Displaying 1 - 10 of 58
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…
In April 2021, the Child Welfare League of Canada (CWLC), in partnership with the Children’s Aid Foundation of Canada, led a series of cross-sectoral convenings with the goal of introducing a positive obligation for government and service providers to assist families who are experiencing difficulties in a context of poverty. This three-day event convened people across sectors to gain a better understanding of how the child welfare system responds to the conditions that place families at an increased risk of child protection involvement due to assessments of ‘neglect’. The goal of Beyond…
Abstract
Permanent supportive housing for families experiencing homelessness—typically, subsidized housing that is not time limited and provides access to a range of support services—has substantially increased over the past 10 years, despite an absence of rigorous evidence of its effectiveness. We examine the benefits of subsidized housing with supportive services compared to subsidized housing alone. Our findings suggest that supportive housing offers more opportunities for access to services and benefits than subsidized housing alone, but it may not be beneficial to families’ housing…
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…
Executive Summary
When announced in December 2014, the Partnering for Family Success (PFS) program was among the first Pay for Success projects in the United States and was the first sponsored by a U.S. county (Cuyahoga County, Ohio). With funding from Reinvestment Fund, The George Gund Foundation, the Cleveland Foundation, the Sisters of Charity Foundation of Cleveland, and Nonprofit Finance Fund, the project was conceived as an innovative intervention to address the particular needs of housing unstable families who had a child in the custody of the county child welfare agency. As part of…
Abstract
Financial hardship is one of the most challenging issues faced by kinship foster care families. Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) benefits and foster care payments are potential sources of financial assistance for kinship families. This study used wave 2 of the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being II (NSCAW II) to develop a new typology of kinship care based on financial mechanisms, including: (1) families that received TANF only (TANF only); (2) families that received foster care payments only (FC only); (3) families that received both TANF benefits and…
Abstract
Child welfare-involved homeless families are at greater risk of poor social and economic outcomes compared with homeless families not involved with child welfare, and these negative outcomes reverberate in terms of economic and social costs to society. This study employed a mixed-methods approach to examine process findings from a randomized control trial from the first county-level Pay for Success initiative, Partnering for Family Success. The research compared housing, child welfare and public assistance outcomes for the treatment (N = 90) and control (N…
Abstract
Objectives:
Housing insecurity and homelessness contribute to risk of maltreatment among one in five of the nearly 3.5 million children annually investigated for maltreatment in the United States. The Family Unification Program (FUP)—a federal initiative—connects inadequately housed families involved in child welfare with long-term rental subsidies to avoid foster placement. However, FUP remains understudied and underutilized with funding levels that serve only a fraction of eligible households. The present study uses system dynamics modeling to inform…