Child Welfare Practice Research Articles

Exploring State Level Factors Associated with Short-Stays in Child Welfare: The Role of Systemic Risk and Surveillance.

Growing attention has been directed toward children who are placed in out-of-home care by child welfare authorities for less than 30 days, deemed "short-stayers". This exploratory study uses multiple national child welfare and population data sources to identify macro level factors associated with short-stays. Two-level logistic regression modeling was conducted to explore how state-level factors were associated with risk of short-stays. Factors associated with lower odds of short-stays included living in a state with a centralized child welfare reporting structure and with greater food insecurity. Factors associated with greater odds included living in a state with a higher percentage of the state's population enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and states with more police per capita. Multiple state level factors were associated short-stay risk, which suggests broader systemic factors contribute to these brief removals. Findings suggest greater surveillance by police and social services increases risk of short-stays, which likely have implications for child welfare policy and practice.

Information and communications technology use in rural child welfare work

AbstractThis study explores the impact of information and communications technology (ICT) use on rural child welfare practice using a technology‐in‐practice framework to derive the social structures that are instantiated by rural child welfare workers (CWWs) and to examine their agency as actors. ICT use was tracked, and interviews were conducted with rural CWWs who work with children and families to gain an understanding of and describe their day‐to‐day ICT use at the practice level. Findings demonstrate that CWWs enact social structures along four frames: bureaucratic structure, family centricity, ICT context and information–documentation culture. In terms of agency, CWWs not only are constrained by but also exert some influence on the social structures they enact through facilities (material resources), norms and interpretive schemes. These findings have implications for how ICT can be used to facilitate the CWW–client relationship and the need in rural areas for increased infrastructure to support CWWs.

Biblical narratives and the planned change process in social work: assessment tool integration of faith and learning

ABSTRACT Assessment is an integral part of social work intervention with clients; however, a lack of mastery in the use of assessment can negate the goal of the intervention. Therefore, it becomes imperative that social workers and students are skilled in implementing assessment tools with a holistic view of the client. This includes a religious and spiritually responsive facet since the profession is practice-based. This study examined Biblical narratives in the teaching and learning of the planned change process, focusing on assessment. Since there are many assessment tools utilized in the social work profession, the author uses the genogram and applies it to case studies from the Bible to understand family dynamics and their influence on individuals. A model was designed for teaching assessment with genogram adaptation while focusing on the relationship between spirituality and religion in child welfare practice. Spirituality is an asset in strength-based perspective and social work practice, including the role of spirituality in the biopsychosocial assessment of clients. Finally, it is recommended that biopsychosocial-spiritual assessment is an essential concept in the classroom to initiate a robust client-centered intervention.

IN HISTORY’S SHADOW: CHILD WELFARE DISCOURSES REGARDING INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES IN THE CANADIAN SOCIAL WORK JOURNAL

This article reviews all items in the Canadian Social Work journal over its almost 90-year history that relate to child welfare practice in an Indigenous context. We review the journal contents as a way of understanding the profession’s voice, noting that a journal’s discursive practice reflects disciplinary discourse and that this journal positioned itself as a platform for social work debates. Our analysis contributes also to the truth-telling and accountability of social workers. While around 10% of the 1500 journal articles focused on child welfare practice, only 9 of these 152 articles addressed child welfare practice with Indigenous children and families. Our discourse analysis highlights that there was contemporaneous silence regarding social work complicity in the residential schools movement, the Sixties Scoop, and the current Millennium Scoop. In the 1980s, sustained critique around the role of social work in perpetuating colonization began to emerge. The journal, though, left child protection discourse unexamined and thus overlooked its role in maintaining dominant Canadian child welfare practice. We suggest that White supremacy and settler colonial discourses support the dominance of the child protection discourse, and that part of decolonizing child welfare practice relates to revealing and resisting these discourses and generating alternative decolonized discourses.

Child welfare worker wellness: An ethical imperative in the service of children

AbstractChild welfare social workers are at high risk of burnout due to the demanding nature of their work (Bowman, 2020; Lizano & Mor Barak, 2012; Sprang et al., 2011; Schelbe, 2017). This condition can have drastic consequences for the psychosocial and emotional wellbeing of social workers and the vulnerable children and families they serve in child welfare organisations across the world. However, burnout and the associated risk of turnover and reduced self‐efficacy can be prevented through effective workplace support and intervention (Brode, 1990). This article provides an overview on the impact of burnout on child welfare workers' health, mental health and turnover as well as child and family outcomes, while underscoring the organisation's role in mitigating this issue. From an extensive literature review, the author proposes the following organisational child welfare wellness model: workplace wellness in child welfare organisations. Recommendations within this model focus on child welfare practices which provide support to workers including wellness (i.e. on‐site crisis and mental health support) and growth‐needs‐focused interventions (i.e. supervision, specialisation and promotion).

