Maria Scannapieco

Kinship Foster Care: Policy, Practice, and Research

Kinship Foster Care: Policy, Practice, and Research assembles the thinking and research of experts from several professional fields concerning what has become the fastest growing type of substitute care for children by the state. The editors have contributed the initial and concluding chapters of the book, and the lead chapter in each of its three sections.

Kinship Care and Foster Care: A Comparison of Characteristics and Outcomes

The increase in children entering foster care, together with a range of other political, economic, and social factors, has helped fuel the newest phenomenon in the child welfare system–a substantial proportion of children in formal kinship care. Kinship care is defined as out-of-home placement with relatives of children who are in the custody of state and local child welfare agencies. The authors present a review of previous research and report on a study that examined differences and similarities between kinship and traditional foster care in Baltimore County, Maryland, a suburban county that surrounds the city of Baltimore. This study supports many earlier conclusions concerning kinship care, such as children remain in care longer, caregivers are primarily African American, and services provided by kin are less extensive than those provided by traditional foster parents.

Independent living programs: Do they make a difference?

Children are entering foster care at an alarming rate. There were an estimated 429,000 children in out-of-home care at the end of 1991, which is a 64% increases since 1982 (Tatara, 1990). The largest proportion of children in out-of-home care are between the ages of 13 and 18 (Mech, 1988; Tatara, 1989). Each year, an estimated 16,000 (Sims, 1988) to 18,000 (Ryan, McFadden, Rice, & Warren, 1988) youth are emancipated and leave foster care to assume independence. Many of these young adults are not prepared for self-sufficiency (Barth, 1986, 1990; Festinger, 1983; Westat, 1988). Adolescents from varying out-of-home care settings are eligible for a set of services—Independent Living Programs.The findings of this study suggest that Independent Living Programs may have positive impact on the ability of youth to be self-sufficient at the time of discharge from foster care programs. The youth who participated in the ILP program were more likely to complete high school, have employment history and employment at discharge, and were more likely to be self supporting at the closing of the case.

Do Collaborations with Schools of Social Work Make a Difference for the Field of Child Welfare?: Practice, Retention and Curriculum

Summary Historically, the profession of social work has held a leadership role in the field of child welfare. Opportunities provided in a number of significant public policies allow schools of social work to be eligible to receive Title IV-E funding for professional development of child welfare workers. Today, hundreds of these partnerships throughout the country (Zlotnik, 1997) are spending millions of federal dollars to professionally educate Bachelor of Social Work and Master of Social Work students for careers in child welfare. Unfortunately, there is not a corresponding proliferation of evaluation research to measure the effectiveness of these partnerships. This article provides a comprehensive description and evaluation of a partnership between a school of social work and a state department of child protective services.

Drug abuse in Vietnam: a critical review of the literature and implications for future research.

AIMS To provide an overall picture of drug abuse in Vietnam, its prevalence, correlates and patterns. METHODS Studies addressing the drug abuse problem in Vietnam are reviewed. Attention is paid to studies conducted from 1993 onwards. The reviewed studies were collected from both refereed and non-refereed sources. RESULTS Drug abuse is rising sharply in Vietnam: almost threefold over the past 10 years. From a predominantly rural-mountainous phenomenon, illicit drug abuse spread rapidly to urban areas. Meanwhile, the average age of drug users has declined and more women have been engaging in drug consumption. At the same time, heroin has replaced opium as the most preferred drug in the countrys illicit drug market, especially among young users in urban areas. At the national level, the second main route of drug administration, injecting, has exceeded smoking and taken precedence in the countrys drug abuse culture, especially among heroin users. CONCLUSION Drug abuse in Vietnam has changed radically over the past decade, which has implications for the national and international community and requires further research to fill the knowledge gap and to inform intervention policy for better drug control policy.

