Children's Bureau Express

Proposed Article List May 2023

Spotlight Articles

Message From Aysha E. Schomburg—Monthly message from the Associate Commissioner

May Is National Foster Care Month—This is an article written by CBX staff about what’s new for the 2023 special initiative, including new developments with the website.

States Should Use New Guidance to Stop Charging Parents for Foster Care, Prioritize Family Reunification—Recent guidance from the Administration for Children and Families allows states to end the harmful practice of charging parents for costs associated with their child being in foster care. Implementing this guidance will be crucial in helping create more equitable child support and child welfare programs that put the needs of children first. The recent guidance provides a useful roadmap to states on how to end these harmful child support policies and ensure families are not burdened with child support debt following reunification. The steps to implement the guidance will vary by state, but most will need to develop clear guidelines establishing nonreferral to child support enforcement agencies as the standard practice; reprogram computer systems to stop automatic referral; train personnel on the new guidance; establish quality-control mechanisms to review cases pending referral; and adopt practices that improve coordination between child welfare and child support programs. (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, https://www.cbpp.org/sites/default/files/10-13-22fis.pdf)

Supporting Immigrant Children & Youth in Foster Care— Recent years have seen an increase in attention to children who enter the United States as immigrants, and the experiences of youth who are in both the immigration and foster care systems remain underexamined. The National Foster Care Youth and Alumni Council decided to elevate this topic due to direct experience by current members of navigating both systems simultaneously. It looked at the experiences of all youth who have navigated both systems, regardless of whether they are “unaccompanied immigrant youth” or they arrived here with family and entered the U.S. foster care system at a later date. To develop this priority statement, the council engaged in discussions with members and key individuals and organizations that are supporting children with these experiences. The council reviewed available research, which was lacking, and developed a survey to understand the experiences of young people across the Nation. (National Foster Care Youth and Alumni Council, https://www.fosterclub.com/blog/public-policy/new-priority-released-supporting-immigrant-youth-children-foster-care)

Rethinking Service Array for Young People Transitioning From Child Welfare—Data from the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System and the Midwest Study show that youth and young adults who exit care without a permanent family are at greater risk than their same-age peers for many negative outcomes, such as unemployment, lower incomes, housing instability, poorer health, criminal justice involvement, lower educational attainment, less access to health insurance, and higher reliance on public assistance programs. This resource offers considerations for redesigning the child welfare service array to meet the needs of youth and young adults currently and formerly in foster care, focusing on topics such as housing, health care and mental health, substance use treatment, and education. The resource reflects lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic and in the course of implementing the provisions of Division X in states and jurisdictions. (Division X Technical Assistance, https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubPDFs/div-x/product8-rethinking-service-array.pdf)

News From the Children's Bureau

Roadmaps to Building Child Welfare Evidence—Child welfare administrators and evaluators conduct evaluations to understand whether, how, and how well programs, policies, and initiatives work for children, youth, and families. The Child Welfare Evidence Strengthening Team (CWEST) aims to increase the number of evidence-based interventions and improve the child welfare system’s ability to build, understand, and use evidence. To support the child welfare professionals in conducting rigorous evaluations, CWEST has developed the Roadmaps to Building Evidence in Child Welfare series, which is a collection of instructional resources about conducting child welfare evaluations. The goal of the series is to give child welfare administrators and evaluators knowledge on many elements of the evaluation process. (Office of Research, Planning, and Evaluation, https://www.acf.hhs.gov/opre/report/roadmaps-building-child-welfare-evidence)

CB Website Updates—This is a brief listing of any new resources or links posted on the CB website.

