Valerie Bryan

Supporting Adoptive Families: Participant Perceptions of a Statewide Peer Mentoring and Support Program

Recently, state child welfare systems have begun to acknowledge the challenges faced by adoptive families, and have responded with specialized programs to support and stabilize these families and prevent placement disruption and adoption dissolution. Adoption Support for Kentucky (ASK) is a consortium of parent-led adoption support groups, operating in 32 locations. To date, few published evaluation studies of such programs exist. This article reports results from six focus groups (n = 42) and a statewide survey (n = 251) of ASK participants. Study findings indicated that participants attended meetings primarily for emotional support and information exchange. They reported high levels of satisfaction with ASK, and many believed the program had stabilized their families and prevented an adoption disruption.

Investigating Health Disparities through Community-Based Participatory Research: Lessons Learned from a Process Evaluation

This article describes one universitys efforts to partner with a local agency (the “Coalition”) within a disadvantaged, predominantly African American neighborhood, to assist them with studying their communitys health disparities and health care access. The final, mutually agreed-upon plan used a community-based participatory research approach, wherein university researchers prepared neighborhood volunteers and Coalition members to conduct face-to-face interviews with residents about their health and health care access. Subsequently, the Coalition surveyed 138 residents, and the agency now possesses extensive data about the nature and extent of health problems in their community. Lessons learned from these experiences are offered.

The Gendered Monitoring of Juvenile Delinquents: A Test of Power-Control Theory Using a Retrospective Cohort Study

Through the framework of power-control theory (PCT), we provide a model of juvenile offending that places the gendered-raced treatment of juveniles central to the analysis. We test the theory using a unique sample that is predominately African American, poor, and composed entirely of juvenile offenders. Multivariate models compare the predictive power of many variables, including ones central to PCT, on status offenses and other, more serious, offenses. Gender and race variables were found to be significant, but varied in their impact across models. The interaction between these variables suggests that being Black and female increases the likelihood of sanctioning for status offenses, but not other types of offenses. Contrary to the theory, single-mother-headed households do not seem to produce more delinquent girls than other types of households. The overall findings of this study indicate that patriarchy and white privilege are continuing characteristics of the juvenile justice system.