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Tagged With "services"

Blog Post

Is child protective services effective?

Karen Zilberstein ·
An article called "Is child protective services effective?" in this month's Children and Youth Services Review finds that CPS involvement does not reduce the risk of further substantiated maltreatment. It highlights both the need to improve interventions and questions current mandates that are not garnering results. As the article explains, one possible reason interventions may be less effective is that most CPS cases are opened for neglect, not abuse, and most services are aimed at...
Blog Post

Can Trained, Paid Peer Support Help New York City Keep Foster Parents? [chronicleofsocialchange.org]

By Megan Conn, The Chronicle of Social Change, December 2, 2019 When Roxanne Williams became a foster parent four years ago, she started in the deep end of the parenting pool. New York City child welfare workers brought her a boy with limited English on a Friday afternoon and left after confirming her home was safe, leaving Williams to muddle through their first days together on her own. “It was rough – you weren’t getting the calls back [from her foster care agency] as fast as you wanted...
Blog Post

Everyday coping with moral injury: The perspectives of professionals and parents involved with child protection services

Dawn Cretney ·
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190740917305285?via%3Dihub This study examines how Child Protection Services (CPS) – involved parents and professionals describe coping with moral injury through resources available within their everyday lives. Moral injury refers to the lasting harm caused by one's own or another's actions in high-stakes situations that transgress deeply held moral beliefs and expectations. This harm can occur at multiple, interacting psychological, social...
Blog Post

Fewer US Children in Foster Care; First Drop Since 2012 [nytimes.com]

By The Associated Press, The New York Times, October 24, 2019 The number of children in the U.S. foster care system has dropped for the first time since 2012, stemming a surge that was linked to substance abuse by parents, according to new federal data released on Thursday. The annual report from the Department of Health and Human Services counted 437,283 children in foster care as of Sept. 30, 2018, down from about 441,000 a year earlier. The peak was 524,000 children in foster care in...
Blog Post

How You and Your Kids Can De-Stress During Coronavirus [pbs.org]

By Deborah Farmer Kris, Public Broadcasting Service, March 13, 2020 A few weeks ago, my eight-year-old daughter made a glitter jar for my students: “Tell them that when their brain has a glitter storm, they can shake this up and take deep breaths as the glitter falls.” We could all use some help settling our glitter right now. If you are feeling stress about the COVID-19 pandemic, your brain isn’t misfiring. Stress is a normal, healthy biological response to perceived threats and challenges.
Blog Post

Reimbursement for Parenting Education and Support Services

Unfortunately, regardless of training received and degrees earned, parenting educators can't serve families and get reimbursed by public and private insurers for their services. In an effort to bring light to this issue, I wrote the attached paper with two colleagues at NC State. Our (unpublished) paper outlines research supporting parenting education services and their efficacy to improve individual and family health and long term wellbeing and community prosperity. We highlight the fact...
Blog Post

Two New Grant Opportunities for Youth Development and Diversion Services

Briana S. Zweifler ·
In 2019, more than $40 million will become available to fund community-based, culturally rooted, trauma-informed services for youth in California as alternatives to arrest and incarceration. Thousands of California youth are arrested every year for low-level offenses. Youth who are arrested or incarcerated for low-level offenses are less likely to graduate high school, more likely to suffer negative health-outcomes, and more likely to have later contact with the justice system.
Blog Post

What's In The Coronavirus Stimulus for Youth and Family Services [chronicleofsocialchange.org]

By John Kelly, The Chronicle of Social Change, April 1, 2020 Congress passed, and President Trump has signed, the CARES Act, a massive piece of stimulus legislation aimed at shoring up the American economy and protecting workers and businesses in the wake of the coronavirus epidemic. One of the nation’s largest employment sectors – human services, a field dominated by nonprofits delivering contracted help to children and families – secured some relief as Americans prepare for a recession...
Comment

Re: Is child protective services effective?

Former Member ·
When I entered child welfare, the worker who came into my beat down, no plumbing trailer asked me what I did to make my parents - parents who had provided me with 10 ACEs- so mad? I was going to be Valedictorian despite all the Hell and Pain I had endured. They separated me from my brother and sister and put them in a separate foster home where I had no contact. When I called, the new home my sister was in told me to never call back because my sister had a new family now. I almost died from...
Comment

Re: Is child protective services effective?

