Helping Low-Income Mothers Overcome Multiple Barriers to Self-Sufficiency: Strategies and Implications for Human Services Professionals

Kinship caregiving as a paradigm in the United States (US) is historically linked to slavery subcultural practices. Over time, dominant US systems have vacillated in demonstrating formal acknowledgement of kinship as an acceptable family unit and in availing resources to support kinship caregiving. The patterns and practices of these variations pertaining to kinship caregiving as a paradigm has received little attention despite documentation of its increased utilization in public child welfare and welfare systems. This exploratory case study responds to the paucity of knowledge regarding the systemic shifts towards the kinship caregiving paradigm and the perspectives of kinship caregivers who interface with public child welfare and welfare systems during their relative caring episodes. Critical theory is used to explore the impact of privilege and oppression as relates to the variations of the paradigm over time within these systems, as well as to the kinship families’ interactions with the child welfare and welfare systems. Kinship caregivers’ recommendations for child welfare and welfare systems’ improvements are also included in this study. Information gained from this study may assist policy makers, trainers, educators, and practitioners involved in child welfare and welfare agencies enhance these systems towards policies and practices that are culturally responsive and improve services to sustain kinship families.

The relationship between poverty and child maltreatment has long been addressed in the literature. Disproportionally, children, especially those of color, are more likely to live in poverty than adults. It has been established that the risk of child maltreatment increases the longer impoverishment is experienced. Thus, the likelihood that racial disproportionality may have negative impact upon the child welfare system is potentially increased. Much attention has been given to the overrepresentation of certain children of color within the child welfare system when cared to their representation within the general population. This study explores the intersection of poverty and race upon child maltreatment through the lens of economically disadvantaged families of various racial backgrounds. Implementing a phenomenological approach, focus groups were conducted with economically disadvantaged families sharing their first-hand experiences of parenting with limited means and their views on the intersection of poverty, race, and child maltreatment. The findings point to three primary areas: (1) The strain of managing life with inadequate financial means results in significant strain on poor families; (2) In spite of the ongoing challenges, poor parents exert great efforts to care for their children; and (3) Adding to their challenges, poor families face additional stressors when having to engage with either the public welfare or child welfare systems. Results further indicate six underlying issues adding to the stressors of living in poverty: (1) Challenges of single parenting; (2) Impact of race and racism on poor families of color; (3) Impact of limited funding and other resources within the community; (4) Living with mental health and disabilities; (5) A constant fear of child welfare intervention; and (6) Biased and inconsistent practices within the public welfare and child welfare systems. Finally findings suggest a negative impact to racial disproportionality when child welfare fails to properly understand how to best serve poor families of color.

The pilot study measures compassion fatigue experienced by social workers in the United States and Chile who work in public child welfare and juvenile justice systems. While public child welfare systems differ in legislative and organizational structures in these two countries, the study uncovers what types of compassion fatigue participants experienced and what they saw as supports and organizational practices that increase or decrease levels of compassion fatigue. Qualtrics survey tools were used to deliver an online survey to potential participants in both countries with two instruments: the Professional Quality of Life Scale V version and the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale. The survey also asked open-ended questions for participants to identify supports received from their work sites that address compassion fatigue and challenges in their work environments. Workers in both countries have similar challenges and needs related to addressing compassion fatigue and hazards. The overall compassion fatigue reported by participants in both countries was relatively high and not directly linked to the perceived level of organizational supports in their work settings. One area of difference is that participants in the U.S. experienced significantly more compassion satisfaction than did the participants from Chile. There also was a significant difference in the responses from participants in Chile related to experiencing more secondary traumatic stress than U.S. participants. This study is the first step in working to determine best practices when addressing compassion fatigue and the hazards of working in high demand public child-serving systems. Further research is necessary to further study compassion fatigue among social workers in child welfare systems in both countries.

Differential factors influencing public and voluntary child welfare workers' intention to leave

ABSTRACTGiven the prevalence of trauma and traumatic stress reactions among child welfare system-involved children, families, caregivers, professionals, and other stakeholders, it is critical that child welfare professionals integrate an understanding of trauma into their own practice and link families with trauma-informed treatment and services, which are essential elements of a trauma-informed child welfare systems. This introductory article provides an overview of the trauma-informed paradigm shift occurring in public child welfare and discusses the importance of moving from a trauma-informed framework to a trauma-responsive organizational culture in order to create and sustain trauma-resilient organizations and communities. In this special issue, readers will discover articles that include research findings relevant for multiple stakeholders engaging in trauma-informed care. Contributions provide insight that is relevant for understanding and engaging in trauma-informed practice across three levels within the socio-ecological model: individual (children and families), organizational (agency leaders and workforce), and community (university-state partnerships).