Black Kin Caregivers: Acceptability and Cultural Adaptation of the Family Check-Up/Everyday Parenting Program.

Black children join kinship care disproportionately and black kin caregivers often face financial, housing, mental health, and parenting challenges when caring for relative children. Few interventions have been developed specifically for kin caregivers, let alone Black kin caregivers. This study evaluated the initial acceptability of an evidence based parenting intervention and worked to culturally adapt it for Black kin caregivers. The intervention was delivered in a family camp format. Feedback from participant interviews were analyzed for this study. Participants felt that overall the intervention was culturally appropriate. However, they also proposed changes to the curriculum, as well as to the process and format of the intervention. This study experienced challenges in terms of participant recruitment and sample size, which was exacerbated by COVID-19-related safety concerns. Future steps regarding recruitment, content, and format are discussed. Implications for child welfare practice, policy, and research are also provided.

Family ties: A quasi-experimental approach to estimate the impact of kinship care on child well-being

The reliance on kinship care within the child welfare system is substantial and has been recently codified into new federal legislation, the Family First Prevention Services Act of 2018, as well as recent emphases that the Indian Child Welfare Act represents the “gold standard” for all child welfare practice and policy. This article uses longitudinal data from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-being (NSCAW) II to analyze the impact of kinship care on child well-being as compared to non-relative foster care. We use propensity score matching to mitigate the selection bias inherent in child placement decisions and find that children who exceed the clinical threshold for externalizing behaviors are less likely to be placed in kinship care than foster care. We find that once accounting for differences in child and caregiver characteristics among those in kinship care and foster care, the effect of kinship care on behavioral and emotional well-being is not significantly different than foster care, though are in the direction of favoring kinship care. These findings contribute to a more sophisticated understanding of the effect of kinship care on child well-being and overcome some key limitations of most prior research on this topic.

The center for regional and tribal child welfare studies: Students’ experiences of an Anishinaabe-centered social work education program

The dramatic over removal of Indigenous children in North American governmental child welfare systems remains one of the most important and neglected issues facing Tribal Nations, child welfare policymakers and practitioners today. This paper is the second in a series of three papers (Authors 2019, 2020) presenting an ethnographic study of the Center for Regional and Tribal Child Welfare Studies in the Department of Social Work, University of Minnesota – Duluth, a child welfare education program grounded in an Anishinaabe knowledge and worldview. This paper focuses on the experiences of 8 student alums and the transformation of their cultural and professional identities and impact on their social work practice through their involvement at the Center. Broadly, students described similar experiences in the transformation of their cultural identities, as Indigenous or white people, and professional identities as social workers as a result of : 1) the Center’s supportive environment that allowed them to let down their guards and learn emotionally painful child welfare history; 2) relationships established with Indigenous and non-Indigenous role models and tribal elders who provided meaningful mentorship; 3) Anishinaabe knowledge, culture, language and spirituality that decentered Eurocentrism in social work; and 4) exposure to accurate U.S. history and child welfare policy vis-à-vis Indigenous peoples. Indigenous students described unique experiences: strengthening of their Indigenous cultural identities, healing from historical trauma, and support in practicing decolonized, Anishinaabe-centered child welfare practice. White students described unique opportunities to address what it means to be “white” within a settler-colonial system, moving past shame when learning about U.S. history and child welfare policy, and addressing their own culturally based assumptions in their practice.

First Time Mothering After Child Welfare Involvement – The Ties That Bind: A Case Study

ABSTRACT This longitudinal single case-study analysis presents one woman’s (Opal’s) journey to resuming her place as a mother after over twenty years of child welfare involvement. Opal’s narrative account of her life with her large family in an urban center in the Northeast United States spans over fifty years. Her story illuminates moments of security, joy and happiness – emotions and experiences rarely documented as being connected to mothers like her. Her account illustrates the roadblocks and challenges that await Black mothers who are child welfare involved, and the ways in which they triumph over those barriers, and reclaim their place within their families. Opal’s narrative is organized into three phases, her: 1) Defining Years; 2) Activation and First-Time Mothering; and, 3) Generational Impact. Her ability to defy the master narrative regarding Black mothers provides a powerful contrast to the persistent violent tropes that undergird punitive child welfare policies and practices. Her story offers insights into dignified and effective ways of interacting with Black families in need of help.

