BACKGROUND Children involved with child welfare systems are at high risk for emotional and behavioral problems. Many children with identified mental health problems do not receive care, especially ethnic/minority children. OBJECTIVE To examine how patterns of specialty mental health service use among children involved with child welfare vary as a function of the degree of coordination between...

range of activities, including investigating alleged incidents of abuse and neglect, protecting victimized children, supporting and preserving families, and assisting children who must be temporarily or permanently removed from their parents’ homes. Child welfare agencies are an integral part of the public social services safety net. They often act as the provider of last resort since state law...

This paper presents findings from an exploratory study of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) applicants in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin. We examine the level of involvement of TANF applicants with the child welfare system both before and after their application for TANF assistance and inclusion in our study. We also present preliminary multivariate models of the hazard of our sample’...

A growing movement in the United States seeks to improve the outcomes achieved by public agencies through performance measurement strategies. In child welfare policy, a federally mandated performance measurement system has evolved since the 1980s, establishing the federal Child and Family Services Review which uses a series of performance indicators for evaluating the child welfare system. This...

The goal of this study was to assess whether child welfare services were available and proximal in identified, predominantly Black and Hispanic zip code areas of three southern cities. GIS mapping of services contained in a state 2-1-1 community services data base revealed that there were no treatment services and/or no public transportation and/or lengthy public (bus) transportation times in 5...

The Family Options Study provides an unprecedented opportunity to investigate the troubling link between family homelessness and child maltreatment. The rigorous design uses multiple methods to probe the impact of housing interventions on family preservation and reunification and the underlying mechanisms. Results show that ending homelessness keeps families together; however, once separated, f...

This study sought to investigate whether the reason for placement was associated with the subsequent risk of arrest. The author has focused on youth entering care for reasons of maltreatment and for child behavioral problems. The author stratified the sample based on a history of juvenile delinquency. The sample was diverse and included youth between 8 and 16 years of age with at least one epis...

While child welfare services are intended, in part, to diminish maltreatment's negative impact on adolescents' development, there is evidence that receiving child welfare services affects adolescents' substance use adversely. The literature on the extent and correlates of this problem is still emerging. The present study aims to fill part of this gap by examining the association between baselin...

As the population of the United States has changed over the last two decades, so has the population of children who come to the attention of the child welfare system, resulting in increasing calls for cultural competence in all aspects of child welfare programming and practice. Given the changing demographics among children involved in the child weltare system and the increasing need to address...

This article introduces social workers to the beliefs and practices associated with Paganism, Witchcraft, and Wicca and describes how social workers can help to create a welcoming environment for children and youths belonging to these religious minority groups. Drawing on social science research, social work literature, and a case example, the author presents suggestions for working with Pagan ...