Casey Foundation Research Articles

The Standards to License Kinship Foster Parents Around the United States: Using Research Findings to Effect Change

The challenges and strengths of all kinship caregivers, whether licensed foster parents, unlicensed, or outside the system entirely, are similar; financial supports and services are essential to assist most kinship caregivers in their efforts to raise children. Despite similarities, financial assistance, services, and oversight are significantly different depending on whether a relative is licensed. Without licensure, kinship families cannot access an important pathway to permanence for children in their care and the accompanying financial assistance available under the federal Guardianship Assistance Program (GAP) in 33 participating jurisdictions. In part to address these inequities, the Annie E. Casey Foundation spearheaded a multipartner effort to look at family foster care licensing around the country. Generations United's National Center on Grandfamilies and the American Bar Association's Center on Children and the Law conducted comprehensive legal research into foster care licensing standards for all 50 states and the District of Columbia. They found problematic and varying licensing standards that cause significant barriers for kinship caregivers. This article summarizes those research findings, along with guiding principles, which are being used to create model licensing standards to remove unnecessary barriers and facilitate the licensure of appropriate kinship and non-kinship foster parents.

Achieving the Anchor Promise: Improving Outcomes for Children, Families and Communities ~ A Resource Review

Achieving the Anchor Promise offers insight into ways anchor community institutions such as hospitals or universities can measure the impact or key areas where they can play an effective role in bettering the welfare of their communities. Funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, this research report highlights more than 75 in-depth interviews with individuals from a broad range of institutions including non-profit leaders, community activists, hospital and university administrators and federal officials. “Best Practices” as well as challenges are reviewed with the goal aimed at helping Anchor Institutions to move from programs to impact and ultimately to delivering benefits to low-income families and communities

Detroit Area Study on Financial Services: What? Why? How?

The following article is based on a talk give by Assistant Professor of Law Michael S. Barr to the University of Texas Law School-Harvard Law School Joint Conference on Commercial Law Realities in Austin, Texas, in April. Barr was selected by the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research, Survey Research Center to be the faculty investigator for the Detroit Area Study, which the University has conducted for more than 50 years. Barr is using the study to explore the financial services needs of low- and moderate-income households, building on his groundbreaking analysis in Banking the Poor. Barr raised a total of more than $800,000 from the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Fannie Mae Foundation, the Casey Foundation, and the Mott Foundation, as well as University sources, for the study. Barr is beginning field work this summer.

Assessing the Impact of the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI): Predictors of Secure Detention and Length of Stay Before and After JDAI

The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI) seeks to reduce the reliance on pre-dispositional detention. While anecdotal evidence indicates that the program has enjoyed some success in reducing detention populations, no controlled study has assessed the efficacy of the program. The current study investigated the impact of JDAI following its adoption in one Virginia juvenile court. Specifically, using data on all juveniles referred to intake over a seven-year period, the research analyzed predictors of detention and length of stay before and after JDAI. Results indicate that after the implementation of JDAI, greater emphasis was placed on legal factors including offense seriousness and prior record, though the increased emphasis was greater for non-whites than for white youth. Additionally, results suggest that after JDAI’s adoption, older non-white youth were more likely to receive secure detention while non-white females received some degree of leniency compared to non-white males.

A Matter of Leadership: Connecting a Grantmaker's Investments in Collaborative Leadership Development to Community Results

