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Contents

Issue 1, 2008

November/December 2007

September/October 2007

July/August 2007

May/June 2007

March/April 2007

January/February 2007

November/December 2006

September/October 2006

July/August 2006

May/June 2006

March/April 2006 Special Issue: LGBTQ Youth in Child Welfare

January/February 2006

November/December 2005

September/October 2005 Special Issue

July/August 2005

May/June 2005

March/April 2005 Special Issue

January/February 2005

November/December 2004

September/October 2004 Special Issue

July/August 2004

May/June 2004

March/April 2004 Special Issue

January/February 2004

November/December 2003

September/October 2003

July/August 2003

May/June 2003

March/April 2003

January/February 2003

November/December 2002

September/October 2002 Special Issue

July/August 2002

May/June 2002

March/April 2002 Special Issue

January/February 2002

Issue 1, 2008

Children With Problematic Sexualized Behaviors in the Child Welfare System
Amy J. L. Baker, Len Gries, Mel Schneiderman, Rob Parker, Marc Archer, and Bill Friedrich

This study assessed the utility of the Child Sexual Behavior Inventory (CSBI) in a child welfare sample. In this study, 97 children from ages 10 to 12 from either foster boarding homes or a residential treatment center participated. Researchers interviewed foster parents or primary therapists about children's sexual behavior, traumatic events, clinical symptoms, and their attitudes toward the child. Findings revealed that problematic sexualized behaviors were more prevalent in the residential treatment center (RTC) sample than they were in a normative sample. The pattern of associations between sexual behavior problems, traumatic events, and clinical syndromes in both the RTC and the foster boarding home (FBH) samples was similar to what has been found in samples in which biological custodial parents were the respondents. Analyses comparing youth who met the criterion for having problematic sexualized behaviors and youth who did not meet the criterion revealed that the two groups differed on clinical symptoms, prior traumatic events, and negative reports by caregivers. Results confirm the utility of the CSBI measure for this population and highlight several important clinical and programmatic concerns for addressing problematic sexual behavior in children in the child welfare system.

The Role of Interagency Collaboration for Substance-Abusing Families Involved With Child Welfare
Beth L. Green, Anna Rockhill, and Scott Burrus

Meeting the needs of families who are involved with the child welfare system because of a substance abuse issue remains a challenge for child welfare practitioners. In order to improve services to these families, there has been an increasing focus on improving collaboration between child welfare, treatment providers, and the court systems. This paper presents the results from qualitative interviews with 104 representatives of these three systems that explore how the collaborative process works to benefit families, as well as the barriers and supports for building successful collaborations. Results indicate that collaboration has at least three major functions: building shared value systems, improving communication, and providing a "team" of support. Each of these leads to different kinds of benefits for families as well as providers and has different implications for building successful collaborative interventions. Despite these putative benefits, providers within each system, however, continue to struggle to build effective collaborations, and they face such issues as deeply ingrained mistrust and continued lack of understanding of other systems' values, goals, and perspectives. Challenges that remain for successful collaborations are discussed.

Safety, Family, Permanency, and Child Well-Being: What We Can Learn From Children
Adair Fox, Jill Duerr Berrick, and Karie Frasch

This study is an attempt to infuse into discussions about system accountability the notion that children can speak to issues of safety, family, permanency, and well-being in child welfare. The study utilized a cross-sectional survey design involving in-home, semistructured interviews with children ages 6 to 13 in two urban California counties. Of the 100 children who participated in face-to-face interviews, 59 were living with kin caregivers and 41 were living with nonkin. Standardized instruments and measures developed specifically for this study were employed. Findings indicate that while children assess their homes as safe, neighborhood conditions are often challenging. A significant proportion of children reveal less than optimal relationships with their caregivers, and many experience feelings of impermanence. Nevertheless, children report positive regard for the caregiving they receive and are optimistic about the future. Implications for practice and research are addressed.

The Climate of Child Welfare Employee Retention
Helen Cahalane and Edward W. Sites

This article describes differences in perceptions of the child welfare work environment among Title IV-E educated individuals who remain within public child welfare and those who sought employment elsewhere after fulfilling a legal work commitment. Job satisfaction, emotional exhaustion, and personal accomplishment were predictive of staying versus leaving. The empirical evidence suggests that efforts to retain highly skilled and educated public child welfare workers should focus on creating positive organizational climates within agencies.

African American Males in Foster Care and the Risk of Delinquency: The Value of Social Bonds and Permanence
Joseph P. Ryan, Mark F. Testa, and Fuhua Zhai

Juvenile delinquency remains a significant problem for child welfare systems throughout the United States. Victims of child abuse and neglect are more likely relative to children in the general population to engage in delinquency (Ryan & Testa, 2005; Widom, 1989). Although the magnitude of this relationship is not fully understood (Zingraff, Leiter, Myers, & Johnsen, 1993), the risk of delinquency is particularly high for African American males, adolescents, and children in substitute care settings. Unfortunately little is known about the factors that connect the experiences of maltreatment and delinquency. This lack of knowledge makes it nearly impossible to decrease the risk of delinquency for children in foster care. To improve the understanding of juvenile delinquency in the child welfare system, the current study tests aspects of social control theory within the context of foster care. We focus specifically on the effects of foster parent-foster child attachment, commitment, and permanence. The results indicate that strong levels of attachment decrease the risk of delinquency for youth in foster care. Involvement with religious organizations also decreases the risk of delinquency. In contrast, perceptions of placement instability, placement with relatives, and school suspensions are associated with an increased risk of delinquency.

Child Abuse and Neglect in Cambodian Refugee Families: Characteristics and Implications for Practice
Janet Chang, Siyon Rhee, and S. Megan Berthold

This study examines the characteristics and patterns of child maltreatment among Cambodian refugee families in Los Angeles and assesses the implications for child welfare practice with Cambodian refugee families. Data were extracted from 243 active Cambodian case files maintained by the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services (LAC-DCFS). Some of the major findings include (1) Cambodian child maltreatment cases were most frequently reported to the LAC-DCFS among various Asian Pacific ethnic groups; (2) Cambodian refugee families were more likely to be charged with neglect, while their Asian Pacific counterparts were more likely charged with physical abuse; (3) the circumstance under which maltreatment occurred most frequently was parental substance abuse and mental illness; and (4) while fathers who maltreated their child were likely to use alcohol, mothers were also more likely to have a mental health problem such as depression. This study suggests the importance of collaboration between Child Protective Service agencies, substance abuse programs, traditional healers, mental health services, and other social service agencies for effective child abuse prevention and intervention efforts.

November/December 2007

Youth Characteristics Associated with Behavioral and Mental Health Problems During the Transition to Residential Treatment Centers: The Odyssey Project Population
Amy J. L. Baker, Marc Archer, and Patrick Curtis

This study aimed to determine what youth characteristics were associated with emotional and behavioral problems exhibited within the first three months of placement in residential treatment centers (RTCs) in a sample of youth from 20 agencies in 13 states. Two primary research questions were addressed: 1) What characteristics were associated with behavior during the transition to care? 2) Were the characteristics associated with behavior during the transition the same for boys and girls? Data were drawn from the Time 1 phase of the longitudinal national Odyssey Project dataset developed by the Child Welfare League of America. Measures included an extensive child and family characteristics (CFC) form and the Achenbach Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL). The results revealed significant gender-specific patterns of associations between youth characteristics and behavior exhibited during the transition to RTC placement. Notably, a sexual abuse history was associated with Externalizing for girls and Internalizing for boys and entering on psychotropic medication was associated with Internalizing for girls and boys and Externalizing for boys only. Results suggest many avenues for refining practice.

Child Welfare Workplace: The State of the Workforce and Strategies to Improve Retention
Maria Scannapieco and Kelli Connell-Carrick

Child welfare systems throughout the United States are being closely scrutinized as sensational cases appear in the media in nearly every state. At the federal level, with the Child and Family Service Review process, the government is documenting that states across the country are not conforming to federal child welfare requirements (DHHS, 2007) put in place to ensure the safety and well-being of children. One of the most crucial underlying causes of these inadequacies is a workforce that lacks the manpower for the tasks it confronts. To meet performance standards for the seven major Adoption and Safe Family Act child welfare safety outcomes, child protection agencies must stop the outward flow of staff from the workplace. This paper presents a study examining correlates related to retention. It was found supervisors and co-workers play a crucial role in the retention of workers. Strategies are presented aimed at assisting states in ways to slow the turnover rate of workers in child welfare.

Social Networks, Informal Child Care, and Inadequate Supervision by Mothers
Carol Coohey

The purpose of this study is to determine whether less informal child care support from family and friends is related to supervisory neglect, and if there is a relationship, to test several explanations for why some mothers receive less child care. Thirty-two low-income mothers who did not adequately supervise their children were matched to 32 mothers who provided adequate supervision. The results showed the mothers who provided inadequate supervision received less child care support from their partners and relatives, but not their friends. These differences appear to be linked to several properties of the mothers' social networks. For example, the majority of the mothers who provided inadequate supervision either did not have a partner or knew them for less than one year. They had fewer family members living nearby and more negative relationships with them than the mothers who provided adequate supervision. To reduce chronic supervisory neglect, mothers may need assistance with both informal and formal child care support.

The Training Process of the Maryland Guardianship Assistance Project: A Collaborative Model for Kinship Foster Care
Pamela L. Thornton, Joshua N. Okundaye, and Donna Harrington

Understanding models of multidisciplinary collaborations in child welfare has become essential for policy development, program success, and improving outcomes for children in foster care. The authors present the state of Maryland's Guardianship Assistance Project (GAP) as a model of multidisciplinary collaboration in child welfare and describe the training process that supported the development of the model. Key components for effective collaborative practice, lessons learned, and recommendations from the GAP collaboration are presented.

