A Pilot Study of the Adoption and Guardianship Enhanced Support (AGES) Program: Preventing Discontinuity by Walking Alongside Adoptive and Guardianship Families Who are Struggling.

PURPOSE: There is a strong preference for evidence-based child welfare services, however, there are few well-researched programs for families that struggle post-permanence. Following adoption or guardianship, some families experience significant challenges, struggle to find effective programs, and run the risk of family instability. This study described the process used to develop the Adoption and Guardianship Enhanced Support (AGES) intervention and explored: 1) the needs of families participating in the program and 2) how AGES worked with families to address those challenges. METHODS: This descriptive study utilized quantitative structured assessment data and qualitative data from case records to explore the needs of families and provide context for qualitative, in-depth interviews with families regarding their experiences with the AGES program, presented using thematic analysis. RESULTS: Pre-service structured assessments indicated multiple dimensions of parenting strain, with case record reviews and interviews with families providing a nuanced picture of multiple sources of strain, suggesting the project was reaching the intended audience. Record review and interviews demonstrated strong alignment between needs of families and the support provided by AGES workers. Intended analysis of quantitative post-assessment data was not possible, due to lower enrollment and higher staff turnover than expected, as well as study timeframes. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: The approach utilized by AGES workers, one that walked alongside families and provided flexible responses to identified needs, showed promise for adoptive and guardianship families. Replication and additional research are needed to assess the program with a larger sample and more rigorous methods.

Conducting culturally competent evaluations of child welfare programs and practices.

As the population of the United States has changed over the last two decades, so has the population of children who come to the attention of the child welfare system, resulting in increasing calls for cultural competence in all aspects of child welfare programming and practice. Given the changing demographics among children involved in the child weltare system and the increasing need to address the racial and ethnic disparities observed in this system, the need for culturally competent approaches to evaluate the outcomes of services for children and families is essential. This article discusses the challenges in conducting culturally competent evaluations and provides strategies to address those challenges within a child welfare context.

Happily Ever After? Life Satisfaction After Childhood Exposure to Violence.

A plethora of research has linked exposure to violence during childhood to negative long-term physical health, mental health, and risk behavior outcomes. Yet, despite estimates that up to 60% of children in the United States will be exposed to violence, little is known about the impact on adult life satisfaction among different racial and ethnic groups, or for different types of violence exposure. This article seeks to explore factors that are associated with life satisfaction in adults who were exposed to family violence or physically abused as a child, while adjusting race, ethnicity, gender, and emotional support. Employing data from the 2010 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), links are examined between childhood exposure to violence and adult life satisfaction. For this study, noninstitutionalized adults aged 18 and above in the United States were included. Adults who reported exposure to physical abuse as a child had lower odds of reporting life satisfaction, and those with both physical abuse and interpersonal violence exposure had the lowest odds of long-term life satisfaction. Higher levels of income, emotional support, and marriage were associated with higher levels of satisfaction for both adults who were not exposed to violence as children and those who were. After controlling for sociodemographic factors, adults who identified as Asian or Pacific Islander had higher odds of reporting life satisfaction than their Caucasian counterparts. Implications from these findings include targeting interventions to increase emotional support and social networks for individuals who have been exposed to violence.

Implementation Fidelity in the Replication of Tuning in to Teens (TINT) Adapted for Adoptive Parents and Guardians in the US.

Purpose: Clear explication of the conditions necessary to reproduce results is imperative in the development of evidence-based interventions.Methods: This study used a fidelity framework to guide the exploration of implementation fidelity in a study of the Tuning in to Teens (TINT) intervention in New Jersey. TINT is an evidence-based prevention program - previously tested with parents of pre-adolescents to reduce emotionally dismissive parenting - that was adapted for use with adoptive and guardianship families.Results: The review of intervention design adaptation and protocols; intervention training; and monitoring of intervention delivery revealed extensive efforts by an adoption clinician, the purveyor of the program, and an implementation team to support the implementation efforts. Results of the monitoring of intervention receipt indicate that the intervention was implemented with high fidelity.Discussion: Future intervention research should consider assessing the effects of implementation efforts on outcomes to improve replication under real-world conditions. Regardless, this exploration of fidelity has implications for public and private organizations seeking to implement an evidence-based intervention. The framework developed by Gearing and Colleagues and the TIDieR checklist could provide useful guidance when planning for and reporting on implementation fidelity in the furtherance of developing and disseminating evidence-based interventions.

