What Are We Telling the Judge?: The Development and Piloting of a Foster-Care Specific Well-Being Assessment with a CASA Agency

Background:

Volunteer Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASAs) are a significant presence at the intersection of the legal and child welfare systems.  CASAs provide an independent report to the judge representing the child’s best interest, their functioning and needs.  In an effort to systematize the CASA process of assessment and recommendations, we created an academic-community partnership with a CASA organization in the Midwest to develop and pilot a well-being assessment. This assessment sought to: capture age-appropriate well-being; reflect changes in the child’s situation; and provide key information for reports to the judge.

Methods:

The well-being assessment was developed through an iterative series of eight focus groups with the supervisory staff (n=15) and a small sample of the volunteers (n= 25) at a large CASA agency that represents about 900 children in foster care a year, from birth to 21 years old.  The language of the assessment was refined following each focus group.  The full assessment was piloted twice and revised using focus-group feedback.  The volunteers for the pilot were selected by agency staff using purposive sampling to ensure that a range of children’s ages and abilities were represented.  The assessment was modified after the second round of pilot testing; then it was introduced to all of the CASA volunteers (n=325). 

Results:

Development Process: The focus-group participants expanded the areas of concern from 12 domains to 32 age-specific questions.  Due to the limitations imposed by the foster care system, participants stressed the importance of capacity rather than performance, such as whether the child had the social skills to make positive friendships, rather than whether they currently had positive friendships.  For other domains, the participants wanted to focus on the child’s ability to function given the services they were provided.  This shifted the focus from identified deficits, such as mental health diagnoses or developmental delays, to whether services allowed the child to engage in school and play. 

Preliminary results: Examples from a sample of 6-18 year olds (n=206), illustrate the importance of operationalizing terms so the volunteers were using consistent definitions.  For example, whether the placement was the least restrictive setting was important, but participants also identified that a nurturing placement was critical for child development.  Unfortunately, many children did not experience nurturing in their placements.  At one assessment point, 24% of children were in placements that were not nurturing at all or nurturing only part of the time.  In an example of a capacity question, 39% of children were reported as having some social skills but struggled to develop friendships. 

Conclusion and implications:

The CASA volunteers and staff identified themes that were consistent with the theoretical work on well-being, and they were able to apply these themes in the unusual situation of children in foster care.  By using this assessment as the foundation for the report to the judge, the judge is provided with more consistent information about the children’s strengths and needs, and it is clearer what factors the volunteers are using to make their recommendations.