Recent Publications on Foster Care and Adoption: Empirical Research to Enhance Best Practices

(prepared by Tiffany Armstrong, March 2007)

Becker, M., Jordan, N., & Larsen, R. (2006). Behavioral health service use and costs among children in foster care. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 633-647. This article compares behavioral health service use and cost for foster care versus nonfoster care children; children before, during, and after foster care placement; and successfully reunified versus nonsuccessfully reunified foster care children.

Berge, J. M., Mendenhall, T. J., Wrobel, G. M., Grotevant, H. D., & McRoy, R. G. (2006). Adolescents' feelings about openness in adoption: Implications for adoption agencies. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 1011-1039. Adoption research commonly uses parents' reports of satisfaction when examining openness in adoption arrangements. This qualitative study aimed to fill a gap in the adoption research by using adolescents' voices to gain a better understanding of their adoption experiences. Adopted adolescents (n = 152) were interviewed concerning their satisfaction with the openness in their adoption arrangements with their birthmothers. Results and implications from this study may affect how adoption agencies work with adopted adolescents and their families, and may influence a broader understanding of the recent trend toward open adoption arrangements.

Bogolub, E. B. Child welfare for the twenty-first century: A handbook of practices, policies, and programs. Affilia: Journal of Women & Social Work, 21, 462-463. The article reviews the book "Child Welfare for the Twenty-First Century: A Handbook of Practices, Policies and Programs," edited by G. P. Mallon and P. M. Hess.

Bottoms, B. L., & Quas, J. A. (2006). Recent advances and new challenges in child maltreatment research, practice, and policy: Previewing the issues. Journal of Social Issues, 62, 653-662. Few issues are of such grave importance to society and to the science and practice of psychology as child maltreatment. Our goal in editing this issue of JSI was to inform scientists across various sub-fields of psychology about the most current knowledge in the field of child maltreatment, broadly defined. The authors of the articles have gone further, pushing past the edge of current knowledge and setting aggressive agendas for future empirical and policy-relevant work. We believe that the result will be enriched future research, practice, policy, and law, and in turn, the increased well-being of children and their families

Brenner, E., & Freundlich, M. (2006). Enhancing the safety of children in foster care and family support programs: Automated critical incident reporting. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 611-632. The Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 has made child safety an explicit focus in child welfare. The authors describe an automated critical incident reporting program designed for use in foster care and family-support programs. The program, which is based in Lotus Notes and uses e-mail to route incident reports from direct service staff to supervisors and administrators, facilitates timely clinical oversight and risk management and ensures the security of clients' protected health information. The authors present data collected using the program to illustrate how it can be used to monitor abuse and neglect allegations in a foster care program. survey of users found that the program saved time, was easy to use, and helped manage critical incident reports.

Cole, S. A. (2005). Infants in foster care: Relational and environmental factors affecting attachment. Journal of Reproductive & Infant Psychology, 23(02), 43-61. The present study investigated the effect of relational and environmental factors affecting attachment security in 46 infants placed in foster homes. The study found that a majority of infants (67%) in the participant group were securely attached. Additionally, of the insecurely attached, a larger percentage of infants than anticipated displayed disorganized/disoriented patterns of attachment. The study found that organization of the foster home environment and appropriate learning materials predicted secure attachment while foster caregiver childhood trauma and involvement predicted insecure attachment. Strategies are proposed for better training and support of foster caregivers for developing secure relationships with the infants.

Connolly, M. (2006). Up front and personal: Confronting dynamics in the family group conference. Family process, 45, 345-357. The Family Group Conference is a participatory model of decision making with families in child protection. It is a legal process that brings together the family, including the extended family, and the professionals in a family-led decision-making forum. This article briefly describes the development and practice of family group conferencing as a family-centered legal process in Aotearoa, New Zealand. It then examines the findings of a study exploring the dynamics emerging from family group conference practice from the perspective of the coordinators who convene them. Family group conferencing as a family strengthening practice is discussed.

DePanfilis, D. (2006). Child neglect: A guide for prevention, assessment, and intervention (User Manual Series ed.). Washington, D.C.: Child Welfare Information Gateway. This is the 3rd edition user manual that addresses in depth issues of child abuse and neglect and describes the root causes, symptoms, and consequences of neglect, as well as the interdisciