Bert Burraston

Effects of a therapeutic intervention for foster preschoolers on diurnal cortisol activity

Atypical diurnal patterns of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis activity have been observed in samples of individuals following early life adversity. A characteristic pattern arising from disrupted caregiving is a low early-morning cortisol level that changes little from morning to evening. Less well understood is the plasticity of the HPA axis in response to subsequent supportive caregiving environments. Monthly early-morning and evening cortisol levels were assessed over 12 months in a sample of 3-6-year-old foster children enrolled in a randomized trial of a family-based therapeutic intervention (N=117; intervention condition, n=57; regular foster care condition, n=60), and a community comparison group of same-aged, non-maltreated children from low-income families (n=60). Latent growth analyses revealed stable and typical diurnal (morning-to-evening) cortisol activity among non-maltreated children. Foster children in the intervention condition exhibited cortisol activity that became comparable to the non-maltreated children over the course of the study. In contrast, children in regular foster care condition exhibited increasingly flattened morning-to-evening cortisol activity over the course of the study. In sum, improvements in caregiving following early adversity appear to have the potential to reverse or prevent disruptions in HPA axis functioning.

The Early Intervention Foster Care Program: Permanent Placement Outcomes From a Randomized Trial

Preschool-aged foster children face multiple risks for poor long-term outcomes. These risks appear to increase with the number of placement changes experienced. The Early Intervention Foster Care Program (EIFC) targets the spectrum of challenges that preschool-aged foster children face via a team approach delivered in home and community settings. In this article, we report on permanent placement outcomes from the EIFC randomized clinical trial. Children in EIFC had significantly fewer failed permanent placements than children in the regular foster care comparison condition. The number of prior placements was positively associated with the risk of failed permanent placements for children in the comparison condition but not for children in EIFC. Type of prior maltreatment did not predict permanent placement outcomes. These results provide the foundation of an evidence base for the EIFC program as a preventive intervention to improve permanent placement outcomes for preschool-aged foster children.

The veridicality of punitive childhood experiences reported by adolescents and young adults

OBJECTIVE The primary goal of the present research was to determine whether retrospective reports of childhood disciplinary experiences and perceptions of that discipline correspond to actual childhood events and whether the accuracy of that report was influenced by the affective state of the respondent. METHOD Eighty-three adolescent and young adult males completed a retrospective measure of physical child maltreatment, Assessing Environments (AEIII), and the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI). As children the participants had been observed naturalistically in their homes interacting with their parents an average of 10 years earlier. RESULTS Analyses were consistent with the hypothesis that both current mood and actual observations of parent-child interactions during childhood predict self-reported recollections of childhood maltreatment by ones parents. Further the veridicality of such recollections appears to depend upon the objective specificity versus the perceptive nature of the questions used to elicit the recollections. CONCLUSIONS The findings suggest that assessment instruments suitable for obtaining information regarding earlier childhood victimization must utilize behaviorally specific items. Thus, items that are either global or intimate a normative comparison should be avoided.

Permanency in Foster Care: Conceptual and Methodological Issues

During the past two decades, there has been an increasing number of published reports from randomized trials documenting that theoretically based, developmentally sensitive interventions can produce positive outcomes for children and families. Unfortunately, none of these have focused on foster care populations. The vulnerabilities of young foster children are so extensive and the need for effective interventions is so great that it is imperative for professionals in science, policy, and practice to identify effective ways to work together to produce research for improving outcomes. Kaufman and Grasso’s (2006 [this issue]) comments highlight the lack of clear guidelines and limitations in existing services for achieving permanency in the child welfare system. They emphasize the need to systematically address parental problems such as substance abuse, mental health problems, and domestic violence as well as child posttraumatic symptomatology in this population. We strongly agree that these issues should be informed by careful research. Given these shared goals, we find the emphasis on the limitations of our study puzzling, especially because it is (to our knowledge) the first published randomized trial focused on improving outcomes for preschoolers in foster care. We were careful to present our results as a promising scientific foundation from which to build programs that will benefit young foster children and their families. However, it is important to recognize progress in building a research base in this area; only then can we begin to look critically at ways to improve long-term outcomes for children and families in the child welfare system. We concur with Kaufman and Grasso’s (2006) comment that, along with ensuring safety, permanency should be a high priority for children in foster care. However, we do not agree with their redefinition of the goals or the outcomes of our study. Regarding goals, permanency may be considered to have two components: (a) achieving permanency through the identification and placement of the child with birth parents, relatives, or nonrelative adoptive parents with whom the child has the potential to live indefinitely and (b) maintaining permanency over time (i.e., the extent to which, once such placements occur, they succeed). This second component is by no means superficial, as prior studies have shown that approximately 30% of children reunified with their birth families re-enter care (Frame, Berrick, & Brodowski, 2000; Wulczyn, 2004). A failed permanent placement is potentially traumatic, and there is evidence to suggest that the likelihood of successful reunification decreases as the number of out-of-home placements increases (Farmer, 1996). We agree that both components of permanency should be emphasized in ongoing research and interventions. The goal of our study, however, was to increase the success of permanency once it was achieved. Given the scarcity of empirically validated treatments in child welfare, this focus seems justified and necessary. Kaufman and Grasso (2006) impose a definition of permanency that combines achieving and maintaining permanency into a single category. We were quite pleased to see that, even using this definition, the differences between the intervention and comparison groups in their analysis of our data remained close to statistically significant, within a range often reported in the literature as indicating a meaningful trend. This is especially notable given that the nonparametric chi-square test they employed fails to take into account the rate at which placement failures occur; instead, it only accounts for the dichotomous outcome of whether the failure occurred. In sum, even using their definition of permanency and the weak statistical test they employed, the intervention and results appear promising. We agree that much work remains to be done to understand how to achieve higher rates of permanency. As we suggested in the article, our intervention represents not a complete solution to the plight of

