Displaying 1 - 10 of 15
Abstract
Background
For children who are not reunified with their biological family members, the child welfare system promotes legal permanence through adoption or guardianship. The intent of adoption and guardianship is a safe home where…
Abstract
Given the high rates of placement disruptions for teenagers, a need exists for resource parents (the collective term for foster, adoptive, kinship, and guardian caregivers) who are both willing and able to care for teenagers. In response to this need, we created Critical On-going Resource Family Education (CORE) Teen, a comprehensive foster parent training program designed to provide resource parents with the knowledge and skills to support teens in their care. A one-way repeated measures ANOVA compared the results from participants at the pretest (N=188), posttest (N=130), and…
ABSTRACT
This study explored data obtained from surveys of caregivers who had previously adopted or assumed guardianship of a child from foster care in two U.S. states (N= 937). Descriptive analyses summarized the demographic and wellbeing characteristics of children and families, and multivariate regression models estimated the association between these variables and caregiver commitment. Consistent with previous research, most caregivers (> 80%) reported positive adjustment across measures, but some caregivers indicated family struggles, such as caregiver strain, child behavior…
Abstract
Adoption and guardianship are meant to provide permanency to foster children when reunification is not a viable option. Unfortunately, sometimes adoption and guardianship placements dissolve resulting in children returning to care. Currently, there is limited research on the prevalence and predictors of adoption and guardianship dissolutions. This study investigated rates of guardianship and adoption dissolution using a complete entry cohort from a large state foster care system and the associations between child characteristics and risk factors with dissolution. Drawing on a…
The National Quality Improvement Center for Adoption and Guardianship Support and Preservation (QIC-AG) is a five-year project working with eight sites that will implement evidence-based interventions or develop and test promising practices which if proven effective can be replicated or adapted in other child welfare jurisdictions. Effective interventions are expected to achieve long-term, stable permanence in adoptive and guardianship homes for waiting children as well as children and families after adoption or guardianship has been finalized.
This webinar presented learning from the…
Abstract
A growing number of children are being raised by relatives under a variety of different care arrangements. Although the extant literature provides rough estimates of the number and characteristics of children living in most care arrangements, research on kinship probate guardianship is especially scarce. This article focuses on kinship probate guardianship in an effort to build the literature on this understudied population. It examines demographic information about caregivers and children pursuing kinship probate guardianship, the circumstances that necessitate children’s…
Attaining legal permanence is not always about finding a new family. In some instances, it is about legally re-defining roles of existing family members or establishing legal relationships with other adults who have a family-like relationship with children through guardianship. Although different from adoption, the adjustment to these newly defined responsibilities can be just as complicated, including the need to address children’s trauma and the changes in family dynamics. Social service professionals can better serve guardianship families by learning about the dynamics of the family’s…
This study seeks to contribute to the literature on child welfare and parental drug use in the United States by answering the following research questions:
(1) Do young children (ages 0–3) with parental drug removals exit foster care to reunification at different rates as compared to older children (ages > 3) with parental drug removals and to other young children (ages 0–3) without parental drug removals?
(2) Do young children (ages 0–3) with parental drug removals exit foster care to adoption at different rates as compared to older children (ages > 3) with parental drug removals…
Abstract
Using data from a national longitudinal survey of children referred to child protective services (NSCAW II), this article compares behavioral, child/caregiver relationship, and school performance outcomes for children residing in kinship and nonkinship settings. Up to three waves of data were gathered for each child. The analysis sample comprises 4,202 children and 10,881 observations. Two sets of regressions were completed. One represents family living settings using child-mean centered predictors while the other does so with dummy-coded variables. An advantage of the child-mean…
Abstract
Although grandfamilies are consumers of a variety of mental health services, less is known about what these families, particularly the grandchildren, want from practitioners. To gain insight into how practitioners can best meet the needs of grandfamilies, 40 custodial grandmothers and their adolescent grandchildren were interviewed. Results of a qualitative analysis indicated that grandmothers and grandchildren did not make clear distinctions between various types of services and service providers. Grandchildren, in particular, emphasized the need for mental…