Research That Matters (January 17 - 20, 2008)

Background and Purpose: Substance abusing families in the child welfare system often experience multiple problems simultaneously. Prior substance abuse research suggests that attention to these co-occurring problems is essential to achieving desirable substance abuse outcomes. It is unknown whether addressing clients' co-occurring problems also can improve key child welfare outcomes such as family reunification. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relation between matching services to needs on the outcome of family reunification for substance abusing families in public child welfare using data collected in the Illinois Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse (AODA) waiver demonstration project. Methods: In this experimental study, the sample consists of a total of 354 substance abusing mothers and their 602 children who were enrolled in the Illinois AODA waiver demonstration study. Hierarchical non-linear modeling is used to understand the role of both child level and family level characteristics. Results: Matched services in mental health, housing, family counseling and substance abuse treatment significantly improved the likelihood of family reunification. Child characteristics, age and sex of children were associated with the likelihood of family reunification. Mothers' demographic characteristics including partner's involvement, education, previous mental health treatment experience, employment, and types of primary drug were also associated with the likelihood of family reunification in HLM subgroup analyses. The effect of race/ethnicity was not detected in this study. The analyses also reveal that the need-service gap is high, i.e., that child welfare system clients continue to struggle with low rates of service utilization. Although the rate of family reunification was greater for those who received matched services, the rates of service utilization were low overall. Conclusion and implications: It remains important for researchers, practitioners and policy makers to continue to reduce the need-service gap and to improve the provision of matched services.