The use of Looking After Children in child protection

The vast majority of children who enter the child protection process are supported at home. While the Looking After Children approach can be used as a basis for assessing child care outcomes everywhere, we need to clarify what aspects of the materials are useful in assessing outcomes for children not looked after or whose separations are short.     

Auditing the implementation of Looking After Children

An audit showed that all authorities in the first implementation cohort had introduced the LAC materials. Standards of completion varied and were greater for children admitted post-implementation than for those already looked after.     

Computerisation of the Looking After Children records: issues of implementation

Implementation of computerised versions of the Looking After Children materials raises wider questions concerning the difficulty of establishing common goals between information technology specialists and social work managers, the need to develop computer systems which are seen to benefit all parties involved and the importance of synchronising information requirements at national and local levels.     

Implementing Looking After Children in Australia

Five of the Australian States and Territories are involved in projects using the Looking After Children materials. Few changes have been required for cultural reasons: initial fears of increasing workloads have been outweighed by positive responses from practitioners, carers and young people.     

Looking After Children: implications for social work education

Pilot schemes demonstrated a wide range of areas in which the Looking After Children materials might be used in social work training, both as part of the academic and the practice curriculum.     

Implementing Looking After Children in an English local authority

Successful training strategies in all authorities implementing Looking After Children cover the following issues: implementation at all levels of the organisation; introducing the materials as a creative work tool; and uses of the data in research and planning.     

Kinship care of the abused child: the New Zealand experience.

The concept of continuity--keeping children within their own kinship, community, and cultural networks--has found international favor in contemporary child welfare practice. This principle is reflected in the 1989 New Zealand Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act. The Act represents a significant shift--from the state to the family--in responsibility for children in need of care. The increasing use of the Family Group Conference process allows families to make decisions about the future of kin children and reflects the belief that, although most abuse is intrafamilial, the family will also be the most committed to keeping the child safe. Other countries have adapted this model to suit their own cultural child welfare needs. The international trend toward formal use of kinship care for children who have suffered abuse or neglect is likely to continue as foster care resources shrink. Drawing on qualitative research, this article describes the experiences of caregivers and their kin children who have been the subject of a care and protection order.     

Reflections on the assessment of outcomes in child care

Measuring the outcomes of social work interventions with children raises complex issues. The instability of intermediate outcomes emphasises the need to undertake regular and carefully timed assessments. Differences in approach and perspective can obscure relationships between evaluations of organisational performance and assessments of outcome for individual children; user perspectives introduce another point of view. Assessing outcomes of family support services raises questions of accountability. Aggregate information about children looked after, collected through the Looking After Children project, should help to establish the chances of certain outcomes being realised, although the influence of some factors may not be easy to explain.     

Connecting child care quality to child outcomes: drawing policy lessons from nonexperimental data

Effective early childhood intervention and child care policies should be based on an understanding of the effects of child care quality and type on child well-being. This article describes methods for securing unbiased estimates of these effects from nonexperimental data. It focuses on longitudinal studies like the one developed by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development's Early Child Care Research Network. This article first describes bias problems that arise in analyses of nonexperimental data and then explains strategies for controlling for biases arising from parental selection of child care. Next, it comments on attrition in longitudinal studies and outlines some strategies for addressing possible attrition bias. Finally, it discusses the need to translate "effect sizes" derived from these studies into the kinds of cost and benefit information needed by policy makers.     

Needs-led child and youth care: Main characteristics and evidence on outcomes

Needs-led child and youth care has three main characteristics: a continuous focus on clients' needs, client participation in the care process (including decision making), and practitioners' displays of needs-led attitudes and skills. The primary aim of this review was to establish whether there is evidence for using a needs-led approach when working with children and families in need. We performed a literature search to find reviews and outcome studies of child and youth care for school-aged children and their families which included the core characteristics of needs-led care, and related them to outcome measures. Only a few studies attributed positive outcomes of care to the attention given to clients' needs and goals. Most studies referred to participation in terms of clients' involvement or engagement. Higher levels of participation were associated with positive changes in child behaviors and parenting stress, client satisfaction, higher completion rates, safety for children, feelings of well-being and empowerment, and better service coordination. Significant professional attitudes and skills included listening to clients and working in active partnership with them. There is some proof for the relevance of core characteristics of needs-led child and youth care, although that evidence is limited by the lack of rigorous studies. This study indicates that needs-led child and youth care can make a difference. Future research should pay attention to the intertwinement of the characteristics of the needs-led approach in care.     

What do child characteristics contribute to outcomes from care: A PRISMA review

This article presents the findings from a systematic review of the literature regarding factors related to positive placement outcomes. Children in care are particularly vulnerable to problems with their emotional and behavioural development. It is important to know which factors affect whether children will have a positive placement outcome or not. Previous research has aimed to examine this, and has found that certain child characteristics can affect placement outcome. Reviews have not reported their search strategy in line with PRISMA guidelines, nor have they always reported the source of the data. This review was particularly interested in which studies had contact with the children or carers themselves, as opposed to a reliance on administrative data. There appear to be child characteristics that affect placement outcome, but findings need to be interpreted with caution due to a high volume of results from administrative data. Future research should aim to conduct full assessments with children when they come into care.     

