Measuring Family Centered Practice in Child Welfare: A Confirmatory Factor Analysis

Background and Purpose: The family-centered practices, known as family support and family preservation services, have been widely implemented in child welfare across the United States. Although family-centered practice has been implemented for decades in child welfare, measures for evaluating family-centered practice have not been well-established. The purpose of this study is to examine the factor structure of the measurement of the Family-Centered Practice Questionnaire and provide a validated measure to assess the family centered practice model.

Methods: This study used secondary data from a statewide family-centered practice follow-up online survey among child welfare workers (n = 307) in 2011. The online survey aimed to assess child welfare staff’s family-centered practice efforts and their personal attitudes toward family-centered practice. The Family-Centered Practice Questionnaire uses a four-point scale (1 = never to 4 = almost always) with seven factors (Craft-Rosenberg, Kelley, & Schnoll, 2006). This study examined the factor structure of the 39-item and revised 31-item versions of the Family-Centered Practice Questionnaire by conducting confirmatory factor analyses in Mplus 8.0.

Results: The majority of participants were female (n = 272; 88.6%) and White (n = 239; 77.9%). Almost three-quarters had MSW degrees (n = 226; 73.6%) and most were between 25 and 54 years old (n = 242; 78.8%). Participants’ primary service areas included child protective services, in-home family services, and foster care. Factor analysis indicated that the original one-factor, seven-factor, and second-order seven-factor models with 39 items yielded overall poor model fit. The five-factor and second-order five-factor models of the revised 31 items both demonstrated adequate fit. The five-factor model (RMSEA = 0.043, CFI = 0.968, TLI = 0.965, and χ 2 = 659.968, df = 424, with p = 0.000) and second-order five-factor model (RMSEA = 0.042, CFI = 0.969, TLI = 0.966, and χ 2 = 661.844, df = 429, with p = 0.000) with 31 items had an adequate overall fit based on the fit indices. The five factors were mutual trust, shared-decision making, family as a unit, strengths-based practice, and cultural competence and sensitivity. The items were significantly loaded on each factor, with coefficients ranging from 0.633 to 0.923.

Conclusions and Implications: The revised five-factor structure of the 31-item and the second-order five-factor structure of the 31-item were statistically comparable and treated as alternative models. However, we recommend using the second-order five-factor structure because this model is supported by family-centered practice theories suggesting family-centered practice is a core concept, and it is composed by other sub-concepts, which are the five factors of this Family-Centered Practice Questionnaire (Child Welfare Information Gateway, n.d; Epley, Summers, & Turnbull, 2010; Lietz, 2011; Allen & Petr, 1998). Using a second-order five-factor Family-Centered Practice Questionnaire can measure the full dimensions and each aspect of family-centered practice.