Outcomes of a Randomized Trial of Continuum of Care Services for Children in a Child Welfare System
E. Wayne Holden, Susan Rousseau O'Connell, Qinghong Liao, Anna Krivelyova, Tim Connor, Gary M. Blau, and Dorian Long

The Connecticut Department of Children and Families Title IV-E waiver demonstration evaluated whether the well-being of children approved for residential mental health services could be improved, and lengths of stay in restrictive placements reduced, by providing case rate payments to community agencies to provide continuum of care services. Children between ages 7 and 15 were randomly assigned to either the demonstration group (n = 78) or to usual state-supported services (n = 79). One-year outcome results indicated that in a situation that is less costly, improvement in outcomes occurred in less restrictive settings. Continuum of care services were more effective in 1) returning children to in-home placements, 2) reducing the length of stay in restrictive placements, and (3) utilizing higher levels of case management through coordination among agencies and family support services.

Shaping Child Welfare Policy Via Performance Measurement
Clare Tilbury

Performance measurement is generally depicted as a neutral, technical exercise providing objective data for decision-making. But it also has a normative role in framing policy problems and solutions. This article explores the role of indicators in shaping child welfare, comparing stated policy with performance indicator regimes in England. It shows how indicators construct child welfare narrowly as investigation and placement, contradicting the more comprehensive family support approaches of policy and legislation.

September/October 2007 Special Issue: Effectively Addressing Mental Health Issues in Child Welfare Practice

Edited by
Julie Collins
Members of the Mental Health Advisory Board

Introduction
Julie Collins

This volume is dedicated to advances in policies, programs, and practices for effectively addressing the mental health issues in child welfare practice, and it reflects CWLA's and the Mental Health Advisory Board's commitment to ensuring children and their families receive effective mental health services that lead to their optimal well-being.

Creating More Trauma-Informed Services for Children Using Assessment-Focused Tools
Robyn Igelman, Nicole Taylor, Alicia Gilbert, Barbara Ryan, Alan Steinberg, Charles Wilson, and Gail Mann

This article promotes integrating assessment and evidence-based practice in the treatment of traumatized children through a review of two newly developed trauma assessment tools: (1) the Child Welfare Trauma Referral Tool (CWT), and (2) Assessment-Based Treatment for Traumatized Children: A Trauma Assessment Pathway Model (TAP). These tools use pathways and algorithms to increase understanding of individual child trauma victims, and assist professionals working with children to make appropriate referral and treatment decisions within both child welfare and mental health contexts.

Mental Health Assessment of Infants in Foster Care
Judith Silver and Sheryl Dicker

Infants placed in foster care are at high risk for emotional and behavioral problems. Assessment of their mental health must account for their often-adverse life experiences prior to placement and the involvement of multiple systems that shape their lives in lieu of parents' authority. This article presents practice guidelines for infant mental health evaluations with consideration of legal requirements and the unique issues conferred by foster care.

The Influence of Family Environment on Mental Health Need and Service Use Among Vulnerable Children
Richard Thompson, Michael A. Lindsey, Diana J. English, Kristin M. Hawley, Sharon Lambert, and Dorothy C. Browne

Children in child welfare are especially likely to have unmet mental health needs. The role of family factors in children's use of mental health services was examined in a longitudinal sample of 1,075 maltreated or at-risk children. Vulnerable family environment (poor family functioning, low social support, and caregiver psychological distress) is an important predictor of children's mental health needs. It also predicts them not having these needs met.

Effectively Addressing Mental Health Issues in Child Welfare Practice: The Family Connection
Elisabeth Pufahl

Nonprofit family-run organizations, such as Tennessee Voices for Children (TVC), are providing leadership in advocating for and delivering services to children and families in need. Utilizing a family-driven approach and a staff partially comprised of parent-professionals, TVC's Nashville Connection and Family Connection programs have strengthened families by providing alternatives to state custody for children and families living with serious emotional or behavioral problems. TVC's Nashville Connection and Family Connection programs did this by coordinating support services, building community bridges, and providing comprehensive in-home services.

Effectively Addressing Mental Health Issues in Permanency-Focused Child Welfare Practice
Laura A. Ornelas, Deborah N. Silverstein, and Sherylle Tan

Children and families built by adoption or relative caregiving have specialized needs. This paper proposes a rubric for the central elements of permanency-focused mental health services in child welfare practice. Kinship Center provides an innovative mental health service delivery system, weaving foster and adoptive placement programs, adoption specialty Wraparound1, and a relative caregiver support program into its permanency-focused children's clinics. Named a 'promising practice' in child behavioral health services (McCarthy & McCullough, 2003), Kinship Center's mental health clinics are publicly funded and are a significant contribution to a managed care behavioral health approach in three diverse California counties. Six years of clinical outcomes data provide promising preliminary information for the field.

Fostering Healthy Futures: An Innovative Preventive Intervention for Preadolescent Youth in Out-of-Home Care
Heather N. Taussig, Sara E. Culhane, and Daniel Hettleman

Fostering Healthy Futures (FHF) is a randomized, controlled trial of an innovative preventive intervention for preadolescent youth (ages 9-11) placed in out-of-home care. The program is designed to promote child well-being by identifying and addressing mental health issues, preventing adolescent risk behaviors, and promoting competence. This paper describes the design, implementation, and uptake of the FHF program as well as our approaches to the challenges of conducting research-based prevention work within a child welfare setting.

Reducing Transfers of Children in Family Foster Care Through Onsite Mental Health Interventions
Carmen Collado and Paul Levine

This article describes a successful pilot project in New York City that effectively reduced the number of transfers or replacements of children in family foster care through the placement of mental health clinicians onsite at two foster care agencies.

Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports: Using Strength-Based Approaches to Enhance the Culture of Care in Residential and Day Treatment Education Environments
Thomas Kalke, Ann Glanton, and Maria Cristalli

Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports model, first introduced into public schools, has been extended to alternative settings. This article highlights applying PBIS to day treatment and residential treatment education programs increasingly challenged to serve seriously emotionally disturbed youth whose risk factors have become more complex. The results demonstrate a more positive environment enhancing children's treatment and education along with decreasing numbers of safety holds and need for out-of-classroom supports.

Psychotropic Medication Management for Youth in State Care: Consent, Oversight, and Policy Considerations
Michael W. Naylor, Christine V. Davidson, D. Jean Ortega-Piron, Arin Bass, Alice Gutierrez, and Angela Hall

The use of psychotropic medications in youth with emotional disturbances in state custody is increasing and presents unique challenges concerning consent and oversight. We examine various means that state child welfare agencies use to provide consent for and oversight of psychotropic medications for children in state custody and describe benefits of a consent process that provides for expert consultation to the child welfare agency and prescribing clinicians, case-specific and systemic oversight of psychotropic medication use, and education for stakeholders.

July/August 2007

Racial Disparity in Minnesota's Child Protection System
Erik P. Johnson, Sonja Clark, Matthew Donald, Rachel Pedersen, and Catherine Pichotta

Minnesota has been recognized by several studies as a state with a significant amount of racial disparity in its child protection system. This study, using 2001 data from Minnesota's Social Services Information Service, was conducted to determine at which of the six decision points in Minnesota's child welfare system racial disparities are statistically significant. The authors employ a nested model to examine a child's journey through the Minnesota child protection system. Using binary logistic regression, they are able to determine the odds that a child belonging to a particular racial or ethnic group would progress to the next decision point.

Addressing the Impact of Foster Care on Biological Children and Their Families
Maha N. Younes and Michele Harp

This study explores from a dual perspective the impact of the fostering process on biological children in the home. Ten foster parents and their biological children were interviewed separately. The impact of foster care on the psychological, educational, and social well-being of biological children and their relationship with parents and siblings were examined. The exploration reveals a paradoxical and life-changing process as seen through the eyes of biological children and their parents.

Mothers' Strategies for Protecting Children from Batterers: The Perspectives of Battered Women Involved in Child Protective Services
Wendy L. Haight, Woochan S. Shim, Linda M. Linn, and Laura Swinford

During in-depth, individual interviews, seventeen battered women involved in the public child welfare system discussed the effects of domestic violence on their children, and their strategies for protecting and supporting them. Most mothers articulated the detrimental effects of domestic violence on their children and coherent strategies to protect them physically, but described difficulties supporting young children psychologically. Collectively, mothers reported a number of apparently useful strategies for supporting childrenís psychological resilience. Implications for intervention are discussed.

Immigrant Families and Public Child Welfare: Barriers to Services and Approaches for Change
Ilze Earner

This article describes the results of two focus groups of immigrant parents who recently experienced child protective investigations in New York City. The purpose of this study was: 1) to hear immigrant parents describe their experiences with child welfare services, 2) to identify barriers to services these parents encountered, and 3) advocate for changes in policy, program, and practice so that public child welfare services can effectively address the special needs of immigrant families, children, and youth. Barriers to child welfare services identified by immigrant parents in this study were caseworker's lack of knowledge about immigration status, cultural misunderstanding, and language access issues. Recommendations for addressing these barriers are offered.