Family Engagement in Child Welfare System-Level Change: A Review of Current Models

Family engagement is a critical component of child welfare practice. Studies report improved experiences and outcomes when families are involved in decision making. Robust engagement may also serve as a culturally responsive approach to improving outcomes for families. Although practice-level interventions have received attention in the literature, there is a dearth of research on program- and system-level family models. The present study contributes to the emerging literature by analyzing publicly available data to document U.S. state efforts to engage families. Findings describe the origin, membership, and activities of four macro-level practice models. Similarities and differences among states as well as implications for future research and practice are discussed.

Hope and resilience as protective factors linked to lower burnout among child welfare workers

Research has established that child welfare professionals regularly face workplace burnout, leading to both high turnover and reduction in service quality. Resilience has been identified as an important factor in coping with workplace burnout. However, a second construct, hope, has also been described as an important buffer to adversity and burnout. To better understand the relative role hope and resilience play in mitigating burnout among child welfare professionals, we conducted a study involving two independent samples of child welfare professionals in Oklahoma (N = 1,272). The two samples were analyzed with structural equation modeling. The model fit the data well (Χ2 = 85.11, p > .001; df = 32, RMSEA = 0.052 [90% CI: 0.039, 0.065]; CFI: 0.983; SRMR = 0.027). Moreover, both hope and resilience were found to be independent protective factors for burnout, but hope was a substantially larger predictor of lower burnout (β = −0.49; p < .001) compared to resilience (β = −0.21; p < .001). The findings suggest that attention to increasing hope in child welfare practice may be a viable intervention to reduce burnout and turnover for child welfare professionals.

What Counts as Evidence in Child Welfare Research?

In this commentary, we respond to Barth and colleagues and critique their premise that Western-based research with population-level administrative data is the best and only valid evidence on which to base child welfare policy and practice changes. We offer an alternative viewpoint on what forms of evidence should be brought to bear as we consider re-envisioning the child welfare system, highlighting the importance of lived experience and the need to consider the evidence regarding all marginalized racial and ethnic groups. We argue that evidence should represent the perspectives of those with lived experience and that collaborative child welfare research can strengthen the validity of analyses and interpretations. We hold that Barth et al. ask and answer the wrong questions. We press for deeper critical reflection, a more nuanced intersectional lens, and urgent action to address structural and institutional racism in the child welfare system.

Parenting by Victims of Domestic Violence: Child Welfare Practices in Domestic Violence Cases

Parenting by Victims of Domestic Violence: Child Welfare Practices in Domestic Violence Cases

Exploration of Twin Separation and Adult Experiences: A Qualitative Study

Many researchers have studied the long-term impact of nontwin sibling separation in foster care, but little is known about the separation of twins. In this study, we examined how one specific set of adult fraternal twin sisters interpreted their personal experiences of separation from each other while in foster care and whether this experience affected their interpersonal relationships. The researchers relied on the theoretical foundations of attachment theory to support the use of existing literature and to integrate the research findings into current child welfare practice for human services professionals. Through personal interviews, each twin was asked to recall experiences from foster care and comment on the effects of being separated from their twin. Thematic analysis of the interview data and observations of the interview process helped to identify four themes: forming successful attachments, mental health issues, trauma history, and number and type of placements experienced. Implications for human services professionals working in social services agencies with youth in foster care are also discussed.

Defining Child Exposure to Domestic Violence: Lessons from a Historical Review of the Literature

Child witnesses of domestic violence policies and practices have been fraught with conceptual challenges that limit their implementation. Such limitations are evident in the case of Minnesota, which amended their definition of child neglect to include a child’s exposure to family violence, only to later repeal this amendment in response to pressure from child welfare administrators and domestic violence advocates (Edleson, Gassman-Pines, &amp; Hill, 2006; Kantor &amp; Little, 2003). The conceptual flaws are also evident in disparities across state statutes for definitions of child witnesses of domestic violence and the legal penalties it carries (Child Welfare Information Gateway, 2021). To enhance the integrity of child witnesses of domestic violence policies and practices, critical attention is needed to clarify and refine the central construct. Pursuant to this goal, this conceptual paper analyzes and synthesizes the history of child welfare. It demonstrates how child witnesses of domestic violence became a social and legal problem. The author traces the evolution of child welfare as a concept and provides new insights. The author also sheds light on the driving forces of child welfare policies and practices. The paper begins in the colonial ages, which gave roots to the contemporary child welfare system. The author describes the early development of child welfare leading to contemporary practice. The paper ends by making evidence-based recommendations for constructing child welfare policies that enhance the safety of children exposed to domestic violence using least restrictive interventions.