Keywords: Collaborative leadership, cross-sector collaboratives, networks, effective grantmakingWhy leadership? Leaders create forward movement through executing strategies for organizational and community change that results in sustained and positive outcomes. Collaborative leadership is especially important in cross-sector collaboratives; it is a specific type of leadership that promotes strategic relationship building, resource-sharing, honest and open dialogue, and a deeper understanding of the important social issues that collaboratives work to address. These skills are crucial when striving for significant results for communities that require collaborative efforts across agencies and sectors. Leadership can and must be developed to promote a focus on results, to create effective strategies to address major social challenges, and to align resources and actions that lead to the execution of strategies at a scope and scale high enough to make a difference.As cross-sector collaboratives become the rule rather than the exception in addressing social change, growing attention has been paid to the specific components that lead to collaborative success (e.g., Bryson, Crosby & Stone, 2006; Thomson & Perry, 2006). We build on recent discussions of collective impact' (Kania & Kramer, 2011) and argue that grantmakers can support self-sustaining and independent cross-sector collaboratives by building the leadership capacity of those individuals participating in collaboratives. A successful and pragmatic method to leadership development is to build the capacity of collaborative leaders while focusing them on their work. In this model of development, collaborative members are supported by neutral, but skillful, facilitators who work to develop participants' collaborative leadership skills and promote both public accountability for the group and individual accountability within the group. We also argue that although a skillful facilitator is critical, through strong collaborative leadership skills and improved accountability, it is the collaborative itself, rather than the facilitator, that influences positive community change. Using data collected from past participants of the Annie E. Casey Foundation's Leadership in Action Program (LAP), we test a model of collaborative success put forth in the Theory of Aligned Contributions (TOAC) (Pillsbury, 2008).This research makes significant contributions to the literature, as researchers have yet to demonstrate the direct impact of collaborative leadership skills on the success of the collaborative process and community-level change. Importantly, the findings presented here can be applied to grantmaking strategies, as we are testing a model that addresses the main challenges noted in the literature around collaboratives - namely, the issues related to accountability, relationshipbuilding, and performance.We first discuss the need for leadership development in collaborations, then discuss TOAC, which incorporates collaborative leadership development as a key component of collaborative success; and then describe how TOAC is implemented through LAP. We then summarize our research and findings and make specific recommendations based on those findings. We point to the most important aspects of collaborative implementation in relation to performance, and inform grantmakers on the most essential areas for investment. We provide examples from one LAP implemented in Marion County, Indiana, to illustrate how these components can be put into practice.Collaborative Leadership Development: A Necessary Ingredient for SuccessCollaboratives are created when two or more organizations join to share information and resources in an effort to create solutions to social problems that could not be achieved by organizations working independently (Bryson, Crosby, & Stone, 2006). Collaboratives are often very loosely structured, without formal leaders and with members typically volunteering to work across sectors and represent their organizations. …

Implementation Guide for Community Change: Tools from First 5 Marin

Implementation Guide for Community Change: Tools from First 5 MarinCommunity change initiatives (CCIs) are longterm, place-based efforts that offer comprehensive services to residents of poor communities. They seek transformational change by replacing piecemeal approaches to social problems with broader efforts designed to strengthen a community socially, educationally, economically, physically, and culturally.CCIs have been around for many years, at least since the 1980s, and have been funded by both the public and private sectors. Supporters have included federal, state, and city governments, as well as many private foundations like the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Annie E. Casey Foundation, and Ford Foundation. Some of these efforts have been deemed more successful than others, but a belief has persisted for more than three decades in the power of community-based systems change as a mechanism for transforming communities and their residents (Kubisch, Auspos, Brown, & Dewar, 2010).There is no such thing as a typical CCI. In fact, they do not even have a consistent label. Some are called comprehensive community initiatives, others place-based initiatives, and still others community development efforts. However, almost all have some things in common. For example, they feature long-term strategies that build on community assets and needs; incorporate local participation and leadership; aim for increased collaboration among social agencies; and seek change at multiple levels - individual, family, neighborhood, and systems. This means that even though community change initiatives have different structures, services, and funding, they share common implementation and evaluation challenges.The Implementation Guide for Community Change: Tools from First 5 Marin1 offers practical advice for those engaged in the day-to-day challenges of funding, implementing, or evaluating community change efforts in all of their diversity and complexity. It distills 13 years of useful structures and tools from First 5 Marin, a community change effort in California's Marin County that uses state dollars from a tobacco surtax to improve the health and well being of children ages birth to 5. While an earlier article in the Fall 2012 issue of The Foundation Review (Coffey, Farkouh, & Reisch, 2012) offered lessons learned from this effort in the context of the broader community change field, this resource is about the nuts and bolts of the community change process.The 67-page Implementation Guide, developed by First 5 Marin's long-term evaluation team at jdcPartnerships in collaboration with First 5 Marin's executive director, is organized to be easily accessible. While the reader would benefit from reading it cover to cover in order to get familiar with its range and depth, the guide can be referenced quickly as distinct implementation and evaluation needs or challenges arise during the community change process.The guide has six chapters. The first two briefly cover foundational elements and overarching lessons for a CCI - core elements, challenges, and pitfalls. As these issues have been covered in depth in other articles by the same authors, the remaining four chapters are the real meat of the guide, organized by the initiative's developmental stages - launch and start up, specializing and standardizing, integrating and disseminating, and finally renewing and regenerating.Chapters 3 through 6 begin with a brief context of what happened during each of First 5 Marin's developmental stages and why, and then quickly get practical. …

Vocational Training in Juvenile Detention: A Call for Action

Given high recidivism rates and the vulnerability of detained youth, the authors posit that juvenile detention centers may be most efficacious by serving as both place and process to create career opportunity through vocational training. The authors review the psychosocial factors contributing to delinquency and the primary theories of rehabilitation that extend to detained youth. They highlight key ingredients to effective vocational programming in juvenile detention, such as integration of traditional career theories with constructs pertinent to this population (emerging adulthood, sociopolitical development, social cognitive career theory). Considerations for successful implementation of vocational programs in juvenile detention are also offered.