What Criteria Do Child Protective Services Investigators Use to Substantiate Exposure to Domestic Violence?
Carol Coohey

The primary purpose of this study is to determine whether child protective services investigators apply a recognizable set of criteria to substantiate batterers and victims of battering for exposing their children to domestic violence. Although domestic violence occurred in 35% of the 1,248 substantiated incidents of child maltreatment, only 31 (7.1%) couples were investigated for exposing a child to domestic violence or failing to protect a child from domestic violence. All of the batterers investigated and in the caregiver role when their children were exposed to domestic violence were substantiated. The unsubstantiated victims of battering tended to use more protective behaviors (M=3.82) than the substantiated victims (M=2.00); yet, at the case level, using more than one protective behavior did not seem to be a criterion used to substantiate the victims. Instead, it appears that investigators were discriminating between those protective behaviors by the victims that ended contact between the batterers and the children-for a substantial amount of time-and those that did not in both the substantiation and removal decision. Key issues related to applying criteria in incidents involving domestic violence are discussed along with recommendations to further refine and document them.
The tables for this article appeared incorrectly in the July/August issue. They will be reprinted in our November/December issue.

Improving Healthcare for Children Entering Foster Care
Christina Risley-Curtiss and Belva Stites

Despite the fact that children in foster care are, perhaps, the most vulnerable children, healthcare for them has been lacking woefully for many years. A growing body of research has documented the need for such care as well as the failure of child welfare agencies to make major improvements in providing healthcare to foster children. Nonetheless, current efforts are being made to change this situation. This article reports on one effort to improve the provision and timeliness of health exams for children entering care. One rural and one urban county served as project treatment sites, with two additional rural and urban counties serving as control sites. The treatment sites achieved a statistically significant improvement in their rate of exam completion as compared to the control sites. The study finds that despite an existing policy for healthcare for children entering foster care, legislation mandating additional efforts, shortened time frames, and provision for judicial oversight are needed for improvement.

May/June 2007

Partitioning the Adoption Process to Better Predict Permanency
Tom McDonald, Alan Press, Peggy Billings, and Terry Moore

Under federal outcome standards established by the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997, discharges to adoption are expected to occur within 24 months of the most recent removal from home for at least 32% of cases. In the research recounted here, adoption is treated as a process composed of two discrete steps: adoptive placement, and adoption finalization. It was hypothesized that the predictors of completion may differ for each step, offering direction for practice and policy. Predictors included child characteristics, maltreatment history, placement history, system variables, and service delivery variables. Children's adoption event history was viewed through five annual entry cohorts, including all children with adoption case plans, rather than the exit cohorts of the federal measure, which includes only adopted children. Over this five-year period, the length of time from removal to adoption finalization decreased significantly, primarily as a result of decreased time from adoption placement to finalization. Child and family characteristics and abuse/neglect history were found to be much more predictive in the analysis of timely adoption placement than of time from placement to finalization. These and other significant predictors suggest strategies for improving timely adoption outcomes.

An Exploratory Study of Drug-exposed Infants: Case Substantiation and Subsequent Child Maltreatment
An-Pyng Sun, Margaret P. Freese, and Mark Fitzgerald

This study explores factors related to drug-exposed infants' case substantiation and subsequent child maltreatment. Child protective services computerized administrative data (from January 1998 to October 2001) were obtained from an urban Nevada county. The data included 457 drug-exposed infant cases. Chi-square, t-test, one-way ANOVA, and logistic regression were used to analyze the data. Results indicate that: (1) drug-exposed infant case substantiation was related to type of drug exposure and the unit to which the case was assigned, but not to the mother's ethnicity; and (2) subsequent maltreatment among drug-exposed infants was related to the mother's age and prior parental alcohol abuse, but not to the type of drug exposure, nor to the initial drug-exposed infant status of case substantiation. Implications for child welfare practice and research are discussed.

Family Group Decision Making and Disproportionality in Foster Care: A Case Study
David Crampton and Wendy Lewis Jackson

Research on the disproportionate number of children of color in the child welfare system suggests that we should focus on key decision points such as investigations, substantiations, and placements to understand how experiences of children vary by race and ethnicity. This article describes one community's efforts to use Family Group Decision Making in placement decisions to reduce disproportionality in foster care by diverting children from regular foster care services and keeping them within their extended families.

Characteristics of Difficult-to-Place Youth in State Custody: A Profile of the Exceptional Care Pilot Project Population
Marilyn P. Armour and James Schwab

This study examines the characteristics of Texas youth designated as 'most difficult to place' recipients of service under the "Exceptional Care Pilot Project" (N = 46). Findings include, among others, high levels of comorbid psychiatric disturbance (> 3 diagnostic groupings), physical (78.3%) and sexual (88%) maltreatment, and placement breakdowns (m = 4.8 therapeutic placements). This initial profile of the population provides a base for helping other states identify and plan for the needs of their most troubled youth.

Mental Health and Behavioral Problems of Youth in the Child Welfare System: Residential Treatment Centers Compared to Therapeutic Foster Care in the Odyssey Project Population
Amy J.L. Baker, David Kurland, Patrick Curtis, Gina Alexander, and Cynthia Papa-Lentini

This is the first multisite, prospective study of behavioral and mental health disorders of youth in residential treatment centers (RTC) and therapeutic foster care (TFC), and the first study to compare the two. This study addressed two questions in a sample of 22 agencies in 13 states: (1) how prevalent were emotional and behavioral disorders in the youth admitted to RTCs and TFC?, and (2) were the youth in RTCs significantly more likely to be disturbed than youth served in TFCs? Data were drawn from the Time 1 phase of the longitudinal national "Odyssey Project" developed by the Child Welfare League of America (1995). Measures included an extensive child and family characteristics form (CFC) and the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL). The results revealed extremely high levels of behavioral and mental health disorders in the sample as a whole, well above the norms for a non-child welfare population. The prevalence of disorder in the RTC population was substantially greater than in the TFC population.

Methamphetamine and the Changing Face of Child Welfare: Practice Principles for Child Welfare Workers
Kelli Connell-Carrick

Methamphetamine use and production is changing child welfare practice. Methamphetamine is a significant public health threat (National Institute of Justice, 1999) reaching epidemic proportions (Anglin, Burke, Perrochet, Stamper, & Dawud-Nouris, 2000). The manufacturing of methamphetamine is a serious problem for the child welfare system, yet child welfare has not addressed the needs of children living in homes where methamphetamine is manufactured (U.S. Department of Justice, 2002; DOJ, 2003; Altshuler, 2005). This article presents key issues for child welfare workers related to the use, production, and effects of methamphetamine on children and families, and identifies practice principles for child welfare workers in order to ensure safety for victims, parents, and workers themselves.

March/April 2007

Sibling Kinnections: A Clinical Visitation Program
Joyce Maguire Pavao, Melissa St. John, Rebecca Ford Cannole, Tara Fischer, Anthony Maluccio, and Suzanne Peining

The growing literature on sibling relationships throughout their lifespans is of great importance to those working in the child welfare system, and in adoption services in particular. Sibling bonds are important to all of us, but they are particularly vital to children from disorganized or dysfunctional families. These relationships assume even greater importance when children from these families enter the care system. Supporting and sustaining sibling bonds should be, and most often is, a priority throughout the child welfare system, with practice literature providing guidelines for arranging and sustaining sibling contact. However, children in the care system may also have dysfunctional sibling relationships as a result of their early experiences, and sibling visitation alone may not be enough to ensure a healthy, long-lasting relationship among siblings. Some form of sibling therapy, or 'clinically supervised visitation,' may be required to help children remove the barriers to form mutually satisfying relationships and to reinforce life-long relationships with each other.

Adoption Now: A Joint Initiative of New York's Courts and Child Welfare System
Kathleen R. DeCataldo and Karen Carroll

In November 2002, Chief Judge Judith Kaye attended the National Adoption Day festivities in Albany County and New York County (Manhattan). Although pleased that 600 adoptions were being finalized statewide on this special day, she was concerned to learn more than 6,000 other children were free for adoption but had not yet found permanent families. Judge Kaye reached out to New York State Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) Commissioner John A. Johnson and New York City Administration for Children's Services (ACS) then-Commissioner William Bell to come together and begin a discussion to identify and resolve systemic barriers to adoption. At a press conference in May 2003, Chief Judge Kaye, Governor Pataki, New York City Mayor Bloomberg, and Judges and Commissioners representing counties from across the state announced the Adoption Now initiative that set a goal of finalizing adoptions for 5,000 children (3800 in New York City and 1200 upstate) by the end of 2003.

Making MEPA-IEP Work: Tools for Professionals
Ruth McRoy, Maryanne Mica, Madelyn Freundlich, and Joe Kroll

The Multiethnic Placement Act of 1994 and the Interethnic Adoption Provisions of 1996 (MEPA-IEP) require states to develop plans that "provide for the diligent recruitment of potential foster and adoptive families that reflect the ethnic and racial diversity of children in the state for whom foster and adoptive homes are needed." This paper explores the background of MEPA-IEP, describes the disparate outcomes for minority children in the child welfare system, and identifies agency challenges in finding permanent families for African American children. Tools are provided for successfully recruiting families while following MEPA-IEP and avoiding potentially discriminatory practices in placement decisionmaking.

Assessing Lesbian and Gay Prospective Foster and Adoptive Families: A Focus on the Home Study Process
Gerald P. Mallon

Foster care and adoption by gay men and lesbians is not a new phenomenon. Children and youth have always been placed by states and public agencies in homes with gay and lesbian parents. Some gay men and lesbians have fostered or adopted children independently from private agencies or have made private adoption arrangements with individual birthmothers, while others have fostered or adopted through the public system. Drawing on research literature, practice wisdom from 31 years of child welfare experiences, and case examples, this article offers child welfare professionals guidelines for competent assessment with prospective foster or adoptive parents who identify as lesbian or gay.

