April 2008Vol. 9, No. 3Print issueSpotlight on National Child Abuse Prevention Month

States and localities working to integrate a family-strengthening approach into their child welfare systems now can benefit from the Strengthening Families National Network (SFNN). Launched in February 2008 by the Center for the Study of Social Policy, SFNN provides a forum for sharing and disseminating information to improve systems of care that support families through early childhood and child welfare education.

SFNN participants include partners and affiliates around the country that are strongly committed to the strengthening families approach. Partners include States, Territories, and Tribes that have successfully implemented strengths-based practices across systems of care. Affiliates include States, Territories, or Tribes in the early stages of planning and implementing the strengths-based approach. Nine States currently are participating as partners and 14 States as affiliates.

SFNN participants will have the opportunity to participate in Learning Circles to disseminate promising ideas and develop strategies. The Learning Circles will convene once a month in a teleconference and schedule periodic meetings. SFNN participants also will attend symposia and summits and connect with one another through the SFNN online network.

SFNN plans to launch a website featuring tools for early education programs, planning materials for States and localities working to implement the approach, information on training, evaluation tools, and an interactive space for participants interested in collaborative work.

To read more about the Strengthening Families National Network, visit:

www.strengtheningfamilies.net/index.php/main_pages/about_nn/

A new report suggests that race is a significant factor associated with whether or not a child in foster care is successfully reunited with his or her family. The report reviews 11 articles and reports that analyzed data from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being to examine the relationship between race/ethnicity and several child welfare outcomes. The outcomes included:

• Child factors and related services, including early childhood development, early intervention services, and mental health and substance abuse treatment
• Parental factors and related services, including parental arrest and child involvement with child welfare agencies
• Reunification and related services

While this report found that race/ethnicity was not a significant predictor in the receipt of services for children remaining at home or as a general indicator of whether children would be placed in out-of-home care, there were significant relationships between race and outcomes in other areas:

• African-American children were more likely to be placed in out-of-home care following a CPS investigation.
• African-American children were less likely to receive developmental services.
• African-American children ages 6 to 10 were less likely to receive mental health treatment.
• African-American infants and children older than age 10 were less likely to achieve reunification.

The report, Racial Disproportionality, Race Disparity, and Other Race-Related Findings in Published Works Derived From the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being, was written by Keesha Dunbar and Richard P. Barth and published by the Casey-CSSP Alliance for Racial Equity in Child Welfare.

www.aecf.org/KnowledgeCenter/Publications.aspx?pubguid={C43DF3DA-45D1-4EDA-AC79-DBA926E28CF6} (PDF - 1,495 KB)

Natural mentoring relationships may increase the likelihood that youth in foster care experience positive outcomes as they transition to adulthood. A recent study of youth in foster care compared young adult outcomes for youth with mentors versus youth without mentors. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, the study analyzed 310 youth in foster care and found that mentored youth generally showed more positive outcomes. Mentored youth were defined as those benefiting from the presence of a nonparental adult over a period of at least 2 years between the ages of 14 and 18.

The study examined outcomes in four domains: education and employment, psychological well-being, physical health, and participation in unhealthy behaviors. In all four domains, mentored youth did significantly better than nonmentored youth. Participants who had a mentor performed better in school, led healthier lives, stayed away from unhealthy behaviors more often, and were significantly less likely to report psychological problems such as suicidal ideation.

The full study, "Youth in Foster Care With Adult Mentors During Adolescence Have Improved Adult Outcomes," by Kym R. Ahrens, David Lane DuBois, Laura P. Richardson, Ming-Yu Fan, and Paula Lozano, was published in the online version of Pediatrics and can be accessed at:

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/121/2/e246

Adoption professionals need sufficient training and education on the adoption process in order to fully prepare and support adoptive parents and families. The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute is tackling the issue of preparation for parents and adoption professionals through its Adoptive Parent Preparation Project. The focus of the initial phase is on the basic principles, key issues, methods, and content areas forming best practice standards regarding the preparation and education of adoptive parents, specifically in relation to meeting the mental health and developmental needs of adoptive children.