Addressing the overrepresentation of Black children in Ontario's child welfare system: insights from child welfare workers and community service providers

BackgroundThe overrepresentation Black children experience in the child welfare system is well documented in the United States, but such studies are now emerging in Canada. In Ontario, there are few studies that address this issue concerning Black families. ObjectiveThis study is to explore the insights of child welfare workers and community service providers on how to potentially address Black children's overrepresentation in Ontario's child welfare system. Participants and settingTwenty-one child welfare workers from two child welfare organizations in Ontario that serves many Black families and thirteen community service providers in Toronto participated in the study. MethodsSix focus groups were conducted with thirty-four participants. Audio recording from each of the focus groups was manually transcribed verbatim. We utilized constant comparison analysis to analyse the transcribed data. ResultsPotential solutions to overrepresentation that emerged from the focus group discussions included viewing Black families as experts of their own lives; increasing workforce diversity; educating referral sources and Black families on child welfare practices; subjecting referral sources to detailed questioning; stopping harmful record keeping on families; providing cultural sensitivity training and education; partnering with community organizations; and providing mentorship opportunities. ConclusionsThe findings from this study emphasize the need for changes related to child welfare assessment tools, workforce development, and shifts in system orientation to address systemic racism and Black children's overrepresentation in the child welfare system.

An exploratory comparison of resilience profiles of Swiss older adult survivors of child welfare‐related maltreatment and controls

Child welfare practices in the last century have been linked to a high risk for child maltreatment and the subsequent development of mental ill‐health. However, not all affected individuals develop clinically relevant psychopathology, which can be considered as a form of resilience. Such resilience is insufficiently understood in survivors of an advanced age. Therefore, this exploratory study aimed to depict a resilience profile of Swiss older adult survivors of child welfare‐related maltreatment (n = 132; M age = 71 years) and to contrast it with age‐matched controls (n = 125). Approximately 30% of survivors did not meet the diagnostic criteria for any of the assessed current or lifetime DSM‐5 disorders. These survivors were older, experienced less physical abuse, and had higher trait resilience, self‐esteem, income, and satisfaction with their socio‐economic status. They had lower levels of neuroticism and some empathy characteristics. Group differences in the resilience profiles suggest that resilience‐related aspects may vary as a function of past adversity.

Reverse visitation between former foster parents and adopted children

ABSTRACT A crucial aspect of designing transitions from foster care to adoptive homes is whether to facilitate contact between the child and their former caregivers after the transition, a practice known as reverse visitation. There is almost no research available on the use of this practice and its correlates, despite it being widely recommended based on attachment theory. In this exploratory study, surveys were completed by adoptive parents, foster parents, or caseworkers on 205 children moving from a foster home to a separate adoptive home in a convenience sample in the State of Oregon. Children were in some form of contact with their former foster parents in 70% of the adoptions. They had in-person visits with their prior caregivers 49% of the time. Associations between these forms of posttransition contact and other variables highlighted characteristics of the foster and adoptive parents as influential. Implications for child welfare practice and research are discussed.

Nothing About Us Without Us: Using Participatory Action Research (PAR) and arts-based methods as empowerment and social justice tools in doing research with youth ‘aging out’ of care

Child welfare practices and policies are often disconnected from youth in care's perspectives and lived realities. Youth ‘aging out’ of care should be empowered to define their own needs, goals and success based on the unique context they are transitioning from. In research, this can be supported by engaging them as co-researchers through emancipatory approaches.Participatory Action Research (PAR) requires collaboration with those who are affected by the issue being studied in all aspects of the research, with the aim to build advocacy capacity and affect transformative social change. Photovoice employs photography and group dialogue - the fusion of images and words - as an empowerment tool, through which individuals can work together to represent their own lived experiences rather than have their stories told and interpreted by others. This is a particularly powerful approach in engaging youth with care experience, as they are often systemically disenfranchised, isolated and in need of connections to the community.This article presents the Relationships Matter for Youth ‘Aging Out’ of Care project, a Participatory Action Research (PAR) photovoice research project with young people with lived experience, as a case study. The project aimed to take a closer look at the relationships that matter to youth from care and how they can be nurtured over time. Narratives about the experience of participating in the project are also featured, from the perspectives of three of the youth co-researchers. Some of the benefits, challenges and lessons learned are also explored, framed within the Relationships Matter project methodology and process. Recommendations for future social work research are also presented.

Book Review: Rural child welfare practice: Stories from “the field”

Book Review: Rural child welfare practice: Stories from “the field”