Strengthening Adoption Practice, Listening to Adoptive Families
Anne Atkinson and Patricia Gonet

In-depth interviews with 500 adoptive families who received postadoption services through Virginia's Adoptive Family Preservation (AFP) program paint a richly detailed picture of the challenges adoptive families face and what they need to sustain adoption for many years after finalization. Findings document the need for support in a variety of forms, including respite, counseling, and information. Numerous implications for strengthening adoption practice through effective training and technical assistance are discussed.

Supporting Child Welfare Supervisors to Improve Worker Retention
Miriam Landsman

Recent child welfare research has identified supervisors as key to retaining qualified and committed workers. This paper describes implementation of a federally funded child welfare training initiative designed to improve worker retention largely through developing, implementing, and evaluating a statewide supervisor training program in a Midwestern state. Unique to this collaborative effort was involving all child welfare supervisors in identifying needed content components, developing competencies, and conducting self-assessments.

A Comparative Evaluation of Preservice Training of Kinship and Nonkinship Foster/Adoptive Families
Brian Christenson and Jerry McMurtry

In 2003, Idaho selected the Foster PRIDE/Adopt PRIDE preservice training and resource family development program. PRIDE participants (n=228) completed a pre and posttest survey based on the PRIDE training competencies in 2004-2005. Results indicate that PRIDE is an effective training and resource family development program. Providing and evaluating foster/adoptive parent preservice training programs can assist child welfare programs in making a positive difference in the lives of families and children involved in the child welfare system while increased cost-savings by retaining foster/adoptive families over time.

Home Study Methods for Evaluating Prospective Resource Families: History, Current Challenges, and Promising Approaches
Thomas M. Crea, Richard P. Barth, and Laura K. Chintapalli

Every state requires a home study before the placement of foster children for adoption. This article examines the history of home studies, presents results from expert interviews on the changing processes and purposes of home studies, and explores current challenges for the field. The article also introduces the Structured Analysis Family Evaluation (SAFE), a uniform home study format that encourages consistent family evaluations across workers, agencies, and jurisdictions. The article clarifies how SAFE may address challenges facing foster care and adoption practice.

January/February 2007

Characteristics of Children in Residential Treatment in New York State
Nan Dale, Amy J.L. Baker, Emily Anastasio, and Jim Purcell

This study addresses three questions about the population of children and families served in the highest level of care in the child welfare system in New York State residential treatment centers (RTCs): (1) How prevalent are emotional and behavioral problems in the youth entering RTCs? (2) Has the proportion of youth with such problems increased compared to ten years ago? (3) Are there identifiable subgroups of youth entering RTCs? One-fourth of RTC admissions in FY 2001 were randomly selected from a representative sample of 16 RTCs. The study completed standardized data collection instrument based on a review of agency records, and included information that was known at the time each child was admitted. The results show significant increases compared to ten years earlier in the proportion of youth with mental health problems and juvenile justice backgrounds. The findings suggest that youth who traditionally have been served by other systems of care are now being served in the child welfare system. The increased treatment needs of these youth and the heterogeneity of the RTC population have important implications for policies, programs, and practice.

Birthfamilies as permanency resources for children in long-term foster care
Susan C. Mapp and Cache Steinberg

Provisions of the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 mandated shorter time frames for making permanency decisions and facilitating adoption. Yet for many children, foster care continued to be a significant portion of their life experiences. This project explored the potential permanency option of birthfamilies and extended kin for children who languished in foster care while being free for adoption. Eighteen children achieved permanent placement with their birthfamilies. In addition, staff found that although many families could not provide permanent placements, they could offer appropriate relationships with the children. This project team recommends viewing family relationships as an integral component where placement is one option on a continuum that includes letters, phone calls, and visits.

Organizational Constructs as Predictors of Effectiveness in Child Welfare Interventions
Jane Yoo, Devon Brooks, and Rino Patti

Organizational context, including line-worker characteristics and service settings, may help explain the equivocal findings of intervention studies in the field of child welfare. Yet organizational context has been largely ignored in studies of child welfare interventions. The purpose of this article is to expound upon the likely role of the organizational context in explaining service effectiveness in child welfare. Several bodies of literature within child welfare and human service organization and administration are reviewed and synthesized. A conceptual framework that can be used to guide future child welfare research is then proposed.

A Clinical Consultation Model for Child Welfare Supervisors
Virginia C. Strand and Lee Badger

This article presents findings from a consultation project conducted by faculty from six schools of social work with approximately 150 child welfare supervisors over a two-year period. The purpose of the program was to assist supervisors with their roles as educators, mentors, and coaches for casework staff, specifically in relationship to case practice decisions. The consultation model, the development of the curriculum, the project implementation, and the results of the initial assessment are described.

Improving Child Welfare Performance: Retrospective and Prospective Approaches
Dennis E. Zeller and Thomas J. Gamble

Some of the key outcome measures used in the first federal Child and Family Service Reviews rely on retrospective cohorts and exclude key portions of the population from the analysis. Most discussions of this issue have focused on the extent to which retrospective measurement is a valid basis on which to judge states' performance (Courtney, Needell, & Wulczyn, 2003). The analyses presented here suggest that in some instances the relative or comparative results of retrospective and prospective measurements exhibit few differences. On the other hand, the analyses also make clear that retrospective measurements have two serious deficiencies in relation to improving performance. First, they are likely to identify the wrong issues, and, second, even when they identify the correct issues they fail to provide information needed to improve performance. This article suggests some practical ways in which the information currently available to child welfare agencies can be used to correct these problems.

Domestic Violence Screening and Service Acceptance Among Adult Victims in a Dependency Court Setting
James E. Rivers, Candice L. Maze, Stefanie A. Hannah, Cindy S. Lederman

Many child welfare systems are unable to effectively identify and address co-occurring domestic violence and child maltreatment. In response, the Dependency Court Intervention Program for Family Violence implemented a protocol to identify indicators of domestic violence in families involved with child protection proceedings. This article highlights data that demonstrate the ability of an outreach and screening process to identify adult victims of domestic violence in dependency court and to offer them appropriate intervention services.

November/December 2006

Facilitating Visitation for Infants with Prenatal Substance Exposure
Caroline Long Burry and Lois Wright

Permanency planning for infants with prenatal substance exposure is challenging due to characteristics of the infants and the ongoing substance use, or relapse of the parents. Visitation is a primary mechanism through which child welfare workers determine and support permanency planning. Productive use of visitation for permanency planning for infants with prenatal substance exposure is described, along with strategies for skillfully focusing visits on issues and needs relevant to this population.

Parent-Child Interaction Therapy: Application of an Empirically Supported Treatment to Maltreated Children in Foster Care
Susan G. Timmer, Anthony J. Urquiza, Amy D. Herschell, Jean M. McGrath, Nancy M. Zebell, Alissa L. Porter, and Eric C. Vargas

One of the more serious problems faced by child welfare services involves the management of children with serious behavioral and mental health problems. Aggressive and defiant foster children are more likely to have multiple foster care placements, require extraordinary social services resources, and have poor short- and long-term mental health outcomes. Interventions that work with challenging foster children and enhance foster parents' skills in managing problem behaviors are needed. This article presents the successful results of a single case study examining the application of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) with an aggressive young boy and his foster-adoptive parent. PCIT is a dyadic intervention that has been identified as an empirically supported treatment for abused children and for children with different types of behavioral disruption. The application of PCIT to assist foster parents is a promising direction for child welfare services.

The Impact of Serial Transitions on Behavioral and Psychological Problems Among Children in Child Protection Services
Marie-Christine Saint-Jacques, Richard Cloutier, Robert Pauzé, Marie Simard, Marie-Hélène Gagné, Amélie Poulin

This study focuses on the impacts of serial transitions on externalized and internalized behavior disorders, anxiety, and depression among children in child protection services. The research was carried out with a sample of 741 children. The findings demonstrate that the number of times a family is blended is a stronger predictive factor for children's adjustment than is the family structure at the time of the interview. In predicting externalized and internalized behavior problems among children, however, the effect of family structure disappears in favor of the variables associated with family functioning and family climate.

The Relationship Between Child Disability and Living Arrangement in Child Welfare
Stephanie C. Romney, Alan J. Litrownik, Rae R. Newton, Anna Lau

The influence of disabilities on placement outcomes was examined for 277 children who were removed from their biological parents due to substantiated maltreatment. Results indicated that children with a disability were less likely to reunify and more likely to reside in non-kin foster care two years later than typical children. Children with cognitive, emotional/behavioral, and physical disabilities were over four times more likely to be permanently living in non-kin foster care than to be reunified.

An Analysis of Selected Measures of Child Well-Being for Use at School- and Community-Based Family Resource Centers
Mieko K. Smith and Carl F. Brun

This article describes standardized instruments designed to measure physical and emotional health outcomes among children for a statewide implementation of community- and school-based family resource centers. It includes descriptive and psychometric information, and strengths and weaknesses of two measures of physical well-being and four measures of emotional and behavioral well-being, based on criteria selected by the evaluation team. The authors conclude by recommending those instruments that accommodated the evaluation goals of the family support programs.

Adolescents' Feelings about Openness in Adoption: Implications for Adoption Agencies
Jerica M. Berge, Tai J. Mendenhall, Gretchen M. Wrobel, Harold D. Grotevant, Ruth G. McRoy

Adoption research commonly uses parents' reports of satisfaction when examining openness in adoption arrangements. This qualitative study aimed to fill a gap in the adoption research by using adolescents' voices to gain a better understanding of their adoption experiences. Adopted adolescents (n = 152) were interviewed concerning their satisfaction with the openness in their adoption arrangements with their birthmother. Results and implications are discussed in relation to how adoption agencies can use this information to further their work with adopted adolescents and their families and to understand more fully the recent trend towards adoption agencies offering more open adoption arrangements.

