Co-occurring problems for substance abusing mothers in child welfare: Matching services to improve family reunification

Abstract

Substance abusing families often experience multiple problems simultaneously. Prior substance abuse research suggests that attention to these co-occurring problems is essential to achieving desirable outcomes. Yet no prior study attempts to determine whether tailoring services to meet clients' co-occurring problems improve key child welfare outcomes such as family reunification. This study addresses this gap by investigating the relationship between matching mothers' needs to service and family reunification for substance abusing families in public child welfare using the Illinois Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse (AODA) waiver demonstration project. The sample consists of a total of 354 substance abusing mothers and their 602 children enrolled in the Illinois AODA waiver demonstration. Hierarchical non-linear modeling is used to understand the role of both child level and family level characteristics. Matched services in mental health, housing, family counseling and substance abuse treatment significantly improved the likelihood of family reunification. The analyses also reveal that child welfare systems continue to struggle with low rates of service utilization and low rates of family reunification. Thus, it remains important for researchers, practitioners and policy makers to continue identifying the barriers to the provision of matched services, and to develop strategies for improving the provision of matched services.