To assist in the development of effective curricula to educate and prepare adoptive parents, the Adoption Institute has issued a policy brief that offers the following general recommendations as a foundation for best practice guidelines:

• More information about adoption and foster care should be incorporated into professionals' graduate training programs, and better continuing education opportunities should be developed.
• Professionals should provide parent training/education both before and after the adoption; those who cannot offer such services themselves should provide appropriate referrals to their clients.
• Professionals should provide a balanced, realistic view of adoption that focuses on appropriate skills and expectations generally, and on the unique needs of the child to be adopted in particular.
• Because much of the current postadoption counseling comes through community-based mental health professionals, they should receive better training in areas related to adoption.

The policy brief also highlights the core beliefs and principles of parent preparation and education, obstacles to sufficient preparation, content areas and topics to include in parent education, and topics for specific types of families, including those who adopt from the child welfare system, from other countries, and across racial lines.

The second phase of the project will involve the development of a comprehensive set of curriculum modules for training adoptive parents on the mental health, developmental, and childrearing issues related to adoption.

The full policy brief, Adoptive Parent Preparation Project Phase I: Meeting the Mental Health and Developmental Needs of Adopted Children, written by David Brodzinksy, can be downloaded from the Adoption Institute website:

www.adoptioninstitute.org/research/2008_02_parent_prep.php

A new publication from the Center for Public Policy Priorities (CPPP) examines the problem of diminishing foster care capacity in the State of Texas and makes recommendations that may be applicable to many States and jurisdictions facing similar challenges. Recognizing the complexity of foster care capacity problems, CPPP underscores the need to increase the quantity and quality of foster care placement options in order to meet the requirements of the growing and changing population of children entering the child welfare system.

CPPP offers six recommendations that build on the State's own action plan to increase capacity and incorporate components for effective capacity building developed by Casey Family Programs:

1. Examine whether foster care rates are adequate.
2. Examine whether the service level system is affecting capacity.
3. Consider a no-reject/no-eject clause in contracts with private providers so that the cost of caring for children with greater needs is spread fairly among providers.
4. Consider more funding for foster/adoptive parent training.
5. Determine whether licensing standards and enforcement are reasonable.
6. Consider hiring a third-party evaluator.

The new report, Creating Foster Care Capacity for Abused and Neglected Children, is available on the CPPP website:

www.cppp.org/files/4/capacitypiece311.pdf (PDF - 153 KB)

Faced with potential leadership gaps as baby boomers in management positions approach retirement, many child welfare agencies are seeking strategies to improve their ability to promote workers from within the ranks of their agency. A recent article in Children's Voice magazine addresses these issues by highlighting leadership-building strategies being developed in agencies across the country.

Internal training and promotion programs can help agencies preserve institutional knowledge, promote agency growth, and reduce reliance on outside recruitment. In keeping with these goals, the Parsons Child and Family Center in Albany, NY, developed the Leadership Academy, an internal program in which selected staff members receive management training in preparation for leadership roles in the organization. Participants engage in class discussions and prepare written assignments that study the organization on three levels: departmental, agency, and future. The program also provides "stretch opportunities" that expose staff to the structure and services of other parts of the organization and encourage staff to build business relationships across departments.

According to the Children's Voice article, the Parsons' plan for leadership development suggests agencies can effectively address future leadership gaps by:

• Estimating the rate of retirement across all current leadership and planning accordingly
• Involving a wide variety of staff in the planning process
• Individualizing plans to the specific features of the organization

The article outlines the Parsons blueprint for leadership development and also describes the efforts of two other agencies in creating similar succession management and leadership development programs.

The full article, "Promoting From the Ranks" by Jennifer Michael, can be found in the Jan/Feb 2008 issue of Children's Voice. Read recent issues of the magazine on the Child Welfare League of America's website:

www.cwla.org/voice/default.htm

Voice for Adoption (VFA) has developed a factsheet on the new college financial aid provisions for foster youth that will go into effect in 2009. The new provisions remove a financial disincentive to adopting teens from foster care by disregarding adoptive parents' income when calculating a youth's need for financial aid for youth adopted after their 13th birthday. The factsheet, which explains the details of the Fostering Adoption to Further Student Achievement Act (FAFSA) that was signed into law in September 2007 as part of Public Law 110-84, is available on the VFA website: 

http://www.voice-for-adoption.org/sites/default/files/FAFSA%20factsheet_updated2010.pdf (PDF - 80 KB)

Home visiting by professionals and paraprofessionals is an important component of many prevention programs for families at risk for child abuse and neglect. A new manual, Your Guide to Nurturing Parent-Child Relationships: Positive Parenting Activities for Home Visitors, offers activities that visitors can use to strengthen parenting capacity and the parent-child relationship. Each chapter focuses on a parenting competency that can be supported through specific home visiting activities. These parenting competencies are:

• Empathy and caring
• Coping and resilience
• Problem solving
• Social competence

The manual's final section describes ways that the home visitor can help parents strengthen the relationship with their children at each developmental stage, up to age 5 years.

