Inger P. Davis

Impact of child psychosocial functioning on reunification from out-of-home placement

Abstract This study examined the impact of child psychosocial functioning on the probability of reunification over an eighteen month period for 669 children, ages 2–16, who had been removed from their birth home and placed in either kinship care or foster care. Psychosocial functioning was measured from two sources, a standardized measure of behavior problems, and information abstracted from case files on emotional/behavioral problems, developmental/learning problems, and physical handicap or acute medical problems. Results indicated a separate and significant negative impact of externalizing behavior problems and behavioral/emotional problems on reunification from out-of-home placement. Children with problems were one-half as likely to be reunified as children without problems, even after controlling for background characteristics and type of maltreatment. The impact of externalizing behavior problems was observed in foster care but not in kinship care. Developmental and medical problems were not significantly related to reunification.

Parental visiting and foster care reunification

Abstract Parental visiting has long been a crucial factor in reunification decisions for children in foster care. The purposes of the present study, part of a larger follow-up investigation of permanency planning for children in foster care, were to correlate parental visiting with permanency planning outcomes and to develop a logistic regression model predicting family reunification. Findings show that the majority of children with maternal and paternal visits at the level recommended by the court were reunified, but no association was found between parental visiting and recidivism of reunified children at a 12 month follow-up. Maternal visiting at the recommended level was the strongest predictor of reunification among the five study variables included in the regression model, indicating that a child visited by the mother as recommended was approximately 10 times more likely to be reunified. The paper also includes information on parental visiting in traditional and kinship foster homes and across three ethnic groups. Implications of study findings for child welfare practice and future research are discussed.

Children in Out-of-Home Care: Entry Into Intensive or Restrictive Mental Health and Residential Care Placements

Using longitudinal data from the National Survey on Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW), this study investigates entry into intensive or restrictive settings during a 36-month study period. Specifically, this analysis examines entry into treatment foster care, group homes, residential treatment, and inpatient psychiatric care for youth placed into out-of-home care (n = 981). It aims to determine at what point in their first out-of-home episodes and for what reasons youth entered such settings. As NSCAW used a national probability sampling design,this analysis provides national estimates about entry into intensive or restrictive settings for youth in out-of-home care. Twenty-five percent of youth (n = 280) experienced an intensive or restrictive setting during their first out-of-home care episode; 70% were in either group homes (33.2%) or residential treatment settings (37.0%).About half of the youth with such placements (48.9%) were placed into intensive or restrictive settings as a first placement during their first out-of-home episode.

Factors associated with caregiver stability in permanent placements: A classification tree approach ☆

OBJECTIVE Identify individual and environmental variables associated with caregiver stability and instability for children in diverse permanent placement types (i.e., reunification, adoption, and long-term foster care/guardianship with relatives or non-relatives), following 5 or more months in out-of-home care prior to age 4 due to substantiated maltreatment. METHODS Participants were 285 children from the Southwestern site of Longitudinal Studies of Child Abuse and Neglect (LONGSCAN). Caregiver instability was defined as a change in primary caregiver between ages 6 and 8 years. Classification and regression tree (CART) analysis was used to identify the strongest predictors of instability from multiple variables assessed at age 6 with caregiver and child reports within the domains of neighborhood/community characteristics, caregiving environment, caregiver characteristics, and child characteristics. RESULTS One out of 7, or 14% of the 285 children experienced caregiver instability in their permanent placement between ages 6 and 8. The strongest predictor of stability was whether the child had been placed in adoptive care. However, for children who were not adopted, a number of contextual factors (e.g., father involvement, expressiveness within the family) and child characteristics (e.g., intellectual functioning, externalizing problem behaviors) predicted stability and instability of permanent placements. CONCLUSIONS Current findings suggest that a number of factors should be considered, in addition to placement type, if we are to understand what predicts caregiver stability and find stable permanent placements for children who have entered foster care. These factors include involvement of a father figure, family functioning, and child functioning. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS Adoption was supported as a desired permanent placement in terms of stability, but results suggest that other placement types can also lead to stability. In fact, with attention to providing biological parents, relative, and non-relative caregivers with support and resources (e.g., emotional, financial, and optimizing father involvement or providing a stable adult figure) the likelihood that a child will have a stable caregiver may be increased.

