The Relationship Between the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 and Innovative Welfare Practices on a Local Level

SUMMARY

Part of the intention of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) was to encourage the development of innovative welfare programs on a state and local level. The Act removed stringent federal regulations regarding the design and implementation of cash welfare programs. The freer programmatic environment was to assist local offices in addressing the unique needs of their particular clients as they moved from welfare to work within a time limited setting. In an attempt to examine if this intended piece of the policy was implemented, qualitative data were collected from a statewide sample of local Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS) offices in Georgia. The findings indicate that a minority of local offices engaged in innovative behaviors that were significantly different from their pre-PRWORA behaviors. Implications for welfare policy implementation and program development are discussed.     

Exploring the university partnership model for child welfare citizen review panels: A research brief

Child Welfare Citizen Review Panels (CRPs) are groups of citizen volunteers authorized by Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA; P.L. 104-235) to examine practices of public child welfare agencies. Increasingly, state CRP groups are engaging in university-community partnerships to assist in meeting CAPTA mandates. Despite this trend, there are no published studies that examine this practice.This research brief examines group differences between CRP members of university and non-university affiliated panels, respectively. Factors of interest included CRP Knowledge, Member Satisfaction, Member Engagement, Personal Influence, Perceived CRP Impact on Child Welfare System, CRP Member Dynamics, and Meeting Format. Results indicate that respondents perceived themselves to be no more knowledgeable or engaged in their panels and expressed no greater confidence in the potential impact of CRPs on the child welfare system, whether affiliated with a university or not. After a brief review of literature, this brief will explicate findings derived from this study and discuss salient implications and areas for future research.     

Child welfare caseworkers' perspectives on the challenges of addressing mental health problems in early childhood

Although nearly half of child maltreatment victims are under the age of five and at high risk for developing serious emotional or behavioral problems, few young children involved in the child welfare system receive treatment. As the first point of service contact, child welfare caseworkers can play a key role in quickly identifying children with mental health problems and linking them to services. This study examines caseworkers' perspectives on the challenges of addressing mental health problems in early childhood. Based on five focus groups conducted with 50 caseworkers from an urban, public child welfare agency, results suggest that although workers acknowledge the importance of early intervention, difficulty identifying mental health needs in early childhood and workplace barriers impede linkage to services. Given the lasting impacts of early experiences on children's development, it is imperative that these challenges be addressed. Implications for systematic mental health screening and caseworker training are discussed.     

Children,Parents and the State: The Children Act, 1908

SUMMARY: This article examines the first major consolidating piece of child welfare legislation in Britain, the 1908 Children Act. The focus is on the relationship established between child, parent, and state. Contemporary reasons for the need for this re-ordered relationship are suggested, but it is also argued that in certain respects parallels can be found between the Edwardian Act and that of 1989. This in turn suggests the persistence of certain issues in child welfare, and especially that of the division of responsibilities for the care of children between parents and State.     

Developing and validating measures for child welfare agencies to self-monitor fidelity to a child safety intervention

Building evidence of effective practice in child welfare requires practitioners and researchers to know the extent to which programs are implemented in order to understand evaluation results. Fidelity monitoring is a critical strategy for ensuring that evidence-based and promising practices are implemented as intended and can be studied in real-world contexts. This paper addresses challenges to measuring fidelity in child welfare systems and presents an approach taken with one state to define fidelity criteria and measure fidelity to a child safety intervention. Measurement challenges were addressed by using existing documents and case review mechanisms to assess fidelity, and measuring the quality of practitioner judgment using expert reviewers. Validity of fidelity criteria and fidelity review instruments was established through consensus with model developers and local purveyors. Twelve cases were reviewed by a panel of raters to assess inter-rater reliability and discrepancy between local purveyors and model developers. This participatory and capacity-building method can be replicated and used to develop and embed valid and reliable fidelity monitoring systems in public child welfare to continue to build evidence about what works in child welfare services.     

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.     

