well as questions about whether and when such mental health problems can be resolved or how best to manage them. They also require the L-GAL to carefully consider crucially important questions—rarely with all the information one would like to have and too often with information that comes late in the case, is fragmented or glaringly incomplete. This …

Building Resilience In Foster Children: The Role Of The Child's Advocate, Frank E. Vandervort, James Henry, Mark A. Sloane

Articles

This Article provides an introduction to, and brief overview of trauma, its impact upon foster children, and steps children's advocates" can take to lessen or ameliorate the impact of trauma upon their clients. This Article begins in Part 11 by defining relevant terms. Part III addresses the prevalence of trauma among children entering the child welfare system. Part IV considers the neurodevelopmental (i.e., the developing brain) impact of trauma on children and will explore how that trauma may manifest emotionally and behaviorally. With this foundation in place, Part V discusses the need for a comprehensive trauma assessment including a thorough …

Child Welfare Workers’ Perceptions Of The Influence Of The Organizational Environment On Permanency Decisions For Families, Belinda Smith, Rhonda Wells-Wilbon

Journal of Family Strengths

The findings of this study suggest that while child welfare workers are consistently distracted by competing priorities from unexpected events, most are committed, and to understand perspectives is more inclusive and may improve retention rates. Notably, while it is recognized that permanency decisions are not made in an intellectual, legal or clinical vacuum and certain traditional aspects of the bureaucratic structure do not impact decision making, this study advances the body of knowledge on child welfare decision making. Examined in this study are child welfare case workers’ perceptions of the extent to which the organizational environment influences the permanency decisions …

Agenda And Reports, Juvenile Welfare Board, November 10, 2011, Juvenile Welfare Board Of Pinellas County

Juvenile Welfare Board Agendas, Minutes, and Historical Audits

Agenda for the November 10, 2011, meeting of the Juvenile Welfare Board. Attached as supplemental files include past meeting minutes and attachments to review before the meeting.

Minutes, Finance Committee Meeting, Juvenile Welfare Board, May 23, 2011, Penny Delacqueseaux

Juvenile Welfare Board Agendas, Minutes, and Historical Audits

Minutes from the May 23, 2011, meeting of the Finance Committee of the Juvenile Welfare Board. Attached as supplemental files are previous meeting minutes and documents to review during the meeting.

Reunification Outcomes For Hispanics In The Child Welfare System, Lucia Aguirre Coronel

Theses Digitization Project

The purpose of this study was to identify any contributing factors to the overrepresentation of Hispanic children in the child welfare system. This study used an exploratory design and quantitavie methods to examine reunification oucomes of 100 case files in a county in Southern California.

Family Preservation In Families’ Ecological Systems: Factors That Predict Out-Of-Home Placement And Maltreatment For Service Recipients In Richmond City, Jody Hearn

Theses and Dissertations

Family preservation services are intended to prevent the out-of-home placement (into foster care or some other alternative arrangement) of children and youth in families at risk of maltreating them. An Ecological Systems perspective of these families might suggest that a family’s context (represented by the variables of poverty, agency services, family history, and individual/caretaker characteristics) must be considered as an over-arching influence in families’ risk and outcomes. The purpose of this cross-sectional secondary data analysis study was to identify layered factors that distinguish family preservation cases in Richmond, VA that experience removal or subsequent abuse or neglect from those that …

A Study Of Abuse Recovery Programs: Perceptions Of Mothers In Recovery, Michelle Larkan

Social Work Theses

There is a strong correlation between parental substance abuse and child maltreatment, and many substance abusing parents do not or are not able to access treatment recovery programs. The literature indicates that 8.3 million children are living with a substance abusing parent in the United States, and of these parents 2.4 million do not receive substance abuse treatment and recovery programs (Carlson, 2006, p.97). As a result, many of these children are removed from their homes due to child maltreatment. This research study examined what mothers in recovery (with children in state custody) in a Northern Rhode Island social service …

Family Group Conferencing Practice, Angela Rodgers, Katharine Cahn

Child Welfare

Oregon has long been known as a site for innovative family engagement practice. Multiple forms of family meetings have been implemented in Oregon over the years and many child welfare offices use some form of intensive efforts to find family for children in care. Beginning in the Fall 2012 and over the next three years, Oregon implemented a federally funded (Children's Bureau) demonstration project, Family Connections Oregon, to test a model intervention, to develop a supportive infrastructure for sustaining family connections practice, and to establish a family voice association at the policy level. These practices are continuing in Oregon through …

Rescuing Children And Punishing Poor Families: Housing Related Decisions, Corey Shdaimah