Ecological Correlates of Child Maltreatment: Similarities and Differences Between Child Fatality and Nonfatality Cases

The rate of fatal child maltreatment is increasing, and differentiating between risk factors for fatal as opposed to nonfatal maltreatment is essential to developing prevention programs. This exploratory retrospective study utilizes case record analysis to examine four categories of correlates for child maltreatment: 1) parent/caregiver factors, 2) child factors, 3) environmental/situational factors, and 4) maltreatment incident factors. Thirty-eight fatality cases are compared to a matched group of nonfatality cases to determine which factors are related to fatality in a large Southwestern metropolitan area. The results provide a profile of characteristics that may place a child at higher risk of fatal maltreatment.

Ecological Correlates of Neglect in Infants and Toddlers

Infants and toddlers are more likely to be victims of neglect than any other form of maltreatment. Infants and toddlers are at highest risk of fatality because of maltreatment and experience behavioral, social, academic, medical, and cognitive consequences of neglect during their most formative years. Within an ecological framework, this study examines the correlates of the substantiation of neglect in children 0 to 36 months of age. Using an ex post facto design and a random sample of 148 child protective services cases, bivariate analysis revealed significant differences in families who were substantiated for neglect in the areas of child characteristics, home environment, social environment, caregiver, and maltreatment situations. Multivariate analysis found children who were substantiated for neglect were exposed to greater environmental dangers and had caregivers who had poor parenting skills. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.

Characteristics of Workload Management in Pulic Child Welfare Agencies

Abstract This study examines the relationship among supervisor support, availability of resources, and worker ability and their impact on workload management. Child welfare caseworkers struggle to maintain their workloads amid tremendously high caseloads and ever-increasing paperwork. A structural equation model is utilized to determine the dynamic relationship of these variables. Results suggest that supervisor support and availability of resources have a direct impact on workload management. Additionally, supervisor support is significantly associated with worker ability and availability of resources. While worker ability does not directly affect workload management, it is significantly related to availability of resources. Results of this study can be useful to public child welfare agencies by identifying variables associated with increased manageability of employee workloads.

Home-based services program: Effectiveness with at risk families

Since the enactment of the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980 (P.L. 96-272) family preservation is of major significance to the child welfare field. As a result, family-centered, home-based services have proliferated as a means of prevention of out-of-home placement and as a means of empowering families to help themselves. This is an exploratory, descriptive study on family-centered, home-based services, involving a secondary analysis of an existing database. Client characteristics are analyzed, and a subsample of high-risk clients is identified, based on a scale of risk of out-of-home placement developed for this research. Client characteristic is operationalized for this study as all contextual variables present in database that are associated with the family, i.e., demographic, history of physical abuse, prior social services and so forth. Client characteristics are drawn from several client domains--psychological, social, environmental--and are not only personal characteristics of the client. The effectiveness of family-centered, home-based services with the lowand high-risk client are examined in relation to four outcome variables. These variables are as follows, placement prevention, family functioning, completion of the program, and improvement in problem areas. The studys findings suggest that family-centered, home-based programs are effective in the prevention of placement for both highand low-risk clients. The study found a statistically significant difference between preand postfamily functioning of families who participated in the home-based program. Among the implications of these findings was the assertion that home-based services are effective with the multi-problem family. The use of client characteristics as a measure of risk and potential program success positions this study as a model for continuing research in this area. The findings have significance for not only the child welfare field but also for the profession of social work.

Assessment of families who have substance abuse issues: those who maltreat their infants and toddlers and those who do not.

Although an association exists among risk factors of age of child, substance use and child maltreatment, less is known about the differences between substance abusing families who maltreat their children and substance abusing families who do not maltreat their children. The relationship among substance use and maltreatment needs to be further explored to identify specific assessment techniques to discriminate between the two groups. The study findings, based upon case records analyzed in 2002, show there is a set of significant characteristics of families who have a history of substance use and who maltreat their infant and toddlers and those families who do not. 1The journals style utilizes the category substance abuse as a diagnostic category. Substances are used or misused; living organisms are and can be abused. Editors note.