Using concept mapping as a planning tool: Child welfare citizen review panels

Citizen Review Panels (CRPs) are groups of citizen volunteers authorized by U.S. federal law to examine state child welfare agencies. These groups inspect policies and practices related to child protection responsibilities and are tasked with making recommendations for systemic improvement. Despite the federal mandate for each state to develop a CRP and the potential of these groups to positively impact child welfare practices, there is a dearth in the literature related to CRPs. Consequently, planning and evaluation processes of these groups vary widely. This study reports on the use of concept mapping (CM) to outline a framework for planning and subsequently evaluating the CRP in one southeastern state. CM is a mixed-method research approach that uses multi-dimensional scaling and hierarchical cluster analyses to explore an area of study. Through these analyses, the method creates visual depictions of conceptual relationships between ideas. Data yielded a seven cluster concept map that CRP members (N = 36) utilized for planning processes, and subsequently for developing an internal evaluation tool. Results from this study offer a unifying framework by which CRPs, and similar groups in other areas can utilize for planning and evaluation purposes. After a review of pertinent literature on CRPs, this article explicates CM processes utilized in this study, describes results, discusses lessons learned, and outlines apposite areas for future CRP research.     

Training child welfare citizen review panel members: A promising approach?

Citizen Review Panels (CRPS) are groups of volunteers mandated by United States federal law to examine policies, procedures, and practices of public (e.g., state) child welfare agencies, and make recommendations for systemic improvements. To date, several researchers have made clarion calls for training frameworks and approaches for CRP members. Despite the federal mandate, millions of dollars in resources allocated to these panels, and the potential to positively impact the child welfare system, no published training frameworks exist. This brief documents the evaluation of an online training for CRP members (N = 21) in one southeastern state. The training was developed based on needs identified in existing CRP literature, and delivered via an online learning platform. A pre-experimental (pre/post) approach was used to evaluate the training. Results indicate a significant improvement in knowledge associated with serving on the CRP, and overall, participants viewed the training as being positively impactful to their work as a CRP member. The brief will provide an overview of the training, evaluation approach, and briefly discuss salient implications derived from the results.     

Early childhood interventionists' perspectives on serving maltreated infants and toddlers

A 2003 amendment to the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) required states to create developmental screening programs for maltreated infants and toddlers. Programs authorized under Part C of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) were directed to work with state and local child welfare authorities to develop the screening program. They were also to ensure that additional assessment and intervention was provided when needed. The degree to which this mandate has been implemented varies widely between state and local programs. Some early intervention experts and Part C program administrators have expressed concerns about providers' willingness to serve families referred from child welfare, but there has been no systematic research on this issue. The Professional Interventionist CAPTA Survey (PICS) is a newly developed measure of early childhood intervention providers' perceptions of their responsibilities under CAPTA. The first aim of this study was to conduct analysis of the PICS using a national sample of providers. This study also reports the perceptions of early childhood interventionists about their responsibilities under CAPTA and examines the relationship between worker characteristics and how they perceive these responsibilities. The PICS appears to be useful for examining early childhood intervention providers' responses to CAPTA.     

Perceptions of state child welfare administrators regarding federally-mandated citizen review panels

Since 1996, federal law has required state child welfare agencies receiving grant funding through the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act to support the work of independent citizen review panels. According to the law, citizen review panels are to assess the functions and performance of state child welfare systems, providing recommendations for improvements. To date, a handful of studies have examined the work of the citizen review panels from the perspective of the citizen participants, yet the voice of state child welfare administrators regarding their work with the panels has been largely silent in the literature. While exploratory in nature and intent, the present study begins to fill this gap by reporting the results of a national survey of state child welfare administrators regarding their perceptions of barriers and benefits to citizen participation. The qualitative analysis yielded a significant degree of agreement across administrators in 31 states and the District of Columbia, and provided a number of insights for how agencies and citizen review panels can work more collaboratively. These include the need for agencies to assist in the training of CRP participants and for administrators to more deliberately foster an environment conducive to effective engagement by supporting ongoing dialog, integrating CRP recommendations into agency work, and meeting regularly with the groups.     