Helping Government Agencies Become More Effective and Efficient: Discovering 'Catalytic Combinations' in Public Child Welfare Reform

· This article describes work of the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Casey Strategic Consulting Group (CSCG), a 10-year, multistate initiative that embeds outside experts – both public-system and traditional management consulting – in child and family services systems to improve system performance and outcomes.

Youth workers in college: A replicable model for professional development

Abstract Positive relationships with skilled frontline staff are critical to positive youth outcomes (Bouffard & Little, 2004), and yet many youth workers are insufficiently prepared to deal with these complex environments (Casey Foundation, 2003). There is also concern that there is little motivation for frontline youth workers to stay in a field rife with danger of burnout, feelings of being overwhelmed, and low pay (Anderson-Nathe, 2008; Borden, Craig, & Villaruel, 2004). This article establishes the important role higher education can play towards stabilizing the youth workforce, and posits that coursework that is multidisciplinary, relevant to students' jobs, and supported by employers is important to the success of college programs. The 12-credit Youth Studies Certificate (YSC) was offered by the City University of New York (CUNY) to 223 youth workers from 1999 to 2011. Coursework addresses the complex field of youth development by recasting traditional courses in education, human services, psychology, sociology, development, and recreation. Frontline workers combine their practical knowledge of the field with the theoretical framework of a college course. Additionally, the certificate is an opportunity to develop academically and in critical thinking, skills which enhance a worker's development and delivery of service in the practice setting. Public/private partnership is an important feature of this replicable model aimed to build the stability and capacity of the youth development field and the workers within it. Recommendations for replicability and future research are provided.

Getting to Results: A Tool and Lessons from the Annie E. Casey Foundation's K-12 Education Portfolio

Getting to Results: A Tool and Lessons from the Annie E. Casey Foundation's K-12 Education Portfolio

Resource Review: The Annie E. Casey Foundation 2010 KIDS COUNT Data Book: State Profiles of Child Well-Being

The 2010 KIDS COUNT Data Book: State Profiles of Child Well-Being is an excellent resource for youth development professionals. The Data Book, prepared by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, provides national as well as state-by-state information on the conditions of America’s children and families. Ten key indicators of child well-being are utilized for the state rankings. In addition, the book includes an Appendix highlighting 10 years of state-by-state rankings using key indicators of child well-being.

Peer Networking and Community Change: Improving Foundation Practice

· This article brings together the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s 15 years of experience with peer networking— examining through two research studies the process of peer networking and its impact, both with community-based and funder groups.

Finding Place in Community Change Initiatives: Using GIS to Uncover Resident Perceptions of their Neighborhoods

The growing recognition that place matters has led to numerous foundation- and government-sponsored initiatives that attempt to simultaneously strengthen neighborhoods and address the needs of families that live there. Despite the centrality of the concept of neighborhood, these place-based initiatives have few tools to understand how residents identify with the space within their target areas. This article demonstrates how resident-drawn maps gathered in a household survey can be used to uncover individual and collective neighborhood definitions. Using data gathered as part of the Annie E. Casey Foundation's Making Connections program in 10 cities, the study finds that there is considerable variation among residents in how they define their neighborhoods, but that there are also commonly held neighborhood identities that need to be taken into account in community practice. Funding for this analysis was provided by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Death and taxes: Child health and the state tax freedom race

Each year the Tax Foundation releases rankings of U.S. states on time to Tax Freedom, or the day that the average taxpayer has met their tax burden. The current analysis sought to contextualize the tax freedom day rankings, by examining the association between state tax burden and key indicators of child wellbeing. The 2009 measure of days to tax freedom by state was correlated with ten key indicators of child wellbeing from the Casey Foundation's KIDS COUNT 2009 data. Each of the wellbeing indicators and the overall composite wellbeing rankings were also regressed on days to Tax Freedom and Gross State Product. As the days to tax freedom decrease, indicating a lighter tax burden, all of the following increase significantly — the infant mortality rate, child and teen death rates, teen birth rate, rates of school dropout and disconnected youth, and numbers of children in poverty. These findings all held even after controlling for Gross State Product. Public attitudes and choices about paying taxes have important consequences for the health of children in our society. The broad appeal of Tax Freedom Day highlights a disconnect between the act of paying taxes and recognition of the benefits to children those taxes provide.

Strategic Communications for Influence: Lessons From the Annie E. Casey Foundation and Its KIDS COUNT Initiative

· This article describes how the Annie E. Casey Foundation is using the KIDS COUNT Network in a new way: as a strategic communications tool in its focused efforts toward policy change, broad social change, and improved conditions for vulnerable children and families. An outcome map illustrates links between this strategy and the intended outcomes.

