Session: Preventive Interventions for Child Welfare-Involved Children and Youth Across Developmental Periods (Society for Social Work and Research 21st Annual Conference - Ensure Healthy Development for all Youth)

Currently, very few interventions that target child welfare populations are evidence-based, and even fewer incorporate elements of evidence-based prevention programming. The child welfare system works with some of the most vulnerable children, youth, and families in the country, and programs effective at preventing harmful and risky behaviors and improving well-being are sorely needed. This symposium presents results from three prevention interventions being developed, adapted, and/or tested in collaboration with child welfare systems and child welfare-involved populations. Paper 1 describes the development process and pilot data from Strive, an "open source" evidence-informed intervention designed to prevent parent-child relationship breakdown and re-traumatization during supervised visitation of child welfare involved children. Paper 2 describes pilot findings and lessons learned from Connecting, a family-focused substance abuse and risky sexual behavior prevention program designed to build stronger relationships between teens in foster care and their caregivers. Paper 3 describes the youth-reported usability findings from a developmental study of Fostering Higher Education, a postsecondary access and retention intervention for youth transitioning from foster care to adulthood that contains elements of evidence-based alcohol and substance abuse prevention programming. These prevention interventions span several developmental periods, with Strive focusing on early childhood, Connecting focusing on early- to mid-adolescence, and Fostering Higher Education focusing on late adolescence/ emerging adulthood. Findings from these three studies contribute to building the evidence base for prevention efforts for child welfare-involved children and youth.