Charting Directions for Research on Immigrant Children Affected by Undocumented Status.

Three groups of children from Mexico and Central America are vulnerable to effects of US immigration policies: 1) foreign-born children who entered the US with undocumented immigrant parents; 2) unaccompanied children who entered the US alone; and 3) U.S.-born citizen children of undocumented immigrant parents.

The moderating effects of ethnicity on key predictors of trauma in child welfare involved adolescents.

Key predictors of trauma were examined using a multi-group analysis of a nationally representative sample of 716 child welfare involved youth ages 11-17. Results indicate that co-occurring clinical depression was associated with trauma across all racial/ethnic groups. Results also support that youth's ethnicity moderates the relationship between gender, history of sexual abuse and sexual orientation and the development of trauma.

Lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) youth within in welfare: Prevalence, risk and outcomes.

The purpose of this study was to estimate the population of sexual minority or LGB (lesbian, gay and bisexual) children and youth involved with the child welfare system, and to compare their health, mental health, placement and permanency outcomes to those of non-LGB youth. Data were drawn from the Second National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW-II), a nationally representative sample of children who were referred to child welfare due to a report of abuse or neglect over a fifteen month period. This sample included youth ages eleven and older who self-identified their sexual orientation (n = 1095).

Cultural adaptations to augment health and mental health services: a systematic review.

Background: Membership in diverse racial, ethnic, and cultural groups is often associated with inequitable health and mental health outcomes for diverse populations. Yet, little is known about how cultural adaptations of standard services affect health and mental health outcomes for service recipients. This systematic review identified extant themes in the research regarding cultural adaptations across a broad range of health and mental health services and synthesized the most rigorous experimental research available to isolate and evaluate potential efficacy gains of cultural adaptations to service delivery.

Effects of Parent Immigration Status on Mental Health Service Use Among Latino Children Referred to Child Welfare.

Objective: Latino families may be at risk of experiencing stressors resulting from the immigration process, such as those related to documentation status and acculturation, that may increase their need for mental health services. However, little research exists on the mental health needs and service use of Latino children. This study examined how parental nativity and legal status influence mental health needs and service utilization among children in Latino families investigated by child welfare.

Development of an instrument to understand the child protective services decision-making process, with a focus on placement decisions.

When children come to the attention of the child welfare system, they become involved in a decision-making process in which decisions are made that have a significant effect on their future and well-being. The decision to remove children from their families is particularly complex; yet surprisingly little is understood about this decision-making process. This paper presents the results of a study to develop an instrument to explore, at the caseworker level, the context of the removal decision, with the objective of understanding the influence of the individual and organizational factors on this decision, drawing from the Decision Making Ecology as the underlying rationale for obtaining the measures.

The Decision Making Ecology of placing a child into foster care: A structural equation model.

The Decision Making Ecology provided a framework for empirically testing the impact of Case, Caseworker and Organizational factors on the decision to place children in out-of-home care. The structural equation model we developed fit the data extremely well, indicating a complex relationship between the variables. The main findings indicate that Case factors, even as aggregated to the worker level, were of most importance: Percent Removed was increased in part by greater average Risk being assessed and more families on a worker's caseload being Low Income.

Disparities in reported and substantiated infant maltreatment by maternal Hispanic origin and nativity: a birth cohort study.

We followed Latino infants prospectively through age 1 to determine whether maternal foreign-born status conferred a protective advantage against reported and substantiated maltreatment across Hispanic-origin groups, and whether the likelihood an infant was reported or substantiated for maltreatment varied by Hispanic origin. We drew data for all Latino infants born in California between 2000 and 2006 (N = 1,909,155) from population-based birth records linked to child protective services data. We used χ(2) tests to assess distributional differences in covariates and utilized generalized linear models to estimate the adjusted relative risk of report and substantiation in models stratified by nativity.

Substitute care entry: the relationship between race or ethnicity and levels of county organization.

Objective: Past studies demonstrate a relationship between race and the likelihood of children entering state custody subsequent to a maltreatment investigation. Research also shows that community structural characteristics such as poverty and residential mobility are correlated with entry rates. The combined effect, however, of race and community characteristics on substitute care entry is unclear.

Conducting culturally competent evaluations of child welfare programs and practices.

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 the racial and ethnic disparities observed in this system, the need for culturally competent approaches to evaluate the outcomes of services for children and families is essential. This article discusses the challenges in conducting culturally competent evaluations and provides strategies to address those challenges within a child welfare context.

Emerging issues at the intersection of immigration and child welfare: results from a transnational research and policy forum.

In July 2006, the American Humane Association and the Loyola University Chicago School of Social Work facilitated a roundtable to address the emerging issue of immigration and its intersection with child welfare systems. More than 70 participants from 10 states and Mexico joined the roundtable, representing the fields of higher education, child welfare, international immigration, legal practice, and others. This roundtable created a transnational opportunity to discuss the emerging impact of migration on child welfare services in the United States and formed the basis of a continued multidisciplinary collaboration designed to inform and impact policy and practice at the local, state, and national levels.

Adapting systems of care for child welfare practice with immigrant Latino children and families.

Recent reform efforts in the child welfare system have called for child welfare agencies to provide community-based services and to increase the involvement of external stakeholders in identifying and developing services within the community. At the same time, child welfare agencies are faced with the challenge of providing services to an increasingly diverse population of children and families. As a result, there is a need for evidence-based practice models that respond to these challenges and promote positive outcomes for children and families.

Culturally competent systems of care with Latino children and families.

The Latino population represents the fastest growing ethnic minority in the United States. As a result, child welfare agencies need to be prepared to provide culturally appropriate services to Latino families. This paper describes an evaluation of a federally funded initiative designed to train child welfare practitioners in using an existing evidence-based framework--systems of care--with Latino children and families to address the need for culturally competent, community-based services with this population.

Deconstructing disproportionality: views from multiple community stakeholders.

While the existence of racial disproportionality has been well documented, the causes of disproportionality are less clear. Studies identifying contributing factors have relied largely on analyses of state and national data sets, which may lack the robust data necessary to fully explain the factors related to this issue. Further, a limitation of existing research is the lack of data from the voice of those in communities affected by disproportionality.