The road to reunification: Family- and state system-factors associated with successful reunification for children ages zero-to-five.

BACKGROUND: Research suggests that up to one-third of children who reunify re-enter care because of continued maltreatment. For young children, this is particularly detrimental due to rapid brain development during the first years of life. OBJECTIVE: This study examined family- and state child welfare system predictors of successful reunification, or reunification with no reentries into foster care. METHODS: A sample of N=53,789 from the 2012 Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System of children ages zero-to-five who reunified was utilized. Children were tracked over the following three years and a multilevel model was run to compare family- and state system-factors among those that successfully and unsuccessfully reunified. RESULTS: Only 4.6 % of the variance in successful reunification was at the state child welfare system level. After adjusting for family-factors, state average time-to-reunify (OR=1.04, p<.05) and violent crime rates (OR=1.00, p<.01) were associated with successful reunification. A random effect for race and ethnicity and parental drug use suggests that the relationship between race and ethnicity and successful reunification, and parental drug use and successful reunification, varies significantly by state child welfare system. CONCLUSIONS: Given these findings, practitioners and child welfare agencies should prioritize family-centered interventions. Future research could identify which state child welfare systems have successfully improved outcomes for families of color and families with histories of drug abuse.

Implementation Science and Prevention in Action: Application in a Post-Permanency World.

This article describes how implementation science and intervention research guided the process of selecting and implementing an evidence-informed intervention (Tuning in to Teens; TINT). TINT was provided as a selective prevention effort offered to families with youth aged 10 to 13 years old, with characteristics that suggest an elevated risk for post-permanency discontinuity. Usability testing findings: Contact was made with 54% of families, and 12% participated in the intervention. Multivariate results found no statistically significant differences between families who responded to outreach efforts and those who did not; families who participated in TINT and those who did not. Implications: Large public child welfare systems wanting to implement evidence-informed interventions can follow the steps detailed in this paper for selecting, adapting and implementing an intervention. Further, providers that seek to offer post adoption and guardianship services, a growing service need, may gain some insights into activities that promote service usage with this population.

Addressing disproportionality through undoing racism, leadership development, and community engagement.

In 2005 the Texas 79th legislature passed Senate Bill 6, which included mandates to address disproportionality. This article will describe how the Texas Department of Family Protective Services in collaboration with Casey Family Programs' Texas State Strategy systems improvement initiative is addressing disproportionality statewide through promising practices and innovations in undoing racism trainings, values-based leadership development, and community engagement strategies.

Psychological stress in adoptive parents of special-needs children.

This article focuses on the nature and extent of parental stress among adoptive parents of special-needs children. In-depth face-to-face interviews of adoptive parents of 35 children were conducted, on average, four months postplacement (but before adoption). One-year follow-up interviews were conducted with parents of 15 (43%) of these children. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected, including parenting stress scores. Results indicated higher than average levels of stress, particularly on subscales related to parent-child dysfunctional interactions and to raising a difficult child. Increased stress levels were associated with poorer family adjustment and with higher levels of child behavior problems. Stress levels remained mostly unchanged over the year. Responses to open-ended questions identified five stress categories: child characteristics, parent-child interactions, family cohesion, parental adjustment, and adoptions service issues. Practice and research implications are discussed.

Child human trafficking victims: challenges for the child welfare system.

Since the passing of the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act in 2000 and its reauthorization by President George Bush in 2008, federal, state and community efforts in identifying and providing services for victims of human trafficking have significantly improved. However, most of the research and resources for trafficking victims have been directed towards adults rather than children. Researchers agree that there is a growing number of sexually exploited and trafficked children in the United States yet few programs emphasize the unique experiences and special needs of this population. This article examines commercial sexual exploitation of children; differentiates the needs and problems between child prostitution and victims of human trafficking; reviews and critiques current treatment practices; and summarizes challenges and successes in working with child victims of human trafficking, offering practice and policy recommendations.