Child welfare: A view from Australia

In this article the author presents an analysis of family and child welfare in Australia. The author explores the philosophical approaches underlying the development of child welfare policies. Through a historical perspective the author identifies factors which may have influenced some current child welfare policies and practices. Characteristics of the Australian child are described and selected child welfare services in Australia are discussed.She is Editor ofAustralian Child and Family Welfare Journal. She has worked in child welfare in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia.     

A culturally responsive practice model for urban Indian child welfare services

This article describes collaboration among a university, a state child welfare agency, and a Native American community organization to develop a culturally driven practice model for urban, Native American child welfare. The approach includes a strategy to build resources to serve Native American clients, a training program for child welfare and court personnel using a culturally responsive curriculum, and an advocacy program that monitors for Indian Child Welfare Act compliance and provides assistance to child welfare workers and the court. The discussion identifies challenges and opportunities in addressing the needs of urban Native American communities. The article concludes with principles for culturally responsive practice for urban Native American child welfare practice.     

Do child welfare job preview videos reflect evidence on retention and turnover?

To maintain a well-trained, competent work force and reduce turnover, child welfare agencies must use effective recruitment and retention practices. Many states use realistic job preview videos to recruit and retain appropriate, well-matched staff. The purpose of this study is to assess the content of child welfare realistic job preview videos to determine whether the content reflects current evidence on child welfare retention and turnover, and the mechanisms through which realistic job previews are most effective. The study involves content analysis of realistic job preview videos posted at the Child Welfare Information Gateway. A comparison of video content to findings from research on child welfare retention and turnover, and to research on realistic job preview effectiveness reveals some ways that the content of child welfare recruitment and retention efforts could be strengthened.     

Exploring the self-care practices of child welfare workers: A research brief

Child welfare workers experience higher rates of vicarious trauma, workplace stress, and compassion fatigue, when compared to other social service workers. Increasingly, social service agencies, in general, and child welfare agencies, specifically, recognize the importance of self-care in assuaging these problematic employee outcomes. However, research that explicitly examines the self-care practices of child welfare workers in nominal. This study brief explores the self-care practices of child welfare workers (N = 222) in one southeastern state. Results reveal that child welfare workers only engage in self-care at moderate levels. Additionally, data suggests that variables such as health status, current financial status, and relationship status significantly impact personal and professional self-care practices, respectively. After a terse review of relevant literature, this brief will explicate findings associated with this study, and identify salient discussion points and implications for child welfare training, practice, and research.     

NCWWI Traineeships: A National Cross-Site Evaluation of Child Welfare Stipend Programs for Ethnically Diverse Students

The task of recruiting and retaining ethnically diverse, qualified, and committed social workers in child welfare is challenging. Federal funding supporting BSW and MSW education has been a catalyst for university–agency partnerships across the country. An important goal of these partnerships is to prepare social work students with the knowledge, skills, and competencies for effective child welfare practice. The National Child Welfare Workforce Institute’s innovative child welfare traineeships program prepares students from 12 social work programs around the country. This study focused on diversity, competency attainment, and readiness for the job. Results showed that programs recruited ethnically diverse students, and after receiving child welfare–specific content and hands-on experiences in the field, students felt competent and prepared for child welfare work.     

Silver Bullets and Quick Fixes

Abstract

Important lessons in policy implementation are available to welfare reformers who closely examine the case of the child welfare sys tem. Similarities exist between the Personal Responsibility and Work Op portunity Act of 1996 and the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980. While substantively the two pieces are very different, current wel fare reform efforts are likely to repeat mistakes made by those implement ing child welfare system reforms in the 1980s and 1990s. Four factors threaten the success of reforms: The vagueness of language; the search for one single solution for all families; insistence on defining the complexity of family problems in extremely narrow terms; and the excessive bureaucrati- zation of service delivery. Policymakers are cautioned to look toward re cent innovations in child welfare for guidance instead of inadvertently repeating missteps.     

