The Vulnerable Infants Program of Rhode Island (VIP-RI) was established as a care coordination program to promote permanency for substance-exposed newborns in the child welfare system. Goals of VIP-RI were to optimize parents' opportunities for reunification and increase the efficacy of social service systems involved with families affected by…

Current federal legislation identifies three goals for the child welfare system: safety, permanence, and family and child well-being. Unfortunately, child well-being becomes subordinate to the more easily achievable and measurable goal of permanence--returning children to the biological family, facilitating an adoption, or placing them with…

Racial disproportionality in child welfare has been discussed as a seemingly intractable challenge with complex contributing factors. Some argue that these dynamics are far too difficult to be significantly impacted by public child welfare systems alone. The Breakthrough Series Collaborative (BSC) methodology, incorporating an analysis of…

In 2005 the Texas 79th legislature passed Senate Bill 6, which included mandates to address disproportionality. This article will describe how the Texas Department of Family Protective Services in collaboration with Casey Family Programs' Texas State Strategy systems improvement initiative is addressing disproportionality statewide through…

Working in four communities, Casey Foundation/Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP) Alliance on Racial Equity (the Alliance) have developed a Racial Equity Scorecard for measuring disproportionality at key decision points for use in impacting disproportionality in the child welfare system. The four communities include King County,…

Most studies of ethnic disproportionality in child welfare examine data in one of two ways: a point in time approach or an entry cohort approach. While each provides insight into disproportionality, neither gives a full picture of the differences among ethnic groups in the experience of the child welfare system over time. This study uses…

Discusses the changing adoption field, including services needed by the children, biological parents, and adoptive parents. (DP)

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…

Roca, Inc., a grassroots human development and community organization, has adopted the peacemaking circle as a tool in its relationship building with youth, communities, and formal systems. Circles are a method of communication derived from aboriginal and native traditions. In Massachusetts, the Department of Social Services and the Department of…

Discusses the changing role of Service agencies in helping unmarried pregnant women, unwed mothers, and their children. (DP)

Child welfare systems throughout the United States are being closely scrutinized as sensational cases appear in the media in nearly every state. At the federal level, with the Child and Family Service Review process, the government is documenting that states across the country are not conforming to federal child welfare requirements (DHHS, 2007)…

Discusses the changing relationships between the Canadian government and voluntary social welfare agencies, with emphasis on the roles of voluntary agencies in light of growing governmental influence. The problems of voluntary agencies are discussed and illustrated. (DP)

This article is an abstract from Digest of Crisis in Child Mental Health: Challenge for the 1970's, the final report of the Joint Commission on Mental Health of Children (MG)

Organizational context, including line worker characteristics and service settings, may help explain the equivocal findings of intervention studies in the field of child welfare. Yet organizational context has been largely ignored in studies of child welfare interventions. The purpose of this article is to expound upon the likely role of the…

This article reports findings of an exploratory study of 71 parents with substance abuse conditions involved in a child dependency court. Over half (59%) of the parents had a co-occurring mental health condition. Parents with co-occurring conditions (PWCC) differed in several important ways from those with only substance abuse conditions. PWCC…