Mental health outcomes among child welfare investigated children: In-home versus out-of-home care

BackgroundChild welfare has increasingly focused on alternatives to out-of-home (OOH) placement. In-home services, such as parent training, have increased and more maltreated children remain in-home. Yet, little is known about the effect on mental health of maintaining vulnerable children in-home vs placement in stable OOH care.ObjectiveTo evaluate and compare difference in mental health among children investigated by child welfare and who remained in-home vs. those who were placed in stable OOH care.Design/methodsWe examined a cohort of children (aged 1.5–18 years) from a nationally representative sample of children investigated by child welfare using the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being II (NSCAW II). We compared changes in mental health functioning over 18 months for children who remained in-home with parent training versus those placed in stable OOH care.ResultsAmong the 749 children in our sample, baseline characteristics of children who remained in-home with parent training and those placed in stable OOH care were similar. Among school-aged children placed in stable OOH care, mental health problems decreased from 26% to 13% (p = .003). This differed significantly from school-aged children who remained in home, for whom mental health problems increased (50% decrease stable OOH care vs. 23% increase in home; p = .007). Among pre-school aged children, mental health problems increased in both settings, particularly stable out-of-home care (p = .008).ConclusionsFor school aged children with a history of maltreatment, mental health outcomes improve following stable OOH placement, yet worsen when remaining in-home with parents. Pediatricians should be watchful for mental health problems among children who remain home after maltreatment and should advocate for high-quality stable OOH care when it is necessary. Child welfare may need to monitor the outcomes of children remaining at home more closely and provide more intensive preventive and treatment services to families.     

Looking Back: The Experiences of Four Midwest Families After Receiving Foreclosure Counseling Services

The Great Recession produced significant job loss, which precipitated housing instability and the need for foreclosure prevention services for some households. To help meet the needs of struggling homeowners, housing counseling agencies provided education and assistance to offer support. However, after services ended and housing outcomes were identified, families returned to their daily life. Little is known about the experiences and needs of households during and after receiving housing counseling services. This qualitative, in-depth, phenomenological assessment gives voice to the experience of housing instability for families 3 years after initially receiving services from an agency in one economically challenged, urban, Midwestern community. The findings from this study highlight the experience of four Midwestern families, through the use of Seidman’s (Interviewing as qualitative research, 4th edn. Teachers College Press, New York, 2012) three stage interview design, in which the researchers conducted three distinct interviews with each of four participants and two interviews with former housing counselors from the same agency. The findings reveal four key supportive factors that emerged for participants. They include: the importance of faith, family, positivity, and income supports.     

Children in out-of-home care as young adults: A systematic review of outcomes in the Nordic countries

BackgroundInternationally, the Nordic countries occupy top positions in child well-being. We investigated literature on the overall outcomes of young adults from the most vulnerable backgrounds in the Nordic countries, namely young adults who were placed in statutory out-of-home care (OoHC, i.e. foster care) during childhood in the Nordic countries for the protection of their safety and welfare.MethodsWe followed PRISMA guidelines and conducted literature searches manually, as well as electronically, via EBSCO's Psychology/Sociology databases and ProQuest's Social and Behavioral Sciences databases in February 2016 for quantitative studies that compared outcomes at age 18 or later between young adults placed in OoHC as children and those never placed in OoHC. Because of the heterogeneity and small number of eligible studies on each outcome, we conducted no meta-analysis but did formulate a narrative synthesis.ResultsOf 333 studies identified, 20 met the inclusion criteria. All of these studies were cohort studies that employed social and health register data. OoHC placement was studied with nine outcome categories: self-supporting problems, educational challenges, mental health problems, criminality, teenage parenthood, mortality, suicidal behavior, alcohol and drug use, and disability pension. In each of these categories, young adults with a history in OoHC faced higher risks compared with the general population, even after adjusting for various birth parents' socio-economic, demographic, and mental health–related factors.ConclusionAlthough the Nordic countries are among the world's leading nations in promoting child well-being, the Nordic welfare model has partly failed in preventing the inequality of families with children. As young adults, children placed in OoHC in the Nordic countries face an elevated risk of experiencing adversity.     

Exploring the specific needs of an understudied group: Children with intellectual disability in residential child care

Children and adolescents who live in out of home care in the child protection system are considered to be vulnerable to manifesting mental health disorders as well as other types of difficulties. This risk is greater in the case of children who display any type of disability. The aim of this study is to profile the state of health and well-being of a group of children presenting intellectual disability who live in residential care in a Spanish autonomous community and to compare these results with their non-disabled peers.     

The integration of child care services in Scotland

This paper describes the development of integrated child care services in Scotland with a particular focus on the role of residential child care provision. It discusses changes in Social Work Department policies and the impact this has had on their relationship with the Children's Hearings system. Recent research shows the pattern of use of residential and foster care in three Social Work Departments and issues in the development of residential services are identified. Three particular examples of service integration are described: residential outreach work; a centre for young people under an integrated management; and multi-agency youth strategies. Social work and education services in Scotland are in the process of radical change. In the context of the integration of child care services, the paper discusses the impact of local government reorganisation and changes in child care legislation.     

Evaluating the implementation of health policy: pre-hospital care in Pennsylvania.

A statewide study of ambulance services was conducted to inform executive and legislative decision making regarding Emergency Medical Services in Pennsylvania. The study focused on the training status of ambulance personnel, turnover, and coordination between state and local levels. The study found indications that adequate numbers of trained personnel were often not making ambulance trips. A variety of issues that might cause and solve this problem are discussed, as are the dissemination and utilization of the study's results.     

The role of grandparenting in early childcare and child outcomes

This paper examines the short and medium term impact of early childcare provision by grandparents and formal care settings on child cognitive outcomes, using data from the Millennium Cohort Study (UK). Compared with children placed in formal childcare, children cared for by their grandparents are better at naming objects, but perform worse on tests of basic concept development and non-verbal reasoning. These results mask strong heterogeneities. On the one hand, the positive association between grandparental care and child outcomes is stronger for children from more advantaged households; on the other, the negative association is only significant for those from more disadvantaged households. The results of OLS estimations used for our analysis are confirmed using panel methods and an instrumental variable approach.