New roles for families in child welfare: Strategies for expanding family involvement beyond the case level

This paper examines the strategies and approaches child welfare agencies used to integrate meaningful family involvement into their service delivery systems, under the Children's Bureau Improving Child Welfare Outcomes Through Systems of Care demonstration initiative. Through a series of retrospective interviews with child welfare agency staff, systems of care project staff, family members actively involved in implementing the systems of care initiative, and local program evaluators, researchers investigated the family involvement planning and capacity building activities of child welfare agencies during the initiative's implementation. Findings indicate that child welfare agencies' capacity building efforts primarily centered on human resource development, focusing on three areas: program staffing, family engagement, and agency buy-in. These findings illustrate the importance of developing the capacity of child welfare agency staff and family members before fully implementing family involvement programs and activities. Although more research is needed to document the impact of family involvement, the lessons learned from these grant communities' experiences provide critical information and can inform development of policies and practices to help child welfare and other child- and family-serving systems promote and implement meaningful and sustainable family involvement.     

Medicine and Social Work: An Exploration in Interprofessionalism,Edited by Helen Rehr. Neal Watson Academic Publications,New York, 1974. $3.95 Paper

This article presents the results of focus groups conducted with participants following the completion of a Child Welfare Practice Certificate Program. Concept mapping was used as the guiding research method for the data collection and analysis. Social work students and child welfare workers generated statements during the focus group session that were then sorted into conceptual piles. Participants then rated the statements as to their importance and practicality and their interest in learning about them. Results revealed that the concept Reporting, Assessment, and Case Planning in the Real World was rated highest in all three categories. Recommendations are provided regarding infusing a child welfare curriculum into social work programs, and the authors discuss how concept mapping can be used in evaluation research.     

What Works in Group Care? - A Structured Review of Treatment Models for Group Homes and Residential Care

This paper presents findings from a structured review of treatment models that are relevant to group care and residential treatment settings for children involved with the child welfare system. Initiated and guided by The California Evidence-Based Clearinghouse for Child Welfare, five treatment models — Positive Peer Culture, Teaching Family Model, Sanctuary Model, Stop-Gap Model, and Re-ED — were reviewed for effectiveness. In this paper, each model's treatment features are described and relevant outcome studies reviewed in terms of their effectiveness as well as relevance for child welfare practice. Findings indicate that four of the models are either supported or promising in terms of evidence for effectiveness. Implications for group care practice and research are discussed.     

Social support and interdependency in transition to adulthood from child welfare services

This qualitative study explores the need for social support in transition to adulthood for youths in the child welfare service, focusing on what support they need and from whom they can get such support. We have conducted individual and focus group interviews with in all 43 adolescents that are, or have been, in contact with the child welfare service in adolescence/young adulthood. The interviews are transcribed and analyzed by doing initial longitudinal analysis, and thematic analysis inspired by the main structure in Systematic Text Condensation (STC).Through the analyses we have highlighted four different categories of social support that the youths need; practical support, emotional support, affirmational guidance support and participation support. Our findings indicates that such support is necessary, but not always available for youths transitioning out from the Child Welfare System, as many of them lack an informal network of adults that can support them in their transition to adulthood. Several of them consequently need continued support from employees in the Child Welfare Service, which for many of these youths seems to represent a crucial source of social support. One of the challenges seems to be that the youths urge of independency together with the expectations of independency from the Child Welfare Services, makes youths end the contact with the Child Welfare Service too early. The simultaneously need for social support and urge for independency makes it relevant to discuss this in light of the concept of interdependency; which emphasizes the importance of connections and social relations as not only normal but also necessary. This underlines the need for more flexibility and a gradual independency; in contrast to the “sudden adulthood” that many youths transitioning out of child welfare seem to experience.     

