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Child welfare practice requires minimally cooperative, if not integrative actions, by various organizations and professional disciplines; yet, research has traditionally focused on singular institutions. To advance a more holistic understanding, this study applies network analysis methods for their distinctive utility in measuring and visualizing multi-organizational relationships. The objective is to examine the community-wide structure of relations involved in prevention and service delivery efforts serving children and families.
Methods
As part of a larger case study design, the ways organizations in a single county interact were analyzed, specifically including referrals, case coordination, joint programs, shared resources, shared training, evaluation, fundraising, joint advocacy, and education/awareness.
To establish the sample, the local child protection agency was purposefully asked to initiate a boundary specification process by naming agencies they had interacted with on one or more of 11 designated service delivery/prevention activities within 12 months. Each named agency was likewise invited to identify agencies, per the same criteria. This process continued until a refined list was constructed (n=105).
Key informants from each organization completed a survey instrument to capture the types of interaction between their organization and each identified agency. Eighty of the 105 organizations participated (76%). Network statistics were computed using UCINET and network visualizations were produced using NETDRAW to construct results.
Results
Notably, the breadth of professional fields identified for inclusion was a fundamental finding; organizations spanned orientations in education (e.g., schools and mentor programs), law enforcement (e.g., police departments, juvenile justice, probation services), health (e.g., hospitals, clinics, forensic nurses), law (e.g., courts and legal services), religion (e.g., churches), and a range of social services focused in mental health, employment, financial support, housing, food, aging, domestic violence, disabilities, recreation, and others. Empirically establishing this breath of involvement and measuring interconnection supports a conception of child welfare practice as a multidisciplinary intervention process and forays into basic questions of roles, boundaries, and responsibilities in the field.
Analyses were conducted per task to measure connectedness, density, and centralization at the network-level. Almost all organizations, 104 of 105 (99%), were active in the referral network. The lowest percentage of active nodes - 70% in the fundraising network – reinforced that activities were not occurring in isolation, rather with high interdependence.
The referral network was the densest (.188) (i.e., approximately 19% of all possible ties were found to exist). Bootstrap paired sample t-tests confirmed that the networks for referrals, education/ awareness, and case coordination had significantly higher densities than the other categories. The shared training network had a notably low centralization score (.195), considering centralized networks are evidenced as more effective in disseminating evidence-based practice. Full statistics for each activity will be presented, including comparisons among tasks, for a comprehensive analysis of the networked landscape.
Conclusions
By systematically identifying the presence and extent of interdependence among agencies, data serve as a reference point for reversing the field’s long history of poor integrative success and offer a tool for strategic network development. Detailed findings and visualizations will be presented with direct policy and practice implications.