Long-Term Placement Trajectories of Children Who Were Maltreated and Entered the Child Welfare System at an Early Age: Consequences for Physical and Behavioral Well-Being

OBJECTIVE This study aimed to identify childrens long-term placement trajectories following early child welfare involvement and the association of these trajectories with subsequent physical and behavioral well-being. METHOD Participants were 330 children who entered out-of-home care following a substantiated report of child abuse or neglect during infancy/early childhood and their caregivers. Participants were interviewed at child ages 4 and 12 years to assess childrens physical and behavioral well-being and every 2 years in between to determine child placements. RESULTS Latent Class Analyses identified four stable placement trajectories (i.e., adopted [32%], kinship care [15%], stable reunified [27%], and stable foster care [9%]), and two unstable trajectories (i.e., disrupted reunified [12%] and unstable foster care [5%]). Logistic regressions revealed that children in the unstable trajectories had significantly poorer physical and behavioral well-being than children in stable trajectories. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE Maltreated children placed in out-of-home care are at risk for long-term placement instability and poorer physical and behavioral well-being.

Event Analysis in Clinical Practice and Process Research

The authors review the literature in an effort to show how therapeutic events have been used in clinical practice and process research. Using a case example, they discuss and illustrate the use of “informative events” within the context of developing a model for family treatment.

Bridging science and practice in child welfare and children’s mental health service systems through a two-decade research center trajectory

• Summary: Over the past two decades, research on social work practice has experienced substantial growth in the United States, indicated by both the establishment of the Society for Social Work Research in 1994 and increased funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Recently, this growth has carried an increasing emphasis on research to establish the evidence base for social work practice and an emphasis on understanding dissemination and implementation of evidence-based interventions or practice models in usual care settings within service systems that have historic and professional linkages to the social work discipline, such as child welfare and mental health. • Findings: This article illustrates this growth and emphases on evidence-based practice in the social work research areas, child abuse and neglect, child welfare and child mental health through the two-decade experience of a large-scale and multi-disciplinary research center in San Diego County, California, the Child and Adolescent Services Research Center (CASRC). Evidence for understanding and improving care in these two service systems served by social work practice has been developed through center studies of clinical epidemiology, mental health services, effectiveness of evidence-based interventions, and the dissemination and implementation of these interventions in usual care settings. • Applications: This evolving research agenda was shown to be well linked to the NIH Roadmap initiative and highly competitive for NIH funding.

Educational and Supportive Services for Adolescents Living With their Families

Where do adolescents and their families turn when the school sends that final notice of expulsion, when conflict in the home has reached such unbearable levels that parents are prompted to request the immediate placement of the adolescent, when parents get that feared call from the police saying that they have picked up their child for possession of drugs, or when the hospital emergency room calls to say that their son or daughter was one of five teenagers in a car crash? Where does the youngster turn when he or she just can’t make it in school, can’t find a job, feels awkward because his or her body is so much smaller or bigger than classmates’, feels so down and alone that life is not worth living any longer? While some families manage to cope with the stresses, problems, and crises of the adolescent phase by relying on friends, relatives, and the religious group they belong to, as we saw in the Olson and McCubbin (1983) study, other families desperately need and use support from community services under public and private auspices.

Interventions with Specific Groups of Adolescents

This final chapter presents examples of interventive considerations and services regarding three selected groups of adolescents: those who come from divorced and remarried families, those in foster care and adoptive homes, and runaways.

Developmental Tasks of Adolescence in Relation to the Family

This chapter spells out the overall psychosocial tasks the adolescent must engage in to achieve adult societal and psychological status. Most of the chapter is devoted to the topic of the parent-adolescent separation process, which forms an essential knowledge base for the human service professional attempting to help troubled adolescents and their families. This individuation process is viewed from a temporal, life stage perspective, and it is studied in terms of how it is played out in two-parent families, under the special circumstances of divorce, in single-parent families, in stepfamilies, and in relations marred by violence. Finally, in keeping with a system theory perspective, sibling relations are briefly discussed.