September/October 2006

Thinking Mindfully About Parenting and Parenting Education
Dana McDermott

This volume is dedicated to advances in the theory, research, and practice of parenting education and support, and it reflects CWLA's and the National Parenting Education Network's focus on improving the lives of children by supporting the parents and care providers who nurture and guide them. The work of CWLA is well known to readers but that of the National Parenting Education Network (NPEN) may not be. In this introduction, NPEN's vision, mission, and core principles are briefly described (see www.npen.org for further elaboration), and an overview of the articles included in this volume is provided.

Parenting: A Relationship-Oriented and Competency-Based Process
Harriet Heath

Parents have a complex task of guiding a specific child to maturity by using the opportunities offered by the environment, while avoiding its detrimental aspects. This article develops a theory of the parenting process that describes components of the parental role; situations where development and, thus, parenting occurs; the responsibility of parents in those situations; the attributes parents use to fulfill their role; and implications for professionals.

Parents as Developing Adult Learners
Catherine Marienau and Joy Segal

Drawing largely on the literature from adult learning and development, this article presents parents as continuous learners whose critical reflections on their experiences with parenting can be rich fodder for their growth and development. Theories and models are highlighted that may suggest a wider repertoire of approaches for helping professionals who are facilitating parents in their learning and growth.

Competencies of a Parent Educator: What Does a Parent Educator Need To Know and Do?
Betty Cooke

This article examines efforts by organizations and states to describe the competencies of a parent educator, to explain what parent educators teach parents through parent education, and to show how that informs parent educator competencies. It summarizes examples of certification, licensure, and other accountability programs, and identifies the issues involved, along with ways practitioners can use these identified competencies to assess their level of competency. Finally, the article concludes with a call to continue developing certification and other accountability programs to insure quality in parent education.

Building a Professional Development System: A Case Study of North Carolina's Parenting Education Experiences
George M. Bryan, Jr., Karen DeBord, and Karen Schrader

Designing a professional development system for parent educators requires weaving together multiple pieces from within the network of organizations providing parenting education. North Carolina examined how to build a system using the influence of evidence-based programs as well as professional credentialing for parenting educators. A system built with professionals who understand sound parenting practices and networked together to use best practices with parents is critical to support families and prevent child abuse.

Thinking Critically About the Internet: Suggestions for Practitioners
Nancy Martland and Fred Rothbaum

Parents have a long history of seeking child-rearing in-formation in the popular media. This trend continues on the World Wide Web, with the number of parents online still on the rise. The Web offers speed, 24-hour access, and extremely large quantities of child rearing information. Although the availability of huge quantities of child-rearing information has many positive aspects, there is a serious risk of exposure to erroneous and potentially harmful information due to the absence of monitoring of online material. This article summarizes the literature on parents' Web use and describes several steps that, if taken, will help to lessen the chance of parents' exposure to risky online material. The steps include: making parents aware of the risks, providing them with sets of screened sites that they can trust, and teaching them a few simple Web skills to improve their searching and their assessment of sites' trustworthiness.

Trends in Popular Parenting Books and the Need for Parental Critical Thinking
Kelli Connell-Carrick

Parents continually struggle to find better ways to make decisions regarding their children, and many use popular parenting books. The purpose of this article is to discuss the critical thinking skills needed by parents and practitioners who work with parents to make informed parenting decisions influenced by popular media. It also addresses strategies on sleeping, cosleeping, feeding and toilet training in popular parenting books, and the corresponding empirical evidence found in the scientific literature.

Parents and Their Young Adult Children: Transitions to Adulthood
Idy Barasch Gitelson and Dana McDermott

This paper considers how parents are affected by and play a role in the lives of their young adult children. The years during which young people make the transition to adulthood has changed significantly in recent years- this transition now takes place over a longer period of time. We describe how young people experience these years; how they affect their parents and parent-child relationships; and how this time period is experienced by vulnerable youth.

Closer to Home: Parent Mentors in Child Welfare
Edward Cohen and Linda Canan

This article addresses the emerging use of parent mentors--parents who have successfully negotiated the child welfare system and provide support and advocacy to others. The theoretical justification, roles, and expected outcomes and benefits of parent mentors are explored. The organizational factors thought to be required for such programs are also described, drawing on the available literature and the practice experience of a recently implemented Parent Partners program in a county child welfare agency.

Future Challenges for Parenting Education and Support
Harriet Heath and Glen Palm

The authors of this special edition of Child Welfare have shared current shifts in perspective about parenting and parenting education that are raising some interesting challenges. We will first briefly review the shifts identified in the articles presented here. Second, we will raise questions about the implications of these shifts for the field of parenting education.

July/August 2006

Child Death Review Teams: A Vital Component of Child Protection
Neil J. Hochstadt

The alarming number of children killed and seriously injured as a result of child maltreatment and neglect has led to increased calls for action. In response, interdisciplinary and multiagency child death review teams have emerged as an important component of child protection. Paradoxically, child death review teams are among the least visible and understood elements in efforts to protect children. This article examines the role and functions of child death review teams and their contributions to child welfare in practice, prevention, and policy.

Indian Family Exception Doctrine: Still Losing Children Despite the Indian Child Welfare Act
Suzanne L. Cross

Since 1982, the Indian Family Exception Doctrine has been circumventing the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978. Although not clearly defined, the doctrine has been pivotal in several American Indian child welfare cases in the United States. Over time, the doctrine continues to evolve and self-define. Several phrases have become part of the definition, such as Indian family and culture. This doctrine presents major concerns and implications in the field of child welfare.

Comprehensive Family Services and Customer Satisfaction Outcomes
Ruth A. Huebner, Blake L. Jones, Viola P. Miller,Melba Custer, and Becky Critchfield

Comprehensive Family Services (CFS) is a strengths-based and partnership-oriented approach to casework implemented through multiple initiatives. This study examines the relationship between the practice of CFS and satisfaction of clients, foster parents, and community partners. CFS indicators are paired with statewide customer satisfaction survey results. CFS practices are associated with significantly higher customer satisfaction that improved over time for all groups. Although causality cannot be determined, the relationship is consistent, robust, and meaningful.

The Impact of State TANF Policy Decisions on Kinship Care Providers
Steven G. Anderson

Based on a survey of public assistance and child welfare agency staff, this article examines how state Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) policy decisions have affected kinship care providers. Findings indicate that most states have continued using TANF to provide income support to kinship caregivers, and some have used TANF to find related support services. These payments, however, are much lower than rates for licensed providers, and many kinship caregivers are subject to work, training requirements, and time limits.

May/June 2006

Language Delays Among Foster Children: Implications for Policy and Practice
Carol D. Stock and Philip A. Fisher

This article highlights the centrality of language in early childhood development and the potential for language delays to negatively affect long-term outcomes in educational and social domains. Given the high rate of language delays in the foster care population, an emphasis should be placed on assessing language skills among children ages 6 and younger entering foster care. The authors describe several existing approaches to assessing language skills and discuss obstacles to the widespread implementation of systematic evaluation among foster children. Finally, the authors discuss the need for research and programming to establish evidence-based practices that encourage the remediation of language delays in this highly vulnerable population.

Foster Youth Emancipating from Care: Caseworkers' Reports on Needs and Services
Sonya J. Leathers and Mark F. Testa

This article presents findings from a survey mailed to caseworkers, who answered questions about special needs, independent living skills, educational attainment, and services for 416 randomly selected foster youth in Illinois. A third of the adolescents had a mental health disorder, developmental disability, or other special need that their caseworkers believed would interfere with their ability to live independently. Additionally, urban youth were underserved relative to other youth. Youth with more behavior problems and educational and job skill deficits were less likely than other youth to continue to receive child welfare services past age 18, suggesting that services must be provided throughout adolescence to meet the needs of the most vulnerable clients.

Enhancing the Validity of Foster Care Follow-up Studies Through Multiple Alumni Location Strategies
Jason Williams, Alisa McWilliams, Tina Mainieri, Peter J. Pecora, and Karin La Belle

While family-based placement prevention services, family reunification programs, subsidized guardianship, and aggressive adoption programs are reducing the numbers of children spending long periods of time in substitute care, a significant number of America's children will come of age in foster care. Agencies and policymakers should use research and evaluation to assess the effectiveness of foster care in nurturing healthy adults and to explore ways to improve services. Outcome studies that have focused on locating and interviewing young or middle-aged adults emancipated from foster care have been hampered by modest response rates, limiting the field's ability to evaluate the efficacy of foster care programs. This article describes a set of strategies that were used to achieve higher response rates in two recent follow-up studies.

The Potential for Successful Family Foster Care: Conceptualizing Competency Domains for Foster Parents
Cheryl Buehler, Kathryn W. Rhodes, John G. Orme, and Gary Cuddeback

The potential to foster successfully starts with developing and supporting competency in 12 domains: providing a safe and secure environment, providing a nurturing environment, promoting educational attainment and success, meeting physical and mental healthcare needs, promoting social and emotional development, supporting diversity and children's cultural needs, supporting permanency planning, managing ambiguity and loss for the foster child and family, growing as a foster parent, managing the demands of fostering on personal and familial well-being, supporting relationships between children and their families, and working as a team member. This article describes each domain and reviews relevant research to help guide the assessment of practicing and future foster parents.