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Child welfare policy is not self implementing; an understanding of child welfare policy must therefore include the decision making practices by those whom Michael Lipsky (1980) has called "streetlevel bureaucrats." This article reports data from a qualitative study exploring perceptions of child welfare professionals about housing-related child welfare decisions. Interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of 18 child welfare lawyers, judges, and masters level social workers from a large city in the mid-Atlantic U.S. All agreed that there is insufficient affordable adequate housing. They held conflicting views, however, on: 1) the standard for adequate housing in the absence of …

Collateral Children: Consequence And Illegality At The Intersection Of Foster Care And Child Support, Daniel L. Hatcher

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article is the third in a series addressing the conflict between state revenue maximization strategies and the missions of state agencies serving low-income children. The Article examines the policy of foster care cost recovery through child support enforcement. When children are removed from poor families and placed in foster care, federal law requires child welfare agencies to initiate child support obligations against the parents. Resulting payments do not benefit the children but are converted into a government funding stream to reimburse the costs of foster care. This cost recovery effort often subordinates the child welfare system’s primary goals of …

Agenda And Reports, Juvenile Welfare Board, June 11, 2009, Juvenile Welfare Board Of Pinellas County

Juvenile Welfare Board Agendas, Minutes, and Historical Audits

Agenda for the June 11, 2009, meeting of the Juvenile Welfare Board. Attached as supplemental files are previous meeting minutes and reports to review before the meeting.

Disparate Juvenile Court Outcomes For Disabled Delinquent Youth: A Social Work Call To Action, Christopher A. Mallett

Social Work Faculty Publications

Current service delivery for at-risk youth is through four separate systems: special education; mental health and substance abuse; juvenile justice; and child welfare. Many youth (and their families) are involved with more than one of these systems, making early disability identification and subsequent systems coordination paramount in leading to more successful juvenile court outcomes. This coordination is an important and prioritized public policy concern because a majority of youth (disproportionately minority) within juvenile justice populations has been identified with mental health disorders, special education disabilities, or maltreatment histories. This study of a unique sample of probation-supervised delinquent youths ( n …

Minutes, Juvenile Welfare Board, April 9, 2009, Martha Lenderman

Juvenile Welfare Board Agendas, Minutes, and Historical Audits

Minutes from the April 9, 2009, meeting of the Juvenile Welfare Board. Attached as supplemental files are previous meeting minutes and reports to review before the meeting.

2009 Nevada Nonprofit’S Children Summit: Child Welfare, Juvenile Justice, And Youth Homelessness, The Nevada Institute For Children’S Research And Policy

Nevada Institute for Children's Research and Policy Reports

On April 14, 2009, approximately 175 individuals from public and private nonprofit agencies across Nevada came together with representatives from national organizations and federal agencies to attend the Nevada Nonprofit’s Children Summit hosted by Senator Harry Reid and co-sponsored by the Nevada Institute for Children’s Research and Policy and the Children’s Advocacy Alliance. Participants gained insight into federal initiatives and discussed practice and policy priorities in the areas of child welfare, juvenile justice and youth homelessness. This briefing presents the recommendations for federal policy proposed by the participants, both state and national, to improve programs and practices in Nevada around …

Raising The Cut-Off: The Empirical Case For Extending Adoption And Guardianship Subsidies From Age 18 To 21, Josh Gupta-Kagan

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Judicial Oversight Over The Interstate Placement Of Foster Children: The Missing Element In Current Efforts To Reform The Interstate Compact On The Placement Of Children, Vivek Sankaran

Articles

This article argues that current efforts to reform the Compact are flawed because they lack an essential element: judicial oversight of agency decision-making. The first section explores the important role that juvenile court judges play in making placement decisions for foster children. Next, an examination of the current problems in the interstate placement process demonstrates the vital need for judicial oversight of the system. Finally, a specific proposal is put forth on how best to incorporate judicial oversight without interfering with the sovereignty of states.

An Analysis Of The Current United States And State Of Washington's Mental Health Policies Serving Children And Families, Maile M. Bay

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Due to continued fragmentation and gaps in mental health services and the increase in the prevalence of mental health problems for children, youth, and their families, these populations remain underserved. In 2003, the federal New Freedom Commission (Commission) responded by publishing policies to address these concerns. As directed in 2005, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) funded planning incentive grants to states to transform their delivery of care.

The study reviewed the federal policy, specifically the recommendations of the Commission’s Subcommittee on Children and Families, and Washington State’s policy and implementation actions of its five-year SAMHSA incentive …