1. Immigrant Children and Families and Child Welfare Alan Dettlaff 2. Culturally Competent Practice in Public Child Welfare Rowena Fong 3. Promoting Family Integrity: The Child Citizen Protection Act and its Implications for Public Child Welfare Sunny Harris Rome 4. Learning How to Dance with the Public Child Welfare System: Mexican Parents' Efforts to Exercise Their Voice Cecilia Ayon, Eugene Aisenberg, and Pauline Erera 5. A Review of Family-Based Mental Health Treatments That May Be Suitable for Children in Immigrant Families Involved in the Child Welfare System Kya Fawley-King 6. Child Welfare and Immigration in New Mexico: Challenges, Achievements, and the Future Megan Finno and Maryellen Bearzi 7. Using Simulation Training to Improve Culturally Responsive Child Welfare Practice Robin Leake, Kathleen Holt, Cathryn Potter, and Debora M. Ortega 8. Translating Knowledge for Child Welfare Practice Cross-Nationally Julie Cooper Altman, GemJoy Barrett, Jenise Brown, Luvella Clark-Idusogie, Yaminah McClendon, Tanya Ruiz, Chenelle Skepple, and Latarsha Thomas 9. An Empirically Based Field-Education Model: Preparing Students for Culturally Competent Practice with New Immigrants Alma J. Carten and Jeanne Bertrand Finch

Building and sustaining effective child welfare practice requires an infrastructure of social work professionals trained to use data to identify target populations, connect interventions to outcomes, adapt practice to varying contexts and dynamic populations, and assess their own effectiveness. Increasingly, public agencies are implementing models of self-assessment in which administrative data are used to guide and continuously evaluate the implementation of programs and policies. The research curriculum described in the article was developed to provide Title IV-E and other students interested in public child welfare systems with hands-on opportunities to become experienced and “statistically literate” users of aggregated public child welfare data from California's administrative child welfare system, attending to the often missing link between data/research and practice improvement.

A common assumption in public social service organizations is that workload may be positively associated with caseload. However, few empirical studies have examined what specific characteristics of caseload affect caseworkers' workloads in the child welfare system. This study attempts to address this gap by identifying specific individual and regional factors that influence both subjective and objective dimensions of workloads. Survey data were collected from 1,244 caseworkers at one public child welfare agency in a Midwestern state in the United States. The data indicated that both perceptions of unmanageable workloads and self‐reported overtime work were significantly higher when caseworkers had a greater number of cases than the state caseload standard for the investigations units and worked with at least two different types of cases simultaneously (e.g., working with both investigation and ongoing service cases). Additionally, sufficient staffing numbers to meet caseload demands at the regional level significantly decreased the odds ratio of having to do overtime work. The major findings suggest that the objective and subjective dimensions of workload vary by individual‐ and regional‐level variables. Practice implications are discussed for effective and efficient workload management in the public child welfare system.

In criticizing my proposals to restructure public child welfare system (Pelton, 1991), Barth (1993) likened care and discipline of children by parents to helping and policing of families and parents by state. He did so while disputing a claim I never made--that it is not possible to be an authority and helper at once. What I do argue is that results of combining helping and policing roles within context of public child welfare agency have been unsatisfactory, and we should examine how each role might be hindering successful execution of other. During past three decades, increasingly wider spheres of child welfare problems, many of which are related to poverty, have been characterized as child abuse and neglect. These terms are accusatory and, when used as a lens through which to view multiply caused problems, promote an overfixation on parental fault and blindness to varied help that is needed. This orientation led to reporting laws and public awareness campaigns that encourage reports based on vague definitions of child abuse and neglect, thereby swamping child welfare agencies with complaints and rapidly reducing role of child welfare workers to investigators of wrongdoing by mostly impoverished parents. Budgets were spent on investigation and increasingly on foster care, with little money left over for relevant preventive services. These continuing trends are reflected in increase in national foster care population to an estimated 447,000 children by end of fiscal year 1992 (Tatara, 1992), a figure rapidly approaching a record for this century. More depressingly, no evidence exists that children are better protected. However, remedy for child welfare system is not only to narrow laws, although that is necessary. Although I have just spoken of unfortunate developments of past few decades, nostalgia for more distant past is not warranted. From beginning of this century children have frequently been placed into foster care, and agencies have always spent far greater proportions of their budgets on placement than on prevention. It is not for naught that impoverished immigrant parents, fearing public agencies' predecessors (the societies for prevention of cruelty to children), yet having nowhere else to turn for help, viewed such agencies as the Cruelty and as child-snatchers. Such agencies, both public and private, have always had a dual role, and investigative, policing, coercive, and child-removing role has always greatly diminished helping role. This failed paternalistic strategy toward impoverished families experiencing child welfare difficulties should be ended. My proposals call for transformation of current public child welfare agencies into family preservation agencies by divesting them of their investigative, child removal, and foster care roles. I proposed that police functions, such as investigation of possible law violation, be shifted to police. Child welfare workers would no longer serve as society's police. In addition, I proposed that foster care system be made independent of new family preservation agency. This system, whose function is to protect children who cannot be protected in their own homes, should be placed under family court system and be operated by social workers specially trained as foster care workers who would also advise court on all decisions concerning entry into and exit from foster care. All family preservation, preventive, and supportive services would be offered and delivered by new family preservation agency, whether it be to biological, foster, or adoptive families or to children living with relatives. Let us build a new system based on a more positive philosophy. In fact, social work has philosophy, but structure of current child welfare system is incompatible with it. Much of professional child welfare community favors empowering families, focusing on strengths rather than deficits, and providing supports. …