Karen Zilberstein ·
Thanks for sharing your story. I agree that the child welfare system misses on a lot of fronts and tends to pile more ACEs on to people who have already experienced many. Instead of maintaining your sibling relationships, they caused you more stress. Hopefully we can work to get the system to work better.
Blog Post

African American Grandfamilies: Helping Children Thrive Through Connection to Family and Culture

Natalie Audage ·
Both inside and outside the child welfare system, the probability that African American children will live in grandfamilies is more than double that of the overall population, with one in five African American children living in grandfamilies at some point during their childhood. Over the last few decades, drug epidemics, hurricanes and other tragedies have both created African American grandfamilies and challenged existing ones. The COVID-19 pandemic is the latest such crisis. As of mid-May...
Blog Post

How can child welfare systems support families in rural communities? (Casey Family Programs)

Natalie Audage ·
Due to significant differences between geographical areas, some traditional or evidence-based child welfare strategies developed for urban settings may be less effective in rural communities. Recognizing the unique strengths of rural communities and making creative use of both traditional and nontraditional funding is essential to provide services that not only protect children, but strengthen their families and support economic development and well-being for the community as a whole. Many...
Blog Post

What Lessons Can the Child Welfare System Take from the COVID-19 Pandemic?

Natalie Audage ·
This report from American Enterprise Institute makes the following key points: COVID-19 and subsequent government responses introduced new barriers to detection and responding to child maltreatment and achieving permanency for children in foster care. New strategies and better use of existing technologies are needed to detect child maltreatment for children unseen by school personnel. Improved use of virtual technology could improve family court processes and family treatment options during...
Blog Post

Color-Blind Ambition: The idea of removing race from child removal decisions is growing, despite some skepticism. (The Imprint)

Natalie Audage ·
In an all-too-common occurrence in the nation’s largest local child welfare system, a 37-year-old mother of five from Los Angeles County dialed 911 about two years ago, seeking protection from an abusive partner. That call brought not only the police but the Department of Children and Family Services to her home. Under the watch of social workers, Kenia Charles said, she moved into a shelter for domestic violence survivors, but still, the child welfare agency argued in court it had concerns...
Blog Post

An Unavoidable System: The Harms of Family Policing and Parents' Vision for Investing in Community Care

Natalie Audage ·
This new report shares the results of a participatory action research (PAR) project that Rise conducted in winter 2021 in partnership with TakeRoot Justice . Our research documents parents’ experiences with the family policing system and explores a collective vision to transform our society’s structures, policies and practices related to family and community support. Imaginative and sometimes painful community conversations with 48 people impacted by ACS provide the foundation of this...
Blog Post

The Indian Child Welfare Act: A Primer for Child Welfare Professionals (childwelfare.gov)

Natalie Audage ·
The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) of 1978 is one of the key components to protecting the rights and culture of American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) children and families. Unfortunately, not all child welfare caseworkers are aware of how to apply ICWA or the troubling history that prompted the law to be enacted. This factsheet provides caseworkers with an overview of current and historical issues affecting child welfare practice with AI/AN families, practice implications, and cultural...
Blog Post

A Toolkit for Child Welfare Agencies to Help Young People Heal and Thrive During and After Natural Disasters (nctsn.org)

Natalie Audage ·
This toolkit from the National Child Traumatic Stress Network helps child welfare agencies support children and youth during and after natural disasters. This toolkit is for child welfare staff, supervisors, and administrators who work with and on behalf of children, youth, and families who experience a natural disaster. The information and resources included in the toolkit provide evidence- and trauma-informed guidance for promoting positive outcomes for children and youth who experience...
Blog Post

Child Welfare Trauma Training Toolkit (nctsn.org)

Natalie Audage ·
This resource from National Child Traumatic Stress Network supports caseworkers, supervisors, and all other levels of the child welfare workforce in implementing trauma-informed knowledge and skills in their daily interactions, professional services and organizational culture. The third edition of the Child Welfare Trauma Training Toolkit (CWTTT) incorporates two foundational trainings, a specialized skills training for supervisors and caseworkers, and a supervisor consultation series to...
Blog Post

How ‘Shadow’ Foster Care Is Tearing Families Apart (nytimes.com)

Natalie Audage ·
By Lizzie Presser, The New York Times, December 1, 2021 When a staph infection killed Molly Cordell’s mother just before Halloween in 2015, Molly felt, almost immediately, as if she were being shoved out of her own life. At 15, she and her sister, Heaven, who was a year younger, had no idea where they would go. Their dad had been in and out of their lives for most of their childhood. His grief, as their mother lay dying, sent him spinning. It seemed to the girls that he was on too much meth,...
Blog Post