Training and Technical Assistance Updates

Spotlight On Racial Equity and Continuous Quality Improvement in Child Welfare—Families of color are disproportionately represented in our child welfare agencies nationwide. Children of color are more likely to be placed in foster care and more likely to experience multiple placement disruptions while in care.It is vital for jurisdictions to be culturally aware and consider socioeconomic disparities and personal bias when making intervention or placement decisions. A continued, intentional focus is required to embed equity into child welfare practice and disrupt processes that cause disproportionality. Using a continuous quality improvement (CQI) approach can help child welfare agencies identify root causes; review and revise the policies, processes, and practices that contribute to disproportionality; and find adaptive solutions to mitigate inequities. Including communities, families, and youth affected by the system throughout the CQI process is one strategy to help guard against perpetuating inequities. The structured CQI process, from thinking about data collection and analysis to envisioning and implementing changes, can help agencies take the actions needed over time in a sustainable and data-informed way. (Capacity Building Center for States, https://content.govdelivery.com/bulletins/gd/USACFCBCS-34a72e6?wgt_ref=USACFCBCS_WIDGET_1)

Post-Adoption and Guardianship Support Across the Country—Between 2019 and 2021, AdoptUSKids surveyed states and territories to learn more about what postadoption and guardianship services look like across the country and about services offered in the following categories: basic services, such as child and youth assessments; enhanced services, including peer support for parents and caregivers; and intensive services, a category that includes in-home therapeutic services. The report also discusses funding sources and eligibility for services. Professionals can learn about the support services offered across child welfare systems, as the survey received responses from 46 states and 3 territories. (AdoptUSKids, https://professionals.adoptuskids.org/post-adoption-and-guardianship-support-across-the-country/)

More CB Training and Technical Assistance Updates—This is a quick list of new resources from CB's training and technical assistance partners.

Child Welfare Research

Fathers and Continuous Learning in Child Welfare: Descriptive Evaluation Design Report—The Fathers and Continuous Learning in Child Welfare (FCL) project, conducted by Mathematica and the University of Denver, is testing the methodology of the Breakthrough Series Collaborative (BSC) to (1) strengthen the engagement of fathers and paternal relatives with their children in child welfare and (2) add to the evidence base on potentially promising engagement strategies for these fathers and paternal relatives. The BSC methodology pairs methods with values that distinguish it from other continuous learning processes, such as continuous cross-site shared learning opportunities, efforts to broaden participation by reducing power differentials among participants in the change process, and an emphasis on small tests of change. This design report describes the approach to the FCL descriptive study. The study has three aims. The first is to describe potentially promising strategies and approaches for engaging fathers and paternal relatives in the child welfare system. The second is to assess the promise of the BSC as a continuous quality improvement framework for addressing challenges in the child welfare system (e.g., whether and to what extent the BSC has potential for use in the child welfare field, and if so, how it may be applied to other child welfare challenges). The third is to assess the extent to which agencies experienced a shift in organizational culture after implementing the BSC. The FCL descriptive study is not intended to draw causal or other statistical inferences about the effectiveness of the BSC or any of the strategies that agencies developed and tested in the BSC. Instead, the report seeks to describe promising practices and potential next steps for continued research. (Mathematica, https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/documents/opre/fcl_descriptive_eval_plan_oct2022.pdf)

Students Offer Lessons on Enhancing Engagement in Youth Programs—This brief is based on feedback from ninth-grade students who had participated in a larger evaluation of a social-emotional program delivered across four high schools in rural North Carolina. Based in the principles of mindfulness, the program aimed to improve the social and emotional competence of youth and support their healthy relationships. Upon program completion, 42 students participated in nine focus groups designed to evaluate their experiences in the program and provide suggestions for future enhancements. (Child Trends, https://www.childtrends.org/publications/students-offer-lessons-on-enhancing-engagement-in-youth-programs)