The Economics of Adoption of Children from Foster Care
Mary Eschelbach Hansen and Bradley A. Hansen

Federal initiatives since 1996 have intensified the efforts of states to achieve adoption for children in foster care. For many waiting children, the path to adoption is long. The authors offer an economic analysis of adoption from foster care, with an emphasis on the reasons why achieving the goal of adoption for all waiting children may be so difficult. The authors then estimate the determinants of adoptions from foster care across the states using data for fiscal years 1996 and 1997. Adoption assistance subsidy rates stand out as the most important determinant of adoptions from foster care, followed by use of alternatives (e.g., intercountry adoption). Adoptive matching on the basis of race does not appear to prevent adoptions from foster care in the aggregate, leaving flaws in the matching process, such as a lack of information and difficulty using the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children (ICPC), as a primary reason why children wait.

Predictors of Running Away from Family Foster Care
Andrea Nesmith

Running away is a frequent but little studied phenomenon among adolescents in foster care. Repeated running from care often leads to premature discharge and homelessness for youth. This article uses cumulative risk theory in the context of normative adolescent development to investigate predicators of running away from foster care. Results indicate risks stemming from individual, foster home, and child welfare system sources, which offer some insight for prevention and intervention.

Enhancing the Safety of Children in Foster Care and Family Support Programs: Automated Critical Incident Reporting
Eliot Brenner and Madelyn Freundlich

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.

Behavioral Health Service Use and Costs Among Children in Foster Care
Marion Becker, Neil Jordan, and Rebecca Larsen

This article compares behavioral health service use and cost for foster care versus nonfoster care children; children before, during, and after foster care placement; and successfully reunified versus nonsuccessfully reunified foster care children. Behavioral health service costs for children in foster care were higher than for children not in foster care. Children in foster care used more services during their foster care placement than before placement and after discharge. Nonsuccessfully reunified children received a significantly larger quantity of services than those successfully reunified.

March/April 2006 Special Issue: LGBTQ Youth in Child Welfare

The Model Standards Project: Creating Inclusive Systems for LGBT Youth in Out-of-Home Care
Shannan Wilber, Carolyn Reyes, and Jody Marksamer

This article describes the Model Standards Project (MSP), a collaboration of Legal Services for Children and the National Center for Lesbian Rights. The MSP developed a set of model professional standards governing the care of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youth in out-of-home care. This article provides an overview of the experiences of LGBT youth in state custody, drawing from existing research, as well as the actual experiences of youth who participated in the project or spoke with project staff. It will describe existing professional standards applicable to child welfare and juvenile justice systems, and the need for standards specifically focused on serving LGBT youth. The article concludes with recommendations for implementation of the standards in local jurisdictions.

Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Homeless Youth: An Eight-City Public Health Perspective
James M. Van Leeuwen, Susan Boyle, Stacy Salomonsen-Sautel, D. Nico Baker, J.T. Garcia, Allison Hoffman, and Christian J. Hopfer

This article reports on results of a one-day public health survey conducted in six states by homeless youth providers to measure and compare risk factors between lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) homeless youth and non-LGB homeless youth. This article intends to inform the child welfare field on existing gaps in services and areas where more training and technical support is necessary in providing services to homeless LGB youth. The findings point to substantial differences within the homeless youth sample and demonstrate that in addition to the public health risks young people face merely by being homeless, the risks are exacerbated for those who self-identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual. The article informs child welfare providers and policymakers about the substantial vulnerability of LGB youth beyond that of non-LGB homeless youth and the need to fund programming, training, technical assistance and further research to specifically respond to the complex needs of this population.

The Legal Rights of LGBT Youth in State Custody: What Child Welfare and Juvenile Justice Professionals Need to Know
Rudy Estrada and Jody Marksamer

Youth in state custody, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity, have federal and state constitutional and statutory rights. These rights guarantee a young person safety in their placement as well as freedom from deprivation of their liberty interest. Many lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth have these rights violated on a regular basis. Many cases in both the child welfare and juvenile justice contexts have resulted in extensive and time-consuming consent decrees as well as sizable damages awards. Knowledge of a youth's legal rights can help providers avoid legal liability while creating a safer and healthier environment for LGBT youth. This article provides a general overview of the successful federal legal claims that youth in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems have made, discussion of the rights generated as a result, particle application of these rights to the experiences of LGBT youth with hypothetical scenarios, a focus on specific rights that emanate from certain state laws, and a focus on specific concerns of transgender youth.

Hazards of Stigma: The Sexual and Physical Abuse of Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Adolescents in the United States and Canada
Elizabeth M. Saewyc, Carol L. Skay, Sandra L. Pettingell, Elizabeth A. Reis, Linda Bearinger, Michael Resnick, Aileen Murphy, and Leigh Combs

Some studies suggest lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) teens are at higher risk than peers for violence at home, in school, and in the community. That can bring them into the child welfare system or services for runaway and homeless teens. This study compared self-reported experiences of sexual and physical abuse based on sexual orientation and gender in seven population-based surveys of youth. The authors used c2 and age-adjusted odds of abuse to compare bisexual to heterosexual, mostly heterosexual, and gay and lesbian students. They also provide case studies to illustrate the experiences of such youth.

Transgender Children and Youth: A Child Welfare Practice Perspective
Gerald P. Mallon and Teresa DeCrescenzo

Using an ecological framework, the existing literature and research, and the authors' combined 60 years of clinical practice with children, youth, and families, this article examines gender variant childhood development from a holistic viewpoint where children, youth, and environments are understood as a unit in the context of their relationship to one another. The focus is limited to a discussion about the recognition of gender identity; an examination of the adaptation process through which gender variant children and youth go through to deal with the stress of an environment where there is not a "goodness of fit"; and a discussion of the overall developmental tasks of a transgender childhood and adolescence. Recommendations for social work practice with gender variant young people are presented in the conclusion of the paper.

Slamming the Closet Door: Working with Gay and Lesbian Youth in Care
D. Mark Ragg, Dennis Patrick, and Marjorie Ziefert

The developmental challenges of gay and lesbian youth are well understood by professionals in the field. Increasingly, professionals are extending this understanding to the plight of gay and lesbian youth living in out-of-home care. Such youth face additional challenges and a lack of support that greatly complicates the development of a positive identity. Inherent in these additional challenges is the responsiveness of professionals mandated to work with youth. This study explores critical worker competencies for supporting gay and lesbian foster youth. Twenty-one youth were interviewed and asked to describe workers who were facilitative and workers who inhibited positive development. The interview transcripts were assessed to identify critical competencies. This article shares critical youth themes and underlying practice competencies.

Issues of Shared Parenting of LGBTQ Children and Youth in Foster Care: Preparing Foster Parents for New Roles
Heather Craig-Oldsen, J. Ann Craig, and Thomas Morton

Foster parents have increasingly assumed new and challenging roles during the past decade. Meeting the developmental, attachment, and grieving needs of children and youth in out of home care is challenging by itself, but can become even more difficult with the issues that arise when the child is lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or questioning (LGBTQ). Preservice and in-service foster parent training programs can strengthen shared parenting skills by focusing on the universal critical issues of safety, well being, and permanence for children and youth in foster care. This article will focus on these skill areas: (1) sharing parenting to promote healthy growth and development of LGBTQ youth in foster care, (2) threats to safety of LGBTQ youth in foster care, and (3) general challenges and strategies for preparing foster parents of LGBTQ youth to build support systems.

Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Foster Parents: Strengths and Challenges for the Child Welfare System
A. Chris Downs and Steven E. James

Historically, a shortage of skilled and dedicated foster parents has existed in America. Lesbian, gay, or bisexual (LBG) foster parents have received little attention in the published literature. This article documents the challenges and successes of a group of 60 LGB foster parents. All participants provided foster parenting for public (state or county) agencies. The primary successes of this group included meaningful and gratifying parenting and successful testing of whether adoption might be a natural next step after foster parenting. The primary challenges included insensitive, inappropriate, and difficult social workers; state or local laws that worked against successful foster parenting by LGB adults; failure to recognize parents' partners; and lack of support by the system to acknowledge the important role of LGB parents. Numerous recommendations are identified for improving how LGB foster parents are supported within child welfare systems including foster parent and social worker training in LGB issues.

Achieving Permanency for LGBTQ Youth
Jill Jacobs and Madelyn Freundlich

This article brings together two significant efforts in the child welfare field: achieving permanence for youth in out-of-home care and meeting the needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) youth. During the past several years, a national movement has taken place to assure all children and youth have a permanent family connection before leaving the child welfare system; however, LGBTQ youth are not routinely included in the permanency discussions. At the same time, efforts in addressing the needs of LGBTQ youth have increased, but permanency is rarely mentioned as a need. This article offers models of permanence and practices to facilitate permanence with LGBTQ youth and their families. It also offers a youth-driven, individualized process, using youth development principles to achieve relational, physical, and legal permanence. Reunification efforts are discussed, including services, supports, and education required for youth to return to their family of origin. For those who cannot return home, other family resources are explored. The article also discusses cultural issues as they affect permanence for LGBTQ youth, and, finally, addresses the need for ongoing support services to sustain and support permanency.

