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| Saturday, 14 January 2006: 8:00 AM-9:45 AM | |||
| The Adoption and Safe Families Act: Research on Child Safety, Permanency and Well-Being | |||
| Organizer: | Dana J. Sullivan, PhD, University of Louisville | ||
| The Kentucky Foster Care Census: Measuring Child Well-Being in the Child Welfare System Dana J. Sullivan, PhD | |||
| Child Maltreatment: Assessment and Recidivism Helen K. Mudd, PhD | |||
| Legacy Children: Whose Legacy Are They? Pam N. Tungate, PhD | |||
| Abstract Text: The three goals of the Adoption and Safe Families Act, passed in 1997 containing mandates for public child welfare agencies, are safety, permanency, and improving the well-being of children and families. The purpose of this symposium is to present research on each of these three outcomes that was conducted within Kentucky's child welfare agency. The three papers that will be presented focus on maltreatment assessment and recidivism, factors affecting permanency, and exploring predictors of child well-being. The study on child safety examined risk assessment and recidivism of child maltreatment to answer the following research question: What is the relationship between child protective services provided by a child welfare agency and risk of maltreatment? Findings highlighted the success of solution-based casework in creating change. Paired t-testing, comparing changes in opening and closing assessment scores by safety factor, cumulative score, type of abuse, and region of service found significant differences (p < .001), indicating that there had been a reduction in risk of harm. A number of foster children are still spending long periods of time in foster care. Mixed methods were utilized to study permanency and to identify variables that were significantly different in groups of children who find permanency when compared to those who do not and which family, child, social worker, and system variables predict long term foster care. The results showed that seven direct predictors and nineteen indirect post of long term care. Of the direct predictors, three direct predictors and fourteen indirect predictors were present at point of entry into foster care. Number of days between case planning conferences was the strongest predictor of long term foster care. Kentucky utilized a census approach to measure the well-being of the children in the foster care system, in order to gather data on the well-being of these children in foster care (Huebner et al., 2002a). CHAID analysis (Kass, 1980) was utilized to partition the data into mutually exclusive, exhaustive subsets to best describe the well-being of the children in the census. The results of the census, overall, showed that there were low percentages of identified or diagnosed needs and that most of the children in the sample had access to needed resources. The children were being visited fairly frequently by their case workers, receiving educational advocacy, having regular visits to the doctor and dentist, and their needs were being tracked as they continued to be in the system. Research studies such as those presented in this symposium can assist individual social workers and agencies to evaluate their practices related to safety, permanency, and well-being. References English, D. (1998). The extent and consequences of child maltreatment. The Future of Children, 8(1), 39-52. Huebner, R., Wolford, B., & Hommrich, B. (2002a). Kentucky foster care census executive summary. Retrieved from www.trc.eku.edu/fostercare.html Kass, G. V. (1980). An exploratory technique for investigating large quantities of categorical data. Applied Statistics, 29(2), 119-127. McDonald, T., & Marks, J. (1991). A review of risk factors assessed in child protective services. Social Service Review, 65(1), 112-132.
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See more of Meeting the Challenge: Research In and With Diverse Communities (January 12 - 15, 2006)