Reducing Juvenile Delinquency With Automated Cell Phone Calls

Using a sample of 70 juvenile probationers (39 treatment and 31 controls), we evaluated the effectiveness of a rehabilitation program that combined cognitive-behavioral training and automated phone calls. The cognitive-behavioral training contained six 90-min sessions, one per week, and the phone calls occurred twice per day for the year following treatment. Recidivism was measured by whether they were rearrested and the total number of rearrests during the 1st year. To test the impact of the phone calls, those who received phone calls were divided into high and low groups depending on whether they answered more or less than half of their phone calls. Those who completed the class and answered at least half of their phone calls were less likely to have been arrested and had fewer total arrests.

Highway Robbery: Testing the Impact of Interstate Highways on Robbery

Research has shown that the occurrence of crime is based on multiple factors including a variety of geographical characteristics. Previous researchers have suggested that the environmental feature of the interstate system has an influence on crime. For this study, we test for a relationship between interstate presence and robbery at the county-level in Georgia. Additionally, we test whether or not urban/rural differences affect this relationship. Findings are consistent with previous research showing that the number of interstate exits in a county significantly increases crime; in this case the robbery rate.

Relative and Absolute Deprivation’s Relationship With Violent Crime in the United States: Testing an Interaction Effect Between Income Inequality and Disadvantage:

Relative deprivation and absolute deprivation both have effects on crime. Although these two concepts are often treated as separate, some scholarship has suggested that the two may be complementary. The current study assesses whether the effects of relative and absolute deprivation interact statistically in their effect on violent crime by testing an interaction effect between income inequality and disadvantage. Using data from U.S. counties, hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) regression models show that there is a significant interaction between relative and absolute deprivation predicting violent crime rates. The plot of this interaction shows that when absolute deprivation is high, there is less violence in high inequality counties than in counties with medium levels of inequality. The implication of this finding is discussed.

Testing the Impact of Road Network Connectivity on Criminal Lethality

Increased road network connectivity has been linked to more positive outcomes among all health outcomes. Road network connectivity has yet to be tested in association with specifically criminal lethality. The current study looks to incorporate road network connectivity as an explanatory variable for criminal lethality. Data on Road Network Connectivity and Criminal Lethality are gathered for 190 cities. Data sources include the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), 2010 Census, 2010 American Community Survey, Google Earth, and Census Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing (TIGER) files. The data demonstrate that a city’s road network connectivity is related to decreases in the rates of lethality among assaults. Implications of this finding are discussed.

WITHDRAWN: Relative Deprivation, Absolute Deprivation, and Homicide: Testing an Interaction Between Income Inequality and Disadvantage

Both relative and absolute deprivation have effects on crime. These two concepts may be complementary, but much scholarship has treated them as separate. The present study assesses whether the effects of relative and absolute deprivation, measured as income inequality and disadvantage, respectively, interact in their effect on known homicide counts in U.S. counties. A multilevel regression model shows that there is a significant interaction between income inequality and disadvantage predicting homicide counts known to police. The plot of this interaction shows that when disadvantage is extremely high, increasing income inequality does not increase known homicides. The less disadvantage there is, the greater the effect of increasing income inequality on homicide counts in U.S. counties. This finding suggests that the effect of relative deprivation on known homicide is contingent on levels of absolute deprivation and vice versa. The implication of this finding is discussed.

The Moderating Effect of Living with a Child Before Incarceration on Postrelease Outcomes Related to a Prison-Based Parent Management Training Program

ABSTRACT With the rapid growth in incarceration in the United States over the past few decades came dramatic growth in the number of the incarcerated parents with at least one minor child. Parental incarceration places extra stresses and strains on families and children. Almost all of those incarcerated will eventually be released. However, the majority of those released from prison will be rearrested within a year. Finding interventions that can decrease the likelihood of returning to crime and to incarceration are of utmost importance. Using a social bond theory framework, the authors examine the moderating effect of living with a child before incarceration on program outcomes related to a prison-based parent management training program. A significant effect was found. Implications for these findings are discussed for future research and practice.