Community-building principles: implications for professional development

This article reviews a Think Tank meeting among child welfare practitioners at the 2003 Building Communities for 21st-Century Child Welfare Symposium. The Child Welfare League of America's focus on community building is recognition of the vital importance of promoting and fostering collaboration with community members to enhance the well-being of children, families, and communities. The Think Tank participants responded to four questions concerning the knowledge, policies, and strategies that are needed for the development of strategies for community building and child welfare. This article highlights several of the findings of the preconference, which addressed the challenges and opportunities inherent in community-building practices and discusses the key principles that emerged from the Think Tank. The article emphasizes implications for professional education and cites selected examples of innovative community-building initiatives with families.     

Reflections on citizen-state child welfare partnerships: Listening to citizen review panel volunteers and agency liaisons

Objective

Previous research pertaining to the citizen review panel (CRP) initiative indicates that discrepancies exist between panel member and state agency liaison perceptions of CRP effectiveness in fulfilling the CAPTA CRP mandate. This study explores the impressions of both CRP members and liaisons involving barriers to effective CRP-state child welfare partnerships and recommendations to improve the relationship, provided through narrative survey responses from CRP liaisons from 30 states and D.C. and panel members from 32 states and D.C. Thematic categories which emerged from analyses of these responses are discussed, and a conceptual model and substantive-level theory of the CRP-child protective services (CPS) relationship developed from the results are presented.

Results

The complex nature of CRP-CPS relationships emerged as the central theme among CRP members' and liaisons' responses. Liaisons and CRP members identified a need for CRP members to become more educated globally on child welfare despite the relatively high level of education and experience of much of the sample. Difficulties encountered by panel members in the effort to partner surfaced in themes of mistrust and skepticism about the worth of citizen participation in child protection. Negative agency attitudes, lack of role clarity, and lack of commitment to authentic partnership were cited as negative influences upon the relationship by both liaisons and CRP members. The most important preferred outcome of the partnership was that citizen volunteers would become more knowledgeable partners who could meaningfully contribute to child welfare efforts. A second desired outcome important to CRP members was to form a shared vision with CPS.

Conclusions

Findings imply that when key components of mutual respect, legitimacy, CPS knowledge, shared vision, authenticity, citizen engagement, honest communication, and a serious, deliberative process are in any way impeded, the partnership is vulnerable to breakdown, and intended outcomes may be compromised.

Implications

Important relational difficulties that have formed barriers between volunteers and CPS agencies have been identified, and results suggest specific issues to target for improvement. These findings can prompt a more informed discourse about the challenges and opportunities presented when attempting to engage citizens in child welfare practice and policy-making, and can lead to new research paths. Suggestions for such efforts are offered.     

Factors affecting permanency for legally free children & youth: A study of Colorado's legally free population across age groups, 2008–2014

Legally freed children and youth whose parents have had their parental rights terminated have been shown to be more likely to emancipate from the child welfare system as a result of facing a series of complex factors that affect their likelihood of achieving permanency. To better understand these complex factors, the Colorado Department of Human Services' Division of Child Welfare utilized survival analysis to comprehensively examine the factors that affect permanency for legally free children and youth. Factors affecting permanency outcomes were analyzed for more than 5700 legally free children and youth within Colorado's child welfare system during the period of January 2008 to August 2014. Overall, the majority of Colorado's legally free children and youth achieved a positive permanency outcome. However, the results of the survival analysis reveal distinct factors affecting the permanency of children and youth in distinct age groups, including: children who became legally free after birth through five years in age, children who became legally free between six to twelve years in age, and youth who became legally free between thirteen to seventeen years in age. Across all age groups, African American race, number of prior involvements, permanency goal, age, number of placements while in care, and the time spent in congregate care or family-like settings were found to have statistically significant effects on the likelihood of achieving permanency. Collectively, the findings highlight the distinct factors affecting permanency across different age groups as well as the need for future research to examine the disparate factors affecting permanency outcomes across different age groups.     