Implementing the family preservation program: Feedback from focus groups with consumers and providers of services

There is a growing understanding that preventative child welfare efforts can be both more cost effective and are more desirable philosophically than strictly remedial programs. The Family Preservation Act provides funds to assist communities in strengthening and preserving at-risk families. In order to implement this program effectively, local communities must design new programs and procedures which will be both attractive to consumers and effective in meeting their needs. This study it identifies problems with contemporary child and family services and suggests solutions to those problems. This study uses a focus group format and presents ideas generated by those individuals who will be most directly affected by this legislation; front line service providers and service consumers. Several areas of weakness in the current service delivery system are identified, including bureaucratic barriers, limited resources, problematic consumer/provider relations and a range of collaborative issues, both within and between agencies and the communities they serve.     

An evaluation of a Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) program in the rural south

Children in the court system who are abused or neglected are mandated by the federal Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) to have special legal representation in the form of a Guardian ad Litem (GAL). A GAL can be a staff attorney or a volunteer layperson (known as a Court Appointed Special Advocate, or CASA) who has undergone GAL training. In some states, the CASA volunteer can be a substitute for the GAL, while in other states, including Georgia, the CASA is appointed by the judge as a complement to the staff attorney. To date, there has been very little research evaluating the fidelity of CASA programs where they are implemented, nor has there been much research on the CASA program more generally. Therefore, this study evaluates the fidelity of a rural CASA program using the Justice Program Fidelity Scale (JPFS; Miller & Miller, 2015) and interview data from 12 CASA volunteers, along with local CASA program statistics and training materials. The CASA program evaluated for the present study scored an 85.64% on the JPFS using combined scores from two researchers. Implications for practitioners working in the field of child abuse and prevention in rural areas, including implications specifically for a judicial circuit with no dedicated specialty judge for cases involving abused or neglected children, are discussed.     

Enhancing the safety of children in foster care and family support programs: automated critical incident reporting

The Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 has made child safety an explicit focus in child welfare. The authors describe an automated critical incident reporting program designed for use in foster care and family-support programs. The program, which is based in Lotus Notes and uses e-mail to route incident reports from direct service staff to supervisors and administrators, facilitates timely clinical oversight and risk management and ensures the security of clients' protected health information. The authors present data collected using the program to illustrate how it can be used to monitor abuse and neglect allegations in a foster care program. A survey of users found that the program saved time, was easy to use, and helped manage critical incident reports.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

The relationship between child welfare financing,screening, and substantiation

This study examines the relationship between state-level child welfare spending and two important decision points in the child welfare system: the decision to screen out a referral and the decision to substantiate. The model is estimated using a pooled fractional probit estimator that controls for year effects and state-level clustering. The findings suggest that decreases in state-level child welfare expenditures predict increases in the proportion of referrals that are screened out and decreases in the proportion of maltreatment claims that are substantiated. The results are robust to the inclusion of caseload and federal spending as control variables, to the exclusion of states known to have changed their screening or funding practices during the sample period, and to the use of combined state and local child welfare expenditures as an explanatory variable in lieu of state-level child welfare expenditures. The findings imply that the amount of money a state spends on child welfare may influence important decisions in the child welfare process.     

Bridging child welfare and juvenile justice: preventing unnecessary detention of foster children

Gaps in service coordination between child welfare and other child-serving agencies are well documented. This article examines the gap between the child welfare and juvenile justice systems and discusses a program, Project Confirm, designed to reduce the problems associated with this gap. Project Confirm aims to improve cooperation between juvenile justice and child welfare agencies to prevent the unnecessary detention of arrested foster children in secure facilities. The program's design is outlined, and implementation statistics and government partner perceptions of the program in its first year of operations are provided. The article also identifies future challenges to implementation and discusses the broader implications of the program. In making this appeal for coordination and collaboration among public agencies, I'm not talking about pro forma integration efforts-I'm not talking about memoranda of understanding or top-level reorganizations that have autonomous agencies vaguely reporting to a single box labeled "human services." Rather, I'm talking about the much more challenging objective of achieving real working partnerships at the front line. (Nelson, 1998, p. 6)     

