An international classification system for child welfare programs

A major challenge in child welfare is whether a program (or service) developed and successfully implemented in one jurisdiction, especially another country, will attain the same outcomes for children and families in another jurisdiction? This paper presents the “DCE Classification System” (Defining, Classifying, and Evaluating), a classification system that facilitates cross-jurisdiction comparisons of child and family services. The paper reviews the cross-national research literature in child and family services as well as literature on classification schemes and typologies. As an example of the issues that arise when importing a promising program, we briefly highlight the exporting and importing of family group conferencing. After tracing the history and development of the DCE Classification System, the paper describes the proposed classification scheme, and provides a brief example of how researchers and practitioners can use the classification system for cross-national comparisons of client outcomes and program costs. Finally, we discuss the strengths and weaknesses of this approach, as well as possible benefits for child and family practices.     

Divergence of the world city system from national economies

This study shows that the position of cities in the world economy has diverged from national economies. Using data from 2016, we evaluate a network of 12,802 cities formed by the location decisions of 24,355 firms in terms of their point centrality, and show that the inter-city and inter-national systems have measurably decoupled, disrupting the previously-observed pattern in which the most powerful cities in the world city system were located in core countries, "mid-level" cities were in the semi-periphery,and the least powerful cities were in peripheral countries. Our findings support predictions that globalizing cities would diverge from national economies and that globalization would generate a new global geography that transects long-standing cleavages in the world system.     

Children with developmental disabilities in the child welfare system: a national survey

A survey of state agencies responsible for developmental disabilities/mental retardation and child welfare investigated the coordination of services for children with developmental disabilities. Recommendations are offered with regard to further research and model program development.     

Ethnic disproportionality in the child welfare system: A Norwegian national cohort study

This study of Norwegian child welfare clients examined the extent to which ethnic disparities in involvement with the child welfare system can be attributed to ethnic differences in sociodemographic background. Using logistic regression models and a unique dataset constructed by linking child welfare records to national administrative registers for the 1993–1994 birth cohorts, we computed ethnic disparities in the odds of child welfare involvement at age 6–12 (N = 122,894), both before and after adjustments for sociodemographic background. Compared with ethnic Norwegian cohort peers, non-Western children had twice the unadjusted odds of entering the child welfare system (odds ratio = 2.13). However, the data also indicated pronounced ethnic disparities in eight sociodemographic correlates of child welfare involvement. When adjustments for these background factors were modeled, we found no ethnic differences in the odds of child welfare involvement. Our findings suggest that the association between ethnicity and child welfare involvement is confounded by differences in socioeconomic status, maternal social assistance, family size and family structure.     

Improving productivity in child welfare programs

The project met its objective of finding ways to improve the efficiency of a child welfare program. The agency will continue an intensive evaluation of the program to reassess the procedures' impact on productivity. The project found that, with adaptation, work-methods techniques developed in industry can be useful to child welfare programs. Critical elements in the success of a productivity improvement project include full, visible support by the agency's policy makers and top management; early intensive involvement of affected personnel; wide implementation of recommended improvements; and continued review of their effectiveness. Although no single work-methods project can solve all problems connected with an agency's way of carrying out its work, the process developed by the Texas Department of Human Resources can be applied usefully by both public and private child welfare agencies as they seek ways to improve the efficiency of their programs.     

Can work and training programs reform welfare?

Over the past thirty years the number of Americans on welfare has increased by 460 percent, generating concern about both the monetary and social costs involved. Long-term welfare dependence produces adverse outcomes for many families by distorting incentives for work and marriage. Government programs to reduce welfare have focused on work and training programs to raise the skills of welfare recipients, but these programs have not significantly reduced welfare participation. Policies to scale back welfare are essential for reducing welfare disincentives. New approaches to the delivery of education are viewed as an important preventive strategy.     

Race and the local politics of punishment in the new world of welfare

To illuminate how race affects the usage of punitive tools in policy implementation settings, we analyze sanctions imposed for noncompliant client behavior under welfare reform. Drawing on a model of racial classification and policy choice, we test four hypotheses regarding client race, local context, and sanctioning. Based on longitudinal and cross-sectional multilevel analyses of individual-level administrative data, we find that race plays a significant role in shaping sanction implementation. Its effects, however, are highly contingent on client characteristics, local political contexts, and the degree to which state governments devolve policy control to local officials.     

Improving the measurement of child welfare in the context of intra-household inequality

This study aims to illustrate how to improve the evaluation of child economic well-being and child poverty using the collective approach. International organisations such as the World Bank, OECD and UNICEF have made important efforts in recent years to produce reliable data and to measure poverty according to the most relevant items of household consumption baskets. However, when measuring poverty, it is common practice to assume either that resources are distributed equally within the household or that there are fixed equivalence scales (for example, a child can be counted as 0.5 adults). The methodology based on collective models of consumption overcomes this rigidity by allowing inequality within each household to be taken into account. The method assumes that each household devotes a fraction of resources to children, which can be estimated using the observed expenditure on child-exclusive goods. An example of how child poverty measures can be inaccurately estimated is illustrated through the case of young children in Albania.     

A national profile of child welfare workers and supervisors

Using information gained in a national survey of inservice training of child welfare supervisors and workers, the authors provide a profile of the practitioners providing child welfare services, their clientele, and their perspectives on training needs.     

State capacity: the missing piece in child welfare privatization

Privatization has been used to address the limited capacity of government to achieve positive results in child welfare systems. Privatized systems have not realized better outcomes than their public counterparts, however, and many states continue to struggle with implementation. In order to demonstrate that privatization is in fact an investment on the part of the state, rather than a solution to limited public resources, this article explores the relationship between state capacity and privatization and makes recommendations for more effective partnerships between the public and private sectors.     