Delineating disproportionality and disparity of Asian-Canadian versus White-Canadian families in the child welfare system

ObjectiveThis paper builds upon the analyses presented in three companion papers using data from the 2003 and 2008 cycles of the Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect (CIS-2003 and CIS-2008) and the Ontario Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (OCANDS) to examine disproportionality and disparity of child welfare involvement for Asian-Canadian children involved in the child welfare system.MethodsThis study used CIS-2008 data adjusted by Census child population data to examine rates per 1000 and three disparity indexes (population-based disparity index [PDI], decision-based disparity index [DDI], and maltreatment-based disparity index [MDI]) to determine the representation of child maltreatment investigations for Asian-Canadian versus White-Canadian children involved in the child welfare system. Logistic regression analyses were conducted to determine the odds of case closure for substantiated child maltreatment investigations, and whether Asian ethnicity remained significant while controlling for child demographics and household composition, case characteristics, and clinical concerns.ResultsThis study found that Asian-Canadian children were underrepresented in the child welfare system compared to White-Canadian children (13.9 per 1000 Asian children in the Canadian population vs. 36.1 per 1000 White children in the Canadian population). Child welfare involvement for Asian-Canadian children are almost 2 times more likely to close after an investigation than White-Canadian children. The three disparity indexes (PDI, DDI, MDI) showed substantially different results with respect to the representation of child maltreatment investigations involving Asian-Canadian versus White-Canadian children for physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect, emotional maltreatment, and exposure to domestic violence.ConclusionsDisproportionality and disparity are complex phenomena. The variation in results derived from different methods of calculating representation suggests the need for greater clarity and consistency in the definitions and methodology in examining racial disparity in child welfare research. Some methodological considerations for future child welfare research with Asian-Canadian populations were discussed.     

Early Childhood Maltreatment: Substantiation related to Family Risk and Intervention Factors

Child maltreatment interventions had been targeted on intervening parental factors among risk families. However, limited knowledge was known about possible interaction effects between certain family risk factors and such intervention factors. The present study used existing Child Protective Service (CPS) data to explore interaction effects between two family risk variables (child maltreatment pattern and domestic violence) and three common intervention variables (quality of parent–child connection, caregiver knowledge and caregiver skill) on child maltreatment substantiation. Findings showed good quality of parent–child connection, caregiver knowledge, and caregiver skill significantly predicted lower risk of child maltreatment. However, the significant effects were found only among families of minor child maltreatment pattern and were greater for non-domestic violence families. In all, findings of this study suggested that different intervention emphasis might be needed to work with families of more severe risk issues.Szu-Yu Chen and Maria Scannapieco are affiliated with Center for Child Welfare, School of Social Work, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington     

Family policy in Korea

In Korea, family policy as a public policy gained interest in the 1980s, when the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs (since January 1995 the Ministry of Health and Welfare) renamed the Maternal and Child Bureau the Family Welfare Bureau. This paper first presents a brief overview of the traditional family system and values in Korea and examines changes in economic and social indicators, changes in family functions and roles, and changes in attitudes toward family that have occurred following industrialization and urbanization. The paper then briefly explains some of the problems Korean families face today. It next examines the Family Planning Program and its results. Finally, it turns to an examination and critique of the policies and programs administered by the Family Welfare Bureau.Yeonoak Baik is a Family Advocacy Therapist for the 8th U.S. Army c/o Commander, 43rd Surgical Hospital (MA), ATTN: EAMC-SH-FAP, Room D-108, Unit #15190, APO AP, 96271-0126. She works in Korea with U.S. military soldiers and their dependents. Her research interests include child welfare, single-parent families, and domestic violence. Her MSW was received from the School of Social Work, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.Her research interests include children of divorced families, social welfare policy, and social work administration in Korea. She received her Ph.D. in Social Welfare at Seoul National University in Korea.