In-home Child Welfare Services

Abstract

In-home services represent a wide range of approaches to supporting and strengthening families that child welfare agencies implement to achieve the important outcomes of child and family well-being, safety, and permanency. In-home services are an essential component of the child welfare service system, but often receive less explicit attention in child welfare practice and research than other system components such as foster care, adoption, and child protective investigation. In-home services have been known by different terms over time, from services to children in their own homes, home-based, family-based, or family-centered services, family preservation, or others. Child welfare service systems differ considerably across states and localities, and in-home services probably demonstrate the highest degree of variability in target population, design, and implementation. New federal legislation, the Family First Prevention Services Act (2018), has renewed interest in in-home services. Family First creates mechanisms for states to access federal Title IV-E funds, the primary funding stream for foster care, to use for preventive services, but it also requires that these services demonstrate a sufficiently high level of research evidence of their effectiveness. With increasing emphasis on evidence-based practice, the field is challenged to implement programs and practices that demonstrate efficacy as well as practicality within the budgetary and bureaucratic constraints of public child welfare systems. This bibliography reflects a changing landscape for in-home services. The focus is on specific program models, and the extant evidence base of these models. Most are used with families who are receiving in-home services because the child welfare agency opened a service case due to an allegation of child maltreatment with the goal of preventing repeat maltreatment or the child’s removal from home. Some jurisdictions also use in-home services, including some of the specific program models described in this bibliography, prior to a report of child maltreatment, during the assessment or investigative process, or as part of an aftercare program to facilitate family reunification following a placement. Some attention is also given to in-home child welfare services provided when a child’s behavior, rather than the parent’s, poses a risk for removal. Included in this review are differential response systems, which numerous states have implemented to provide in-home services earlier and without formally opening a child welfare case; however, home visiting and family support programs of a more primary prevention nature are excluded from this review.