Envisaging the Adoption Process to Strengthen Gay- and Lesbian-Headed Families: Recommendations for Adoption Professionals
John D. Matthews and Elizabeth P. Cramer

Although a growing number of child placement agencies are serving lesbians and gay men, a dearth of literature exists for adoption agency policies and practices related to working with this population. This article explores the unique characteristics and strengths of prospective gay and lesbian adoptive parents throughout each of the three phases of the adoption process--preplacement, placement, and postplacement--as well as provides suggestions for adoption professionals working with gays and lesbians. Data from a recent qualitative study of single, gay adoptive fathers are used to illustrate examples and expose areas of potential strengths of adoptive parents not generally explored in the preplacement or preparatory stage. Special attention also is given to the continuing needs of adoptive families headed by gays and lesbians after adoptive placement. Specifically explored are the needs for developing linkages with similar families, as well as providing resources designed to promote successful outcomes of adopted children raised by gays and   lesbians.

Regional Listening Forums: An Examination of the Methodologies Used by the Child Welfare League of America and Lambda Legal to Highlight the Experiences of LGBTQ Youth in Care
Rob Woronoff and Rudy Estrada

In 2002, the Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) and the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund began Fostering Transitions: CWLA/Lambda Joint Initiative to Support LGBTQ Youth and Adults Involved with the Child Welfare System. To document the needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) youth, as well as identify strategies for systems improvement, initiative staff associated with the joint initiative conducted a series of Regional Listening Forums in 13 cities in the United States. More than 500 participants attended the forums, representing 22 states from every region in the country. Participants included former and current youth in care as well as the adults who work most closely with them. This article focuses on the methodologies on which the forums were developed and conducted.

Putting the Pieces Together for Queer Youth: A Model of Integrated Assessment of Need and Program Planning
Heather M. Berberet

Needs assessments require staff with the necessary expertise to design the study, collect the data, analyze the data, and present results. They require money, time, and persistence, because the people one wishes to assess often are difficult to access. This article argues for the centrality of a well-done needs assessment when developing services for LGBTQ youth. Needs assessment methodology and adjunctive uses of the needs assessment data also are discussed. The authors present a needs assessment of LGBTQ youth living in out-of-home care in San Diego, California, as an example of the purpose, practicality, and power of a comprehensive needs assessment. The needs assessment identified several issues, as well as additional data supporting the project's necessity. The data also identified the most significant obstacles youth face in accessing housing and supportive services. Through the data collection process, non-LGBT housing providers better understood their need for additional training, and housing and city leadership communities obtained and spread knowledge of the project.

Outcomes for a Transitional Living Program Serving LGBTQ Youth in New York City
Theresa C. Nolan

Providing stable housing for runaway and homeless youth is a major function of a transitional living program. This article introduces the focus of one program working with LGBTQ youth in New York City and discusses some issues to consider when working with this population. The article also presents data associated with young people's lives after discharge. In any discussion of outcomes, both reason for discharge and length of stay play important roles in whether or not an exit is safe. Regardless of these two elements, the places youth move to when leaving programs are crucial to their safety and well-being. The exit can be safe even when a young person is discharged early from a program. This article presents types of exits, as well as status of employment and school enrollment at exit. Some youth and staff-identified lessons gained in the program also are discussed in detail. Types of aftercare services sought by discharged youth are specified. This article also describes any differences in outcomes for youth with and without foster care experience.

January/February 2006

Patterns of Child Maltreatment Referrals Among Asian and Pacific Islander Families
Yoshimi Pelczarski and Susan P. Kemp

Much of the available data on Asian American families who become involved with the child welfare system relies on global ethnic categories, such as the category Asian/Pacific Islander. To explore the diversity of experience that is hidden by such categories, this article analyzes two years of child maltreatment referrals for Asian and Pacific Island families in Washington state. The study findings show that considerable variation exists within the Asian and Pacific Islander population with regard to child protection referrals. Although Asian Americans as a whole were less likely to be referred to child protective services than other groups, the within group picture that these data capture is considerably more complex. Some Asian/Pacific Islander ethnic groups, particularly those which have experienced higher levels of social and economic stress, were more at risk of child welfare involvement than other groups. Such findings underscore the need for child welfare policies and practice that are sensitive to the considerable variability within the Asian/Pacific Islander community.

Health and Mental Health Services for Children in Foster Care: The Central Role of Foster Parents
Eileen Mayers Pasztor, David Swanson Hollinger, Moira Inkelas, and Neal Halfon

It is well documented that children enter foster care with special health and mental health needs and, while in care, those conditions are often exacerbated. However, less attention has been given to foster parents who have the most contact with these children. Results are presented from a national study on the developmental, health and mental health care needs of children in foster care that included foster parents' perspectives and observations. Their role in improving child well being is explained and recommendations for policy, practice and advocacy also are included.

Risk Assessment in Child Sexual Abuse Cases
Jill S. Levenson and John W. Morin

Despite continuing improvements in risk assessment for child protective services (CPS) and movement toward actuarial prediction of child maltreatment, current models have not adequately addressed child sexual abuse. Sexual abuse cases present unique and ambiguous indicators to the investigating professional, and risk factors differ from those related to physical abuse and neglect. Incorporation of research on risk factors specifically related to sexual offender recidivism into existing CPS risk assessment models may improve the ability to assess the risk of future sexual maltreatment to children. This article reviews the literature on risk factors for sexual offense recidivism and discusses their relevance and application to CPS assessment models. An evidence-based model for assessing risk in child sexual abuse cases is proposed.

Child Welfare Workers: Who They Are and How They View the Child Welfare System
Maristela C. Zell

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.

November/December 2005

Coping with Parental Loss Because of Termination of Parental Rights
Kerri M. Schneider and Vicky Phares

This article addresses the process by which children and adolescents cope with severe acute stress of parental loss from causes other than divorce or death. Participants were 60 children and adolescents from a residential treatment facility. Most had experienced neglect, physical abuse, and sexual abuse, and their parents had their parential rights terminated. Measures of symptomatology indicated that children reported low levels of depressive symptoms, whereas caregivers reported the children were experiencing significant psychological problems. Children used avoidant coping strategies more often than emotion-focused coping strategies, which, in turn, were used more than problem-focused coping strategies. Results are discussed in terms of helping children cope with parental loss.

Mediated Reunions in Adoption: Findings from an Evaluation Study
Carol Cumming Speirs, Sydney Duder, Richard Sullivan, Silvia Kirstein, Mona Propst, and Dolores Meade

In Canada, there are long waiting lists of adopted persons and birthparents seeking information or actual reunions. In the province of Quebec, the government authorized a pilot project, involving a fee-for-service program and use of contract social workers to supplement agency staff as intermediaries in the reunion process. This article reports on the project's evaluation and provides birthparents' and adoptees' responses to reunion. A survey of clients who used this service found a high level of satisfaction. There were, however, some significant differences between birthparents and adoptees as well as between those who were searching and those found.

Pathways to College for Former Foster Youth: Understanding Factors That Contribute to Educational Success
Joan M. Merdinger, Alice M. Hines, Kathy Lemon Osterling, and Paige Wyatt

This article presents early descriptive findings from the Pathways to College study, a multimethod and multiphase study of emancipated foster youth. Results based on a sample of 216 emancipated foster youth attending a four-year university indicate that many of their experiences are characteristic of individuals manifesting resilience in the face of adversity. At the same time, results indicate that although the youth are successful academically, they may be vulnerable in other areas. This article examines the participants' responses, comparing them to other studies to understand the factors that affect the academic performance of former foster youth.

September/October 2005 Special Issue: Immigrants and Refugees in Child Welfare

Introduction: What Do We Know About Immigrant and Refugee Families and Children?
Ilze Earner and Hilda Rivera

Immigrant and refugee families and children represent the fastest growing portion (11%) of the U.S. population. As recent studies suggest, they also are at the greatest risk for problems associated with poverty, including involvement with the public child welfare system. While public child welfare services agencies can play a pivotal and unique role in providing much-needed help and services to these families, too often they are unprepared to meet the special challenges presented by immigrants and refugees and, as a result, fail to serve them appropriately. Little current literature addresses the salient policy and practice issues involved in working with this population, or offers technical assistance, resources, and ideas to improve services. This special issue of Child Welfare represents an initial effort at providing a clearer picture of what happens when immigrant and refugee families, children, and youth intersect with the public child welfare system. The educators, researchers, direct service providers, and community activists who have contributed articles each made an effort to identify and address the special needs of the immigrant and refugee population. The articles presented here contribute to the knowledge base of social work interventions with specific populations, share information to promote an examination of best practices within the child welfare context, and address policies that affect access to services and resources for this population. The ideas expressed here hopefully will help expand the definition of culturally competent practice in child welfare services to include a greater emphasis on understanding the effect of immigration status and the migrant experience on families and their children.

Effective Child Welfare Practice with Immigrant and Refugee Children and Their Families
Barbara A. Pine and Diane Drachman

This article presents a multistage migration framework to broaden the lens through which child welfare personnel can view immigrant and refugee families and their children. By better understanding the family's experiences in both emigration and immigration, including reasons for leaving their home country, experiences in transit, and reception and resettlement experiences in the United States, child welfare personnel are better equipped to assess their needs and provide effective prevention, protection, permanency, and family preservation services. Case examples illustrating the application of the framework and guidelines for program and practice are included.

Assessment of Issues Facing Immigrant and Refugee Families
Uma A. Segal and Nazneen S. Mayadas

This article identifies the different problems immigrants and refugees face in the United States, especially socioeconomic and psychosocial concerns that often relate to the experience of migration. Traditional familial roles and responsibilities are frequently challenged, exacerbated by sociocultural differences and inadequate understandings between the new arrivals and the host country. Essential in assessments of immigrant and refugee families is evaluating resources for social, economic, and cultural integration; discriminating between realistic and unrealistic expectations; evaluating families' problem-solving abilities; exploring family functioning within the context of heritage; identifying the transferability of work skills; and gauging families' learning capabilities and motivation for adaptation.