Conducting culturally competent evaluations of child welfare programs and practices

As the population of the United States has changed over the last two decades, so has the population of children who come to the attention of the child welfare system, resulting in increasing calls for cultural competence in all aspects of child welfare programming and practice. Given the changing demographics among children involved in the child weltare system and the increasing need to address the racial and ethnic disparities observed in this system, the need for culturally competent approaches to evaluate the outcomes of services for children and families is essential. This article discusses the challenges in conducting culturally competent evaluations and provides strategies to address those challenges within a child welfare context.     

Disability,politics and poverty in a majority world context

This paper argues that the spread of free market economics throughout the world has generated unprecedented inequalities within and between nation states. This has led to the systematic exclusion of people with perceived impairments from the mainstream of economic and community life in almost all societies, the generation of an international disabled people’s movement, and their demand for legal frameworks with which to address the multiple deprivations encountered by people viewed as ‘disabled’. It is argued that the poverty and exclusion encountered by disabled people and other oppressed groups in all societies will not be eliminated without fundamental structural change at the international level.     

State abstinence education programs and teen birth rates in the US

Title V, Section 510 of the Social Security Act, passed in 1996 and implemented in 1998, appropriates funding to states for the purpose of educating minors on the benefits of abstinence before marriage. Despite considerable research on the impact of abstinence education on teen fertility outcomes, high quality population-level studies on state abstinence education using panel data are absent. This paper uses state-level data to analyze the impact of abstinence education on the birth rates for teens 15–17 years by evaluating the Title V, Section 510 State Abstinence Education (SAE) program. For an average state, increasing spending by 50,000/year on SAE can help avoid approximately four births to teenagers, resulting in net savings of50,000/year on SAE can help avoid approximately four births to teenagers, resulting in net savings of 15,652 to the public for each birth avoided.     

Turmoil in the welfare system reshapes rural Sweden

The purpose of the article is to discuss rural change and the effects of policies on the spatial distribution of welfare in Sweden. It is argued that the Swedish welfare model has had a major redistributional effect in favour of peripheral regions. The outcome is largely unintentional as the welfare system is directed to individuals rather than to regions. When recession and political change put pressure on the welfare model, a corresponding unintentional negative effect will hit the periphery. Therefore, a spatial perspective on the changing state budget is needed in order to develop a new policy for rural areas. Finally, attention is drawn to the complex pattern of rural change in Sweden. A cluster of changes are operating at different levels, giving new prospects to some regions while others will have continuing and increasing problems.     

Factor analysis of the personal authority in the family system questionnaire

The factor structure of the Personal Authority in the Family System Questionnaire (PAFS-Q) has been used in numerous studies, but the factor structure has not been examined since its development in 1984. This study examined the factor structure of the PAFS-Q. Findings suggest a six-factor solution with important differences from those reported when the PAFS-Q was developed. The main differences between this study and the original factor analysis are that this study found separate Mother and Father Intimacy factors instead of a single Intergenerational Intimacy factor and the original Spousal Fusion and Spousal Intimacy factors were not separate factors in the current study. Implications and future directions for research are also discussed.     

Window on the world. From modest rights to commodification in Canada's welfare state

This paper examines the rise and decline of Canada's welfare state from 1945 to the end of the century. The years to the mid-1960s were marked by the introduction of an array of social programmes that produced a system inferior to that of the major western European countries, but distinctly superior to that of the United States. These developments gave 'modest social rights' to Canada's residents, whilst not fundamentally challenging the market base of the society. The years since 1971 have been marked by retreat, influenced by three considerations: the world oil crisis of 1973, which imported significant inflation to Canada and resulted in large government deficits; the threat of separatism in Quebec, which resulted in a massive devolution of authority from the central government to the provinces; and the Free Trade Agreement with the United States (reflecting a more general rise in neo-conservatism), which further integrated the economies and societies of the two countries. The impact of these changes has been to increasingly commodify social benefits within a market context, so that Esping-Andersen's 1989 classification of Canada as a 'liberal' welfare state has undoubtedly proved accurate, though a decade later than he identified. The paper explores benefits for children and the right to food as case illustrations of these fundamental changes.     

Child welfare workers: who they are and how they view the child welfare system

This article examines the characteristics of child welfare caseworkers, their views of the child welfare system, their clients, their agency of employment, and child welfare policies, and whether these views vary according to caseworkers' characteristics. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used to analyze in-depth interviews conducted with caseworkers in New York and Chicago. The major themes that emerged from the analysis indicate caseworkers believed that the child welfare system does not meet the needs of the children in care, lacks the resources to appropriately serve clients, and often establishes goals that cannot be attained by the biological parents. Caseworkers held negative views of the biological parents and, although most described their organization as well equipped, almost as many reported that their organization lacked technical, administrative, and personnel resources. Caseworkers' views of child welfare policies emphasized the need for reforming the system and reevaluating funding priorities.     

Moving toward cultural competence in the child welfare system

This paper uses a culturally competent (Cross, Bazron, Dennis & Isaacs, 1989) perspective to examine the child welfare system's, namely protective services, response to children of color. The purpose of the paper is to indicate how the absence of cross-cultural considerations in both child welfare policy and practice, limits the effectiveness of service delivery to children of color and their families. Specifically, three key aspects of the child welfare system are addressed: past responses to children of color, worker-client interactions, and child protective service agencies. The paper ends with several recommendations.