Session: An Examination of the Needs of Parents Involved with the Child Protection System (Society for Social Work and Research 24th Annual Conference - Reducing Racial and Economic Inequality)

Using a range of methodologies and datasets, this symposium aims to inform policy by highlighting the needs of young parents involved with the Child Welfare System (CWS). Parents play important roles in child' healthy development, and thus understanding parents' needs is critical to promote children's well-being. These studies provide an understanding of various risk and protective factors affecting young families and their interaction with child protective services (CPS). In addition, the symposium will address programs designed to serve these vulnerable families. Specifically, Paper 1 highlighted the high risk of CWS involvement among children born to adolescent mothers in foster care. Paper 2 identified fathers of children born to adolescent mothers and analysed their demographic and CPS characteristics. Paper 3 emphasized the needs of young mothers with CPS involvement and listed several program components that were effective for the young mothers who are currently underserved. Paper 4 examined the lifetime incidence of termination of parental rights among 1999 birth cohort in California. All studies leveraged administrative data using various methodologies, except Paper 3, which is a scoping review. Paper 1 used a Cox Proportional Hazard model to determine correlates of next generation reports. Paper 2 linked California vital birth records to CWS records to identify and analyse fathers of children born to adolescent mothers in 2012. Paper 3 used Arksey and O'Malley's (2005) five-stage methodological framework to design the scoping review protocol. Paper 4 constructed dataset by matching vital birth and CWS records based on a probabilistic linkage algorithm and conducted a prospective cohort analysis. These studies suggest implications for policy and practice. Paper 1, specifically, demonstrates the need to provide services to youth involved in foster care to delay pregnancy and engage pregnant and parenting foster youth in services that may prevent intergenerational child welfare involvement. Paper 2 highlighted opportunity to engage both fathers and mothers in services to support healthy parenting to reduce risk of next generation child welfare involvement. Paper 3 suggests that young mothers with CPS involvement may benefit by programs that incorporate peer support initiatives, explicitly intend to create therapeutic alliance, and continue at least one year. Paper 4 provides justification for policies, such as “birth match”, that designed to identify children born to parents who had previously lost their parental rights by using administrative data. Findings add depth to current understanding of factors associated with parenting and CPS involvement, show the potential to inform policy and practice utilizing linked administrative data, and emphasize the importance of providing adequate services for parents and their children in CPS.