Strategies and Tools for Practice

Qualitative Analysis of Workforce Expert Interviews—To understand current efforts to engage youth in child welfare settings, as well as barriers to engagement and recommendations to promote authentic youth engagement, the Quality Improvement Center on Engaging Youth in Finding Permanency (QIC-EY) team conducted a series of 15 interviews with workforce professionals. Interviewees included caseworkers, supervisors, and members of executive leadership in child welfare agencies. Results revealed that youth are being engaged primarily through family team meetings, family search efforts, and conversations with their caseworker. Child welfare professionals felt most comfortable beginning to engage youth at age 12 or 14, when they felt it was developmentally appropriate to do so. The top recommendations to promote youth engagement were providing targeted worker training, coaching, and supervision and reducing caseloads to allow time for relationship building. (QIC-EY, https://qic-ey.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Workforce-expert-interviews.pdf)

A Tool for Youth Engagement and Empowerment—This publication offers child welfare agencies, programs, and organizations resources, checklists, and strategies for youth engagement and empowerment along a youth and young adult involvement continuum, beginning with case-level engagement and ending with participation in systems-level decision-making and advocacy. It also offers resources to help youth and young adults better understand the different aspects of youth engagement and empowerment to advocate for themselves and their goals more effectively within the child welfare system. (Division X Technical Assistance, https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubPDFs/div-x/product6-youthengagement-empowerment.pdf)

Article TBD—This will be an article from the Capacity Building Center for States.

Resources

Social Media: Tips for Youth in Foster Care—This factsheet briefly describes the advantages and challenges youth in foster care may encounter when using social media. It also offers issues that should be considered and tips for handling issues. (Child Welfare Information Gateway, https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/smtips-youth/)

Stronger Than You Think—This podcast amplifies the stories of young people and demonstrates how the work of Youth Villages can transform their lives and create space for them to heal. It demonstrates that national efforts to provide localized mental health care can create a ripple of change. Through story-driven interviews, these individuals share their experiences within the foster care system and the mental health practices that shaped them into the strong adults they are today. Additionally, Youth Villages experts from across the country add additional content and validate the data-driven practices described by the young people. (Youth Villages, https://youthvillages.org/podcast/)

Healthy Sexuality for Youth in Foster Care: Tip Sheet—Parents and caregivers play an important role in keeping youth in foster care safe by promoting healthy behaviors. Research suggests a lack of parental monitoring is linked to a range of risky adolescent behaviors, including risky sexual behavior. When caregivers work together with youth to set rules and expectations, it is easier to keep youth healthy and safe. The tips and activities provided in this tip sheet are explained in more detail in “Healthy Sexuality for Youth in Foster Care: An Online Training for Parents and Caregivers of Youth in Foster Care,” a resource for parents and caregivers from the Family and Youth Services Bureau and the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation. (Mathematica, https://www.fosterparenttalk.org/sites/default/files/2023-01/safety.pdf)

Training and Conferences

Webinar and Training Focus on the Strengths of Kinship Families—Generations United and Dr. Joseph Crumbley

Providing Culturally Relevant Services to Families of LGBTQ+ Youth—This presentation will dive into what it means to have culturally responsive services and key strategies for working with families of LGBTQ+ young people. It will also share findings from a recent systematic review on cultural adaptations as well as important insights from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration guide Adapting Evidence-Based Practices for Under-Resourced Populations. Presenters will discuss case examples from recent efforts to support families of LGBTQ+ youth involved in the child welfare system. Presenters will also share information on the Youth Acceptance Project, a clinical intervention built to provide culturally responsive services to families that are experiencing grief, fear, or guilt around their child’s LGBTQ+ identity. (https://lgbtqequity.org/learn/?vgo_ee=Mmpz4hUqjrZBB0NhPyIqAF%2BTwft2qMjWHmeH75LDp%2BM%3D)

Healthy Sexuality for Youth in Foster Care: An Online Training for Parents and Caregivers of Youth in Foster Care—This free, online training from the Family and Youth Services Bureau can help parents and caregivers of youth in foster care learn about healthy relationships adolescent sexual health and strengthen their communication skills. (Family & Youth Services Bureau, https://www.fosterparenttalk.org/home)

Conferences—These are listings for May 2023 through July 2023.

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