Prevention Resources from the Center for States

Natalie Audage ·
The Center for States helps public child welfare organizations and professionals build the capacity necessary to strengthen, implement, and sustain effective child welfare practice and achieve better outcomes for children, youth, and families. Please check out the resources below, supporting the development of prevention-focused systems: The Visioning for Prevention: Protecting Children Through Strengthening Families series can provide agency leaders and managers the information and tools...
Blog Post

How can child protection agencies identify and support youth involved in or at risk of commercial child sexual exploitation? (casey.org)

Natalie Audage ·
The second largest criminal industry worldwide (second only to drug dealing and tied with the illegal arms industry), human trafficking is the fastest growing of all criminal enterprises. The commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) is one form of human trafficking, affecting thousands of children and youth in the United States every year. (Exact numbers are difficult to estimate, given the clandestine nature of the crime.) Although CSEC historically has been under the purview of...
Blog Post

Child Sex Trafficking in America: A Guide for Child Welfare Professionals (missingkids.org)

Natalie Audage ·
A factsheet from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) focuses on the role that child welfare professionals play in prevention, intervention, and service provision with regard to child sex trafficking. Children and youth involved with child welfare have a higher risk of being victims of sex trafficking, and one in six of the children reported missing to NCMEC were likely victims of sex trafficking. It is important that child welfare professionals be properly equipped...
Blog Post

Homeless and Foster Youth, Racial Inequity, and Policy Shifts for Systemic Change (sr.ithaka.org)

Natalie Audage ·
An issue brief from Ithaka S+R, Homeless and Foster Youth, Racial Inequity, and Policy Shifts for Systemic Change , highlights the racial disparities inherent in foster care and homelessness and the causes of homelessness and foster system involvement. It illustrates the challenges that youth experiencing foster care and homelessness face in earning a college degree and proposes policy changes for states to address and meet the needs of these youth. There is a disproportionate number of...
Blog Post

Achieving Racial and Ethnic Equity in U.S. Health Care A Scorecard of State Performance (childtrends.org)

Natalie Audage ·
This Toolkit from Child Trends is for child welfare staff, supervisors, and administrators who work with and on behalf of children, youth, and families who experience a natural disaster. The information and resources in the Toolkit provide evidence- and trauma-informed guidance for promoting positive outcomes for children and youth who experience natural disasters. Click here to access the toolkit.
Blog Post

The Carceral Logic of the Family Policing System (upendmovement.org)

Natalie Audage ·
By Emma Peyton Williams, upEND Contributor, November 17, 2021 By including the family policing system in their book Prison by Any Other Name , Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law link the punitive nature of the prison system to “the current punitive model for social services.” The similarities that Schenwar and Law note, such as each system’s focus on coercing compliance as opposed to changing material realities and the disproportionate impact of each system on people of color, particularly Black...
Blog Post

Evidence-Based Treatments are Effective for Children in the Child Welfare System: Connecticut’s Family First Prevention Services Plan Can Expand Access to Effective Care

Natalie Audage ·
Each year in Connecticut, over 18,000 children come into contact with the child welfare system due to confirmed or suspected abuse or neglect. 1 Children in the child welfare system are more likely than other children to have mental health conditions 2 and to have experienced potentially traumatic events (e.g., physical or sexual abuse, family violence) 3 or other adversities. 4 The COVID-19 pandemic has stressed many families in the form of disruptions to routines of daily life, increased...
Blog Post

Broader Array of Programs and Services Needed for Tribal Communities and Communities of Color

Natalie Audage ·
Children and families of color are disproportionately represented in the child welfare system. The Family First Prevention Services Act offers an opportunity to address these inequities with evidence-based programs and services, but includes few culturally specific ones in its Clearinghouse. Culturally specific programs and services consider the role of race and culture as integral to developing solutions to challenges families face. In this brief, Chapin Hall policy staff offer an overview...
Blog Post

Child Care is a Child Welfare Issue: Why Rise Identified Child Care as a Policy Priority (risemagazine.org)

Natalie Audage ·
by Keyna Franklin, Rise Magazine, February 15, 2022 Halimah Washington, Rise Community Coordinator, discusses the connection between child care and family policing, how child care supports family safety and well-being and why Rise identified access to child care as a policy priority . Q. Why is the campaign for child care important to you as a parent? A. Universal child care is important to me as a parent because I have children that need child care after school, sometimes before school, and...
Blog Post

‘If I had access to child care, I wouldn’t have had an ACS case.’ (risemagazine.org)