Your Guide to Nurturing Parent-Child Relationships was written by Nadia Hall, Chaya Kulkarni, and Shauna Seneca and is available from the Paul H. Brookes Publishing Company:

www.brookespublishing.com/store/books/hall-69070/index.htm

Several agencies within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (including the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have been working together on the National Children's Study, a long-term look at the effects of environmental influences on the health and development of more than 100,000 children from birth to age 21. Researchers are investigating the impact of natural and manmade environmental factors, including physical surroundings, social factors, behavioral influences, and cultural and family influences on children's development. Several of the working hypotheses developed by the study's researchers have implications for child welfare, including hypotheses regarding the impact of traumatic brain injury, antecedents and resiliency to traumatic life events, and the impact of the family and the community on child health and development.

The National Children's Study recently announced another major step toward full implementation with the issuing of a new Request for Proposals (RFP) for additional study centers. The due date for submission of proposals is May 2. The study began in 2000, and the first study results will be available in 2010. The study is scheduled to continue to 2034.

Visit the website to learn more about the National Children's Study, the recent RFP, and how to subscribe to email updates:

http://nationalchildrensstudy.gov/

Just in time for tax season, a new resource guide, Federal Tax Benefits: Foster, Adoptive Parents and Kinship Caregivers: 2007 Tax Year, has been published by the National Foster Parent Association (NFPA) to provide information on deductions and credits available to foster and adoptive parents and kinship caregivers. An increase in the adoption tax credit is among the tax code changes for the 2007 tax year. Application of the tax laws to individual circumstances may require reference to rules and policies that are not included in the guide. NFPA suggests that users give a copy of the guide to their tax advisors.

The guide is available online:

www.nfpaonline.org/uploads/2007_Federal_Tax_Benefits.pdf (PDF - 837 KB)

The Mazda Foundation focuses much of its charitable giving on youth-oriented initiatives, funding nonprofit organizations in the areas of education, literacy, social welfare, scientific research, cross-cultural understanding, and environmental conservation. To apply for a grant, organizations must submit an application form, available on the Mazda Foundation website. Applications are accepted only between May 1 and July 1.

www.mazdafoundation.org/grantguidelines.html

As part of its sponsorship of the Cooperative Extension Service, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has added a Parenting webpage to the Extension website. The Just in Time Parenting webpage offers a selection of parenting information in different formats, including:

• Information on newborn and toddler development that can be delivered through email newsletters at the appropriate time for a parent
• Answers from the experts to frequently asked parenting questions
• Access to parenting experts
• Announcement of local extension programs

www.extension.org/parenting

The Finance Project, a nonprofit firm whose goal is to support children, families, and communities by improving policies, programs, and financing strategies, has launched the online Sustainability Planning Information Resource Center to provide information about financial sustainability for community programs. The website lists resources and information related to seven elements of sustainability:

1. Vision—how to craft and share a vision statement
2. Results orientation—improving effectiveness through ongoing evaluation
3. Strategic financing—including diversifying funding, creating flexibility in funding, and generating new sources of funding
4. Broad-based community support—how to effectively communicate and collaborate with stakeholders
5. Key champions—engaging powerful advocates
6. Adaptability to changing conditions—monitoring trends and knowing the community
7. Strong internal systems—implementing effective management strategies

www.financeproject.org/index.cfm?page=28

Three assessment tools to help link case planning, services, and outcomes are now available in Spanish from the National Family Preservation Network (NFPN). The NFPN tools include the North Carolina Family Assessment Scale for General Services (NCFAS-G), the North Carolina Family Assessment Scale for Reunification (NCFAS-R), and the North Carolina Family Assessment Scale (NCFAS). Each tool also includes a training package containing definitions, sample ratings, frequently asked questions, a PowerPoint presentation, and the case plan. To learn more about these new resources in Spanish, visit:

www.nfpn.org/assessment-tools.html

 