According to SAMHSA (2014), 1 of the 10 domains of a trauma-informed approach to child welfare relates to universal screening; however, costs of installation and implementation models are often unclear. This paper provides administrators of human service organizations with a fiscal example of the estimated cost of implementing screening with children in the custody of a public child welfare system. Findings show that the cost of installation and start-up are estimated at 208 USD per child while ongoing implementation/sustainability costs are 130 USD per child when implementation is universal to all children in custody. Discussion includes implications for practice and future research.Practice Points There are challenges and successful practices associated with developing trauma-informed child welfare systems (Akin et al., 2018), and public child welfare administrators benefit when they can understand potential costs of implementing new trauma-informed practices, such as screening. Understanding cost analysis is important for leaders across multiple levels of non-profit and human service organizations in order to make informed choices about policies and practices that balance input, output, and outcomes. Human service leadership teams should consider utilizing justice-enhanced cost findings to prioritize and select policies and practices that incorporate fiscal data with intervention data to address individual and structural challenges that maintain disadvantage, inequity, and marginalization. Investing in a trauma/mental health screening tool with their child welfare population is a minimal cost…substantially less than the cost of out-of-home care.

Trying to bridge the worlds of home visitation and child welfare: Lessons learned from a formative evaluation

ABSTRACTThis paper examines, from the perspective of parents and child welfare workers, how cultural values and expectations are integrated and negotiated in public child welfare cases. The study focuses on the experiences and interactions of Mexican families with the public child welfare system in Southern California. Grounded theory is used to complete the content analysis. Findings indicate that workers' efforts to provide culturally congruent services are limited by organizational structural factors. Consistent with the value ofpersonalismo, parents stress the importance of a good relationship with their worker and the implications to their case. Specific recommendations to enhance service delivery include (1) developing services models that are informed by families served; (2) developing/providing ongoing training and evaluation to ascertain if services are in fact culturally competent; and (3) promoting a change in child welfare policy that reflects the diverse needs of families.

Today, the wealthiest country in the world, the United States, has more children living in poverty than any other industrialized nation. Furthermore, the United States, which pioneered strategies to prevent child abuse and which now spends more money fighting child abuse than all other industrialized countries, has the highest rate of child abuse. What should we do to change these discouraging facts? Should we blame the parents? Should we blame those working in the child welfare field? Do we have a collective responsibility to safeguard the futures of these children? If so, what form should this collective responsibility take? In this unique contribution to the study of the child welfare system in North America, Duncan Lindsey provides a critical but heartfelt look into the current situation for children. He closely examines the current ‘residual’ system of child welfare in which the system functions as a last resort to handle only the worst and most dramatic cases. Given the current avalanche of child abuse and neglect reports, the public child welfare system has been transformed into a child protection system limited to investigating child abuse reports and occasionally removing children from their families and placing them in foster care. While the system has seen periods of progress, it is no longer able to cope with the overwhelming destitution of poor and impoverished children. Today, the child welfare system confronts the challenge to act collectively to develop opportunities for the millions of children whose welfare and future are being currently neglected. The system must be restored to its original mandate of broadly ensuring children’s economic security and opportunities. Lindsey examines the examines the successes and failures of the current child welfare system, and proposes new approaches to achieve comprehensive reform of the public child welfare system to allow for greater achievements for children. If taken seriously, Lindsey’s suggestions for the future could virtually end poverty among children, breaking the cycle of abuse and neglect.

The unintended consequence of the Indian Child Welfare Act: American Indian trust in public child welfare

Supporting battered women and their children: Perspectives of battered mothers and child welfare professionals