Natalie Audage ·
by Keyna Franklin, Rise Magazine, February 15, 2022 If it was easy to get child care, many families wouldn’t get an ACS case or have to deal with the family policing system, because they wouldn’t have to leave their children at home. If I had access to child care, I never would have become involved with the family policing system. ACS became involved with my family when I left my younger kids with my 14-year-old child watching them when I went out for an appointment. If I knew that this...
Blog Post

Envisioning systems where families are supported, not policed (prismreports.org)

Natalie Audage ·
by Cynthia Gutierrez, Photo: istock, Prism, February 9, 2022 Child Protective Services often result in the policing, surveillance, and separations of Black, Indigenous, and families of color. We need alternative solutions. The 2020 uprisings against police brutality and state-sanctioned violence pushed more people to recognize how police forces disproportionately abuse and kill Black, Indigenous, and people of color . But policing by other branches of the state also extends to people’s...
Blog Post

State-level Data for Understanding Child Welfare in the United States (Child Trends)

Natalie Audage ·
This comprehensive child welfare resource from Child Trends provides state and national data on child maltreatment , foster care , kinship caregiving , and adoption from foster care. The data are essential to help policymakers understand how many children and youth came in contact with the child welfare system, and why. States can use this information to ensure their child welfare systems support the safety, stability, and well-being of all families in their state. Please click here to...
Blog Post

For Me, Child Care Could Be a Life Saver: ‘I’ve pushed off medical treatment because I don’t have child care, and I don’t want the hospital to call ACS.’ (risemagazine.org)

Natalie Audage ·
By Anonymous, Art by Eileen Jimenez, Rise, March 15, 2022 I am a single mom and it is only my son and I living together. That means that unless he is in school or at camp, wherever I go, he goes, too—even when I have to go to the hospital. I have numerous medical problems and when I end up in the hospital, it’s not always during school hours. There are lots of reasons why I would need to bring my son with me to the hospital, such as if I’m having seizures or sudden severe pain, and these...
Blog Post

Child Care is a Family Policing Issue Handout (Rise)

Natalie Audage ·
This new infographic from Rise highlights how universal child care will reduce involvement with the family policing system and strengthen family well-being. It provides an overview of Rise's policy recommendations related to making child care and respite care free and accessible—without family policing system involvement. It also includes data related to issues with child care: child care is too expensive; lack of access to child care is linked to "neglect" reports; and there are not enough...
Blog Post

New Book: Torn Apart by Dorothy Roberts

Natalie Audage ·
Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families--and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World by Dorothy Roberts will be released on April 5, 2022. An award-winning scholar exposes the foundational racism of the "child welfare system" and calls for radical change. Many believe the "child welfare" system protects children from abuse. But as Torn Apart uncovers, this system is designed to punish Black families. Drawing on decades of research, legal scholar and sociologist Dorothy...
Blog Post

In child welfare, if the solution is money, the problem is poverty [youthtoday.org]

Natalie Audage ·
By Richard Wexler, Youth Today, March 3, 2022 In the beginning, the builders of what would become a system of massive intrusion into families , and, ultimately, the separation of millions of children from their parents, all in the name of “child welfare,” insisted that poverty had nothing at all to do with what they labeled “child abuse” and “child neglect.” “Child abuse crosses class lines” was the mantra in the 1970s and 1980s. In the effort to pass the federal Child Abuse Prevention and...
Blog Post

Moving From ACEs to HOPE: The Power of Positive Experiences [cbexpress.acf.hhs.gov]

Natalie Audage ·
By the Capacity Building Center for States, Children's Bureau Express, March 2022 "A healing-centered approach to addressing trauma requires a different question that moves beyond 'what happened to you' to 'what's right with you' and views those exposed to trauma as agents in the creation of their own well-being rather than victims of traumatic events."—Dr. Shawn Ginwright (2018) The landmark Adverse Childhood Experiences Study helped us understand the effects of adverse experiences (ACEs)...
Blog Post

Cocreating a More Equitable Child Welfare System [cbexpress.acf.hhs.gov]

Natalie Audage ·
By the Capacity Building Center for States, Children's Bureau Express, March 2022 "Historically, the child welfare system has not served all people equitably, and too often, poverty has been treated as neglect and child maltreatment."— Letter From Children's Bureau Associate Commissioner Aysha E. Schomburg , August 3, 2021 Racial inequity, disparities, and disproportionality are complex and longstanding challenges in child welfare that cannot be addressed in isolation. Rather, the effort to...
Blog Post

Anti-Racist Policymaking to Protect, Promote, and Preserve Black Families and Babies Issue Brief [equity-coalition.fpg.unc.edu]

