Adoption and guardianship: A moderated mediation analysis of predictors of post-permanency continuity.

The original thinking behind permanency planning for foster children was to secure a caregiver's intention to provide a permanent home, not to guarantee it. Little is known, however, about how intentions change after permanence or what effect this change has on post-permanency continuity of care. This study examined the mediating effects of caregivers' thoughts about ending an adoption or guardianship, and how this mechanism may be contingent on primordial and bureaucratic factors that child welfare agencies rely on to ensure family continuity after legal permanence.

Insuring the integrity and validity of social work interventions: the case of the subsidized guardianship waiver experiments.

The near loss of the ability to conduct randomized controlled trials in the Title IV-E waiver demonstrations makes the negotiation of a ceasefire urgent in the "causal wars." Results-oriented accountability is a conceptual framework for managing the micro-macro tensions that arise in social work practice and research. This article uses subsidized guardianship experiments to illustrate the results-oriented accountability process by which innovation is aggregated from the micro level through formative implementation and evaluation into a usable, stable intervention that can be rigorously tested through summative implementation and evaluation at the macro level, and if validated, generalized to the micro level through translative implementation and evaluation.

Usability testing, initial implementation, and formative evaluation of an evidence-based intervention: lessons from a demonstration project to reduce long-term foster care.

The field of child welfare faces an undersupply of evidence-based interventions to address long-term foster care. The Permanency Innovations Initiative is a five-year federal demonstration project intended to generate evidence to reduce long stays in foster care for those youth who encounter the most substantial barriers to permanency. This article describes a systematic and staged approach to implementation and evaluation of a PII project that included usability testing as one of its key activities.

Prevention and drug treatment.

Evidence linking alcohol and other drug abuse with child maltreatment, particularly neglect, is strong. But does substance abuse cause maltreatment? According to Mark Testa and Brenda Smith, such co-occurring risk factors as parental depression, social isolation, homelessness, or domestic violence may be more directly responsible than substance abuse itself for maltreatment. Interventions to prevent substance abuse-related maltreatment, say the authors, must attend to the underlying direct causes of both.

African American males in foster care and the risk of delinquency: the value of social bonds and permanence.

Juvenile delinquency remains a significant problem for child welfare systems throughout the United States. Victims of child abuse and neglect are more likely relative to children in the general population to engage in delinquency (Ryan & Testa, 2005; Widom, 1989). Although the magnitude of this relationship is not fully understood (Zingraff, Leiter, Myers, & Johnsen, 1993), the risk of delinquency is particularly high for African American males, adolescents, and children in substitute care settings.

Foster youth emancipating from care: caseworkers' reports on needs and services.

This article presents findings from a survey mailed to caseworkers, who answered questions about special needs, independent living skills, educational attainment, and services for 416 randomly selected foster youth in Illinois. A third of the adolescents had a mental health disorder, developmental disability, or other special need that their caseworkers believed would interfere with their ability to live independently. Additionally, urban youth were underserved relative to other youth.

When children cannot return home: adoption and guardianship.

Since the 1970s, finding alternative permanent families for children in foster care who could not return to their birth parents has been a primary goal of the child welfare system. Since that time, significant gains have been made in helping such children find permanent homes through adoption and guardianship. This article analyzes these trends and finds: A majority of states have doubled the number of adoptions from foster care over the 1995-97 baselines established by the federal government.

Illinois's child welfare research agenda: an approach to building consensus for practice-based research.

This article presents a consensus-building initiative to develop a statewide research agenda that responds to the needs of Illinois's child welfare community. Researchers conducted this process through a university-community partnership to engage those interested in child welfare services. The process and findings resulted in a living document that will guide child welfare research throughout the state.