Every Child Matters? A critical review of child welfare reforms in the context of minority ethnic children and families

This paper critically reviews some key government papers that together largely provide the foundation for the relevant child welfare reforms in England and Wales. The context of this review was to evaluate whether these papers and documents made sufficient reference to improving policies and practices for minority ethnic children and families involved in child welfare matters, given the research evidence from the early 1990s suggesting that such families may experience particular disadvantages or discriminations within the UK child welfare system. The research evidence cited draws upon studies that have considered the experiences of different minority ethnic groups from the point of referrals through to long term services, including those children who have been looked after in local authority care and those families that have been subject to care proceedings. This paper concludes that more is needed under the Every Child Matters agenda to both acknowledge and address the specific needs of minority ethnic children and their families, as identified in the range of studies published post Children Act 1989. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mitigating the ill effects of maternal incarceration on women in prison and their children

Maternal incarceration has deleterious effects on children, families, and society, but child welfare professionals historically have paid limited attention to maternal incarceration. Two recent changes have required the reevaluation of that stance: the dramatic increase in the number of women in prison, and the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997. This article discusses the reality of maternal incarceration, analyzes one prison's attempt to provide programs to support inmate mothers and their children, and makes policy and program recommendations.     

Cracks in the Seams: Durability of Child Care in JOBS Welfare-to-Work Programs

The success of recent welfare reforms will depend, in part, on the ability of local welfare programs to meet the child care needs of low-income parents. A key challenge is the integration of targeted child care subsidies into a seamless system for parents who are making transitions between welfare, training, and employment. This article uses data from a one-year panel study to describe program activities and child care use and transitions for participants in a welfare-to-work program. The results suggest that welfare clients were receiving significant child care assistance but services remained fragmented and poorly integrated. Adult clients engaged in multiple, often short-term job preparation and employment activities, and transitions between activities frequently resulted in disruptions in child care arrangements and loss of child care subsidies. Implications for welfare and child care policy are discussed.     

The Americans with Disabilities Act in Federal Court: litigating against public entities

This study represents the first systematic inquiry into the outcome of litigation against state and local public entities under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990. Because Congress instituted a system of judicial review that established the courts as the final authority of rights and responsibilities under the Act, Title II litigation has a potentially significant impact on the disability policymaking of state and local governments in the United States. The analysis is based on all reported federal court rulings through June 2000 in which the court adjudicated a Title II claim against a public entity. The results show that plaintiffs are moderately successful in their suits against public entities, especially when compared to their record in litigating against private employers. However, the courts, particularly at the appellate level, still exercise restraint about interfering in the disability policies of subnational governments when implementing the ADA.     

Therapeutically Managing Reunification After Abuse Allegations

School-based programs have been the central strategy to educate children about the serious nature of child sexual abuse in the hope of prevention or early intervention. Virtually all evaluations have been quantitative, seldom allowing children to directly comment on their experiences. This article presents the results of qualitative research with 116 students (51 boys and 65 girls) ranging from age 6 to 12 who had participated in the Who Do You Tell child sexual abuse education program. Ten focus groups were conducted with students in separate grades, from kindergarten through sixth grade, two to three months after program participation. The core themes that emerged from the focus group interviews are presented, as are implications for child sexual abuse prevention programs.     

Social Workers’ Preparation for Child Protection: Revisiting the Question of Specialisation

Abstract

Child welfare work is a key field of practice for social work graduates and for graduates of a growing range of disciplines. In the present paper, the authors drew on a survey of 208 child welfare workers and interviews with 28 senior personnel in child and family welfare agencies to analyse perceptions of the educational preparation of social workers and other human science graduates for this field of practice. The findings indicated that child welfare workers and employers are ambivalent about the value of social work and other generic social science and human services programmes as preparation for tertiary or statutory child protection practice, which involves investigation, assessment, and intervention in child abuse and neglect. The authors argue that the social work profession must better balance generic and specialist aspects to prepare graduates for practice in specialist fields of high social work involvement, particularly in tertiary child protection work.