Upcoming national conferences on adoption and child welfare through July 2008 include:

May

• National Foster Parent Association Annual Education Conference
  National Foster Parent Association
  May 12–16, Atlanta, GA
  www.nfpainc.org/content/?page=CONFERENCEINFO
• Pathways to Adulthood 2008
  National Independent Living/Transitional Living Conference
  U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; Administration on Children, Youth and Families; Administration for Children and Families; Children’s Bureau; Family and Youth Services Bureau
  May 14–16, Pittsburgh, PA
  www.nrcys.ou.edu/conferences.shtml
• Prevent Child Abuse America 2008 National Conference
  Connecting the Dots: Turning Knowledge into Action
  May 19–22, Milwaukee, WI
  www.preventchildabuse.org/events/conference/key_dates.shtml
• Fifteenth Annual National Foster Care Conference
  Footsteps to the Future
  Daniel Memorial Institute
  May 21–23, Orlando, FL
  www.danielkids.org/sites/web/content.cfm?id=275

June

• 2008 Conference on Family Group Decision Making
  American Humane
  June 3–6, Tucson, AZ
  www.americanhumane.org/assets/docs/protecting-children/PC-fgdm-teleconference.pdf
• 16th Annual Colloquium
  American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children
  June 18–21, Phoenix, AZ
  www.apsac.org/mc/community/eventdetails.do?eventId=140848

July

• • FFTA 22nd Annual Conference on Treatment Foster Care
    Foster Family-Based Treatment Association
    July 13–16, The Woodlands, TX
    www.ffta.org/conference/
  • The 11th National Child Welfare Data and Technology Conference
    Making IT Work: Achieving Safety, Permanency, and Well-Being for Youth
    National Resource Center for Child Welfare Data and Technology
    July 21–23, Washington, DC
    www.nrccwdt.org/conferences/our_conf.html
  • International Family Violence and Child Victimization Research Conference
    Family Research Laboratory & Crimes Against Children Research Center
    July 27–29, Portsmouth, NH
    www.unh.edu/frl/conferences/2008/

Further details about national and regional adoption and child welfare conferences can be found through the "Conference Calendar Search" feature on the Child Welfare Information Gateway website:

www.childwelfare.gov/calendar/index.cfm

The Georgia Department of Human Resources (DHR), Division of Family & Children Services, has developed a training program for child welfare case managers that uses an online participant guide. While created for the Georgia workforce, the guide may offer information to other child welfare staff. This course is intended to:

• Teach case managers the skills and knowledge needed in child protective services (CPS)
• Emphasize DHR policy and procedures that guide practice to support the transfer of knowledge from the classroom to the field
• Emphasize family-centered practice principles to support families

This guide was designed with 11 modules, each of which contains information and related activities such as worksheets, scenarios, and discussions to aid in knowledge retention. By the end of training, participants should be better able to understand their roles and expectations as CPS case managers.

To view this electronic participant guide, please visit:
http://dhr.state.ga.us/DHR-DFCS/DHR_DFCS-Edu/Files/CPS%20Electronic%20PG%203-22-07.pdf (PDF - 3,310 KB)

The Georgia DHR posts many of its education and training curricula and handouts. To view the online selection, go to:
http://dfcs.dhr.georgia.gov/portal/site/DHR-DFCS/menuitem.83054cda1a084d2f7da1df8dda1010a0/?vgnextoid=3767efd2d0fa2110VgnVCM100000bf01010aRCRD

Oregon's Teen Project was created to help promote positive and effective relationships with youth who have experienced abuse and neglect. The Teen Project website provides training curricula and resources for youth workers based on the most current information on adolescent maltreatment. Both the curriculum for trainers and the individualized learning modules are organized into five categories:

• Adolescent brain development
• Building relationships with youth
• Cultural considerations when working with youth
• Transitions
• Unique needs of youth

The website also offers a workbook for multidisciplinary team investigations of adolescent abuse and neglect.

The Teen Project is a collaborative effort of the Juvenile Rights Project, Inc., Portland State University School of Social Work, and Oregon's Department of Human Services. Access the curricula and workbook on the website:

www.cwpsalem.pdx.edu/teen/