The Status of States' Policies to Support Evidence-Based Practices in Children's Mental Health

This study examined the efforts of states' mental health authorities to promote the use of evidence-based practices through policy. Data were drawn from three components of a national study, including a survey of state children's mental health directors (N=53), which was developed using a three-step process that involved stakeholders. Data from the directors' survey revealed that over 90% of states are implementing strategies to support the use of evidence-based practices. The scope of these efforts varies, with 36% reporting statewide reach. Further, states' strategies for implementing evidence-based practices are often not accompanied by comparable efforts to enhance information systems, even though enhancing such systems can bolster opportunities for successful implementation. Variability in the adoption of evidence-based practices, poor attention to information systems, and inconsistent fiscal policies threaten states' efforts to improve the quality of children's mental health services.

Testing the Relationship of Formal Bonding, Informal Bonding, and Formal Bridging Social Capital on Key Outcomes for Families in Low-Income Neighborhoods

The development of social capital among families living in low income neighborhoods has become a popular poverty reduction and economic advancement strategy. However conceptual scholarship suggests the broad use of social capital has diminished its importance. Scholars have begun to identify the multiple and overlapping characteristics of social capital and the field now needs empirical studies to show how specific types of social capital are important for families living in low-income neighborhoods. This study tests the relationship between three types of social capital (informal bonding social capital, formal bonding social capital and formal bridging social capital) and important outcomes for families in these neighborhoods. Data for the study come from a national neighborhood survey conducted by the Annie E. Casey Foundation (N=6,031). Findings confirm a differentiated relationship between the three types of social capital and family outcomes. Study findings suggest that applying a broad understanding of social capital to interventions in low-income communities may be inadequate and instead interventions should match a "type" of social capital to the community's presenting issue(s).

CHILDREN IN IMMIGRANT FAMILIES: LOOKING TO AMERICA’S FUTURE

Children in immigrant families account for nearly one-in-four children in the U.S. They are the fastest growing population of children, and they are leading the nation’s racial and ethnic transformation. As a consequence, baby-boomers will depend heavily for economic support during retirement on race-ethnic minorities, many of whom grew up in immigrant families. Because the current circumstances and future prospects of children in immigrant families are important not only to these children themselves, but to all Americans, this report uses data from Census 2000 to portray the lives of children with immigrant parents and highlights policy and program initiatives that will foster the future success of these children. This report begins by discussing the diverse origins and destinations of children in immigrant families. It then highlights substantial evidence that children in immigrant families have deep roots in the U.S. refl ected in their own citizenship, as well as their parents’ citizenship and length of residence in this country, their own and their parents’ English fl uency, and their family commitment to homeownership. Based on a new alternative to the offi cial poverty measure, the report continues by discussing economic challenges confronted by many immigrant families. It also portrays additional immigrant strengths and challenges associated with family composition, parental education and employment, and access for children of immigrants to early education and the later years of schooling. Looking toward fostering a successful future for these children, the report identifi es promising policy and programmatic initiatives for language and literacy training, and for assuring access to education, health, and other essential services, and it identifi es immigrant-related questions that should be asked in all research studies involving children and families.

Parental and community level correlates of participation in out-of-school activities among children living in low income neighborhoods

Participation in organized activities outside of school can prevent poor outcomes in at-risk children and youth. In low income neighborhoods, though, there may be barriers to involving children and youth in these activities. This study examined the degree to which parental community involvement and neighborhood safety and disadvantage affected participation in out-of-school activities. Using data from probability samples drawn in 128 low income census tracts in 10 cities that were part of Annie E. Casey Foundation's Making Connections Initiative, hierarchical generalized linear models (HGLM) were estimated. Results show that children whose parents were involved in community volunteering and action were more likely to participate in out-of-school activities. Neighborhood safety ratings also had a positive effect on participation. Cross-level interactions showed that unsafe conditions were less of a barrier if parents volunteered in the community and that participation among African Americans and Hispanics was less inhibited by unsafe conditions than was participation for Whites and other ethnic groups. The implications are that out-of-school programs will have better attendance if they are part of a context in which adults involve themselves in the community and that programs should include provisions for keeping children safe in neighborhoods where safety is perceived as problematic.

Implementation fidelity of Team Decisionmaking

Prior to pursuing a full outcome evaluation, studies of implementation fidelity are often conducted to determine the extent to which practice-level implementation conforms to a program's specified conceptual framework and practice guidelines. This purpose of this study is to measure indicators of the implementation of Team Decisionmaking (TDM), an approach to making child welfare placement decisions sponsored by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, in which birth parents, relatives and community members play a central role in the decision-making process. Researchers review literature pertaining to implementation fidelity, especially in the field of child welfare, and outline the key components of TDM practice. Quantitative analyses of TDM implementation indicators across three sites reveal a large degree of consistency in adherence to practice guidelines, although key discrepancies point to the need for closer examinations of cross-site differences. Researchers conclude with implications for practice and research.