Parenting and the Process of Migration: Possibilities Within South Asian Families
Anne C. Deepak

The migration experience creates a unique set of challenges for families, which can result in intergenerational conflict and create the conditions for abuse or neglect. Alternatively, families can cope with these challenges in creative and seemingly contradictory ways, thus strengthening family relationships. This article introduces the process of migration as a theoretical framework to use in understanding the complexity of the migration experience as well as the wide range of coping responses within families. The process was developed as a theoretical tool in an ethnographic study of first- and second-generation South Asian women in the United States; the study's findings are used to illustrate the application of the process to South Asian parenting experiences and show how the process of migration--where families adjust to a different set of structural conditions, ideologies, cultural norms, and social systems--shapes parenting and family life.

Social Work with Bosnian Muslim Refugee Children and Families: A Review of the Literature
Cindy S. Snyder, J. Dean May, Nihada N. Zulcic, and W. Jay Gabbard

More than two million Bosnian Muslims were ethnically cleansed in the Balkan region; of these, 200,000 were killed while the others were forced to flee their homes and become refugees. This article focuses on the influence of societal and cultural values coupled with wartime experiences on the transition of Bosnian refugee families to their new countries. Consideration is given to culturally competent theoretical frameworks and practice principles social workers can use to assist Bosnian Muslim children and families in their adaptation process within their resettlement communities.

Sudanese Refugee Youth in Foster Care: The "Lost Boys" in America
Laura Bates, Diane Baird, Deborah J. Johnson, Robert E. Lee, Tom Luster, and Christine Rehagen

This study examined the resettlement experiences of unaccompanied Sudanese refugee youth placed in foster care from the perspectives of the youth, foster parents, and agency caseworkers. Youth experienced considerable success. The challenges of adjusting to school and family life, however, suggest a need for funding to support more intensive educational services, more cultural training and support for foster parents and school personnel, and flexibility to provide services in more culturally appropriate modalities.

Finding the Bicultural Balance: Immigrant Latino Mothers Raising "American" Adolescents
Yolanda Quinones-Mayo and Patricia Dempsey

This article discusses the cross-cultural issues that confront immigrant Latino parents living and raising adolescents in the United States. Emphasis is placed on the need for social work practitioners, who, as they aid a family's integration into mainstream society, will listen to the parents' concerns and incorporate their past experiences and traditional culture into the assessment and treatment processes. Implications for practice, programs, and policy are also discussed.

Working Together as Culture Brokers by Building Trusting Alliances with Bilingual and Bicultural Newcomer Paraprofessionals Carol L. Owen and Meme English

The authors' reflect on the challenges and rewards of partnering as casework supervisors with bilingual and bicultural newcomer paraprofessionals in resettlement work with refugee youth. Such individuals are generally recruited for their linguistic abilities and cultural knowledge, but they can lack formal clinical training or licensing credentials. Drawing on their own experience as supervisors of bilingual and bicultural newcomer paraprofessionals from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, the authors compare their early attempts to establish trust and communication with insights gained in more recent supervisory experiences. Recommendations are offered that promote mutual understanding between newcomer paraprofessionals and their Western-trained supervisors.

Cultural Competence in the Assessment of Poor Mexican Families in the Rural Southeastern United States
Tina U. Hancock

Increasing numbers of poor Mexican immigrant families are settling in the rural southeastern United States. Most of these families are from isolated agrarian communities in Mexico and are headed by unskilled laborers or displaced farm workers with little education. Child welfare workers and other service providers in rural communities may be poorly prepared to address the needs of this population. This article provides an overview of the cultural, social, and family dynamics of first generation, working class Mexicans to promote cultural competency among helping professionals. An ecological perspective is used to examine the strengths that poor Mexicans bring from their culture of origin, stresses of the migratory experience and ongoing adaptation, shifts that may occur in family structure and functioning, disruptions in the family life cycle, the role of social supports in family adaptation, and effect of institutional discrimination on family well-being. Suggestions also are made for essential components of adequate in-service education.

Serving Immigrant Families and Children in New York City's Child Welfare System
Zeinab Chahine and Justine van Straaten

This article describes the efforts and special initiatives of New York City's Administration for Children's Services to improve services to immigrant and English language learner populations. Children's Services convened an immigration issues advisory subcommittee, created special tools for child welfare staff, collaborated with legal agencies to assist foster children with immigration status adjustments, improved agency data collection, and launched an agency-wide training initiative on immigration issues. The challenges encountered by Children's Services offer important insight for child welfare agencies in other jurisdictions designing strategies to strengthen their services for immigrant communities.

The Call-Centre: A Child Welfare Liaison Program with Immigrant Serving Agencies
Margaret Williams, Cathryn Bradshaw, Beverly Fournier, Admasu Tachble, Rob Bray, and Fay Hodson

Alberta, Canada, welcomed nearly 16,000 landed immigrants in 2003, of whom more than half came to the Calgary area. Approximately 200,000 immigrants of various ethnic and cultural groups now live in the region. Many of these new arrivals have no natural support networks while struggling with language, cultural, and economic barriers. Recognizing these difficulties, the Calgary and Area Child and Family Services Authority (CFSA) joined with several Immigrant Serving Agencies to develop guidelines and procedures to direct staff working with diverse cultures, including the Call-Centre pilot project, which provided CFSA staff with a one-stop telephone contact for information about an immigrant or refugee family, their culture, and available culturally-appropriate resources. The Call-Centre, which is currently being evaluated by researchers at the University of Calgary, will gradually expand to all CFSA sites in the region. This article describes the Call-Centre and the first phase of the evaluation.

In the "Best Interest" of Immigrant and Refugee Children: Deliberating on Their Unique Circumstances
Qingwen Xu

Each year, state juvenile courts provide thousands of immigrant and refugee children with access to consistent and reliable caregiving and a stable environment. To examine how courts interpret "the best interests" of immigrant and refugee children, this article examines 24 cases in courts across the United States, which indicate they use a territorial approach when evaluating the best interests standard. Although legal status was not an issue, many related factors were. Consequently, the courts restricted immigrant parents' rights in caring, guiding, and visiting their children; increased the risk of wrongfully terminating parental rights; and intensified the unpredictability of immigrant and refugee children's welfare in the long run. This article suggests an approach that encourages communication between social workers and the courts to address the special needs and circumstances of immigrant and refugee children on three key topics: the material and moral welfare of the child, and social welfare for immigrant and refugee families.

An Educational Model for Child Welfare Practice with English-Speaking Caribbean Families
Alma Carten and Harriet Goodman

Implemented in New York City, the Child Welfare Fellowship Project is an international collaboration between social work educators in the United States and Jamaica, the West Indies, the public child welfare agency, and selected community-based agencies. This model educational program prepared selected Masters of Social Work (MSW) Fellowship students for exemplary child welfare practice with English-speaking Caribbean families by providing enhanced programs designed to support culturally competent skill development and a preventive approach to child welfare practice. These educational enhancements, combined with academic course work, increased professionalism, self-efficacy, and culturally competent skill development among participants and averted foster care placement for families seen over the duration of the project.

Bridging Refugee Youth and Children's Services: A Case Study of Cross-Service Training
Lyn Morland, Julianne Duncan, Joyce Hoebing, Juanita Kirschke, and Laura Schmidt

Bridging Refugee Youth and Children's Services(BRYCS), a public-private partnership between the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, provides national technical assistance to public child welfare. After a series of "community conversations," BRYCS identified a lack of knowledge among child welfare staff about newcomer refugees, negative stereotypes, and a fear of child protective services among refugees. BRYCS initiated a number of technical assistance initiatives, including a pilot cross-service training project in St. Louis to strengthen collaboration between child welfare and refugee-serving agencies. This article details the lessons learned from this training and recommends changes in policy and practice.

July/August 2005

Evaluating Multidisciplinary Child Abuse and Neglect Teams: A Research Agenda
Marina Lalayants and Irwin Epstein

A review of child welfare research literature reveals that although multidisciplinary teams are increasingly used to investigate and intervene in child abuse and neglect cases, the field does not know enough about their structural variations, implementation processes, or effectiveness. Moreover, although articles advocating multidisciplinary teams enumerate their apparent strengths, they lack attention to the teams' possible weaknesses. The article discusses implications for future evaluation studies.

Enhancing Parent-Child Interaction During Foster Care Visits: Experimental Assessment of an Intervention
Wendy L. Haight, Sarah Mangelsdorf, James Black, Margaret Szewczyk, Sarah Schoppe, Grace Giorgio, Karen Madrigal, and Lakshmi Tata

Mothers of young children recently placed in foster care participated in an intervention to enhance parent-child interaction during visits. The mothers all reported substantial loss and trauma histories. Immediately prior to the visits, the mothers were coached on strategies for separating from their children at the visit's end. The mothers displayed more behavioral strategies for supporting their children when the visit was over, but were less engaged with their children during the leave-taking sequence and displayed fewer ways of maintaining the child's involvement in mother-child interaction during leave-taking than those in a comparison group. This article discusses consideration of parents' trauma history in designing interventions to enhance parent-child interaction.

Characteristics and Trajectories of Treatment Foster Care Youth
David L. Hussey and Shenyang Guo

Using cross-sectional analyses in conjunction with dynamic modeling (hierarchical linear modeling), the authors profiled 119 treatment foster care youth and constructed behavioral change trajectories for a subset of 97 children. Children generally showed improvements in internalizing and critical pathology problem domains but remained the same on measures of externalizing behaviors and total problem score. The number of previous out-of-home