Natalie Audage ·
By Iheoma U. Iruka, Kristen Harper, Chrishana M. Lloyd, et al., Equity Research Action Coalition and Child Trends, October 2021 A recent issue brief, Anti-Racist Policymaking to Protect, Promote, and Preserve Black Families and Babies , investigates strengths-based programs and policies that support the well-being of Black families and children. It was developed as a collaborative effort between Child Trends and the Equity Research Action Coalition at the University of North Carolina Frank...
Blog Post

Systemically Neglected: How Racism Structures Public Systems to Produce Child Neglect [cssp.org]

Natalie Audage ·
This report from the Center for the Study of Social Policy outlines the history of how child protective services developed to surveil families of color, examines how policy pushes families of color into the child welfare system today, and concludes with some recommendations for adequately supporting children and families of color and keeping families together in the future. Please click here to access the report.
Blog Post

An algorithm that screens for child neglect raises concerns [apnews.com]

Natalie Audage ·
By Sally Ho and Garance Burke, AP News, April 29, 2022 Inside a cavernous stone fortress in downtown Pittsburgh, attorney Robin Frank defends parents at one of their lowest points – when they risk losing their children. The job is never easy, but in the past she knew what she was up against when squaring off against child protective services in family court. Now, she worries she’s fighting something she can’t see: an opaque algorithm whose statistical calculations help social workers decide...
Blog Post

Engaging Fathers Podcast Series from Child Welfare Information Gateway

Natalie Audage ·
Child Welfare Information Gateway released a three-part podcast series dedicated to the importance of engaging fathers in child welfare services. The podcasts share strategies implemented in three of the five state or county agencies that participated in the Fathers and Continuous Learning in Child Welfare project (Los Angeles County, CA; Hartford, CT; and Prowers County, CO), which aimed to improve placement stability and permanency outcomes for children by engaging their fathers and...
Blog Post

Trapped in the Web of Family Policing: The Harms of Mandated Reporting and the Need for Parent-Led Approaches to Safe, Thriving Families

Natalie Audage ·
By Imani Worthy, Tracy Serdjenian and Jeanette Vega Brown, RISE This article was published in the Spring 2022 Issue of Family Integrity & Justice Quarterly , "Poverty Is Not Abuse...Poverty Is Not Neglect." A family’s contact with the family polic ing system often begins with a call to the child abuse and maltreatment “hotline” made by a mandated reporter. About two-thirds of reports to New York’s Statewide Central Register (SCR) are made by mandated reporters—“ certain professionals...
Ask the Community

(TRMBW™) Trauma Responsive Mind-Body Wellness Training

Amanda Willett ·
Hello everyone, I am the founder of Rituals for Recovery a non-profit organization in Ontario Canada who is commited to combating complex trauma and the stigma and suffering that results from it. We are getting ready to launch our fall programming and trauma responsive mind body wellness training and are looking for clinicans, social workers and helping professionals working with children and families in the foster care system (particularly those who offer free services for at-risk families...
Blog Post

Too Many Barriers to Child Care: ‘Universal child care would create safety and opportunities for families' [risemagazine.org]

Natalie Audage ·
By Melissa Landrau, Rise Magazine, July 11, 2022 When I had an active ACS case, I had homemaking services—this involved a lady coming into my home from 8:00 am to 8:00 pm and monitoring my children. I had no privacy. The homemaker would watch and feed my children. If I had to step out, she would accompany me. It was outrageous. I didn’t feel like I was the parent because she did everything for me. I would’ve rather had child care without someone in my home intruding and controlling...
Blog Post

How much would the NAS poverty reduction packages reduce referrals to CPS and foster care placements? Would they reduce racial disproportionality in child welfare? (nasonline.org).

Carey Sipp ·
Because of a collaboration with Columbia University and UW-Madison, we have answers to these questions. By Peter Peter Pecora, Casey Family Programs, March 17, 2023 - Overview The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) recently released a “ roadmap ” to reduce child poverty by as much as half through the implementation of a series of social policy packages. The aim of this study was to simulate the reductions in Child Protective Services (CPS) involvement and foster care placements that are...
Comment

Re: The Carceral Logic of the Family Policing System (upendmovement.org)

Ryan Bailey ·
Young parents find it challenging to cope with the new reality, especially if they lack financial support. Some of them resort to breaking the law in an attempt to provide for their family. After college, I want to work with such individuals and teach them to stay within the bounds of the law. Jurisprudence is not easy for me, but with the help for students from https://essays.edubirdie.com/law-essay-writing I strive to move forward and achieve my goals. Unfortunately, carceral logic is also...
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