The Impact of COVID-19 and Immigration Enforcement on Service Delivery for Immigrant Origin Families Involved in the Child Welfare System.

This descriptive study sought to explore how child welfare agencies and community partner organizations experienced and adapted service provision for immigrant children and families during the COVID-19 pandemic. Semi-structured qualitative interviews were completed with 31 child welfare agency practitioners and community partners in 11 states who work with immigrant clients or on immigration related policies within the child welfare sector. Data were coded and analyzed using a thematic analysis approach. Results: Findings documented ongoing immigration-related fears in accessing services due to the anti-immigrant climate as well as increased scarcity of resources and basic needs stressors among immigrants served by the child welfare community during the pandemic. Results also identified child welfare systemic and structural barriers to accessing needed case supports for immigrants, in addition to innovative practice and policy adaptations to meet immigrant needs during the pandemic. COVID-19 created overwhelming challenges for already overburdened immigrant families at risk of or involved with the child welfare system. Child welfare agencies should foster collaborations with immigrant-serving community organizations who can share information and resources about COVID-19, immigration enforcement, and vaccine distribution. Agencies should adopt policies for tele-visiting that support transnational participation in virtual family visits and court hearings to create more equitable opportunities for reunification and permanency.

Child neglect and maternal cross-relational social cognitive and neurocognitive disturbances.

A social information processing (SIP) theory of parenting risk posits that social-cognitive and neurocognitive incapacities characterize at-risk parents, and that these cognitive difficulties operate across relational domains. This study focused on highly disadvantaged mothers of preschoolers and compared mothers with histories of perpetrating child neglect (n = 69) to demographically similar mothers without such histories (n = 76). Participants completed measures of unrealistic expectations for children and other adults, social problem-solving in parenting and nonparenting situations, executive functioning (EF), and attributions for children and other adults. As predicted, associations among these measures were found within and across relational domains. Exploratory factor analysis revealed two distinct clusters that distinguished the two groups. The first included measures of expectations and attributions (for both children and other adults) and the second included problem-solving difficulties and EF. When group differences were examined on individual variables, mothers with histories of perpetrating neglect exhibited more unrealistic expectations of children and other adults, more hostile attributions toward children and other adults, and poorer performance on tests of EF than comparisons. Only interpersonal problem-solving (in both parenting and nonparenting situations) failed to differentiate the neglect group from comparisons. In regression analyses, both parenting and nonparenting social cognition and EF contributed significantly to child neglect. These findings provide some support for this cognitive model of parenting risk and suggest widespread disturbances in parenting and nonparenting social cognition and neurocognition, may play a role in child neglect. (PsycINFO Database Record

Health Literacy in Unauthorized Mexican Immigrant Mothers and Risk of Developmental Delay in their Children.

The incidence of developmental delay and early intervention (EI) service utilization is not well documented among unauthorized Mexican immigrants, a vulnerable population. Individual interviews were conducted in Spanish with Mexican born women receiving maternal health care. Children 12-60 months of age were screened for developmental delay using the Ages and Stages Questionnaire. 12 % (n = 8) of children assessed (n = 65) were at risk for developmental delay. Of those at risk 38 % (n = 3) participated in EI. An additional 26 % of the children (n = 17) qualified for further monitoring, and of those 59 % (n = 10) received EI. Women with low health literacy had more than four times the odds of having a child with risk of developmental delay (aOR 4.4; 95 % CI 1.3-15.4). Developmental delay was associated with low maternal health literacy in unauthorized Mexican immigrants; however, rates of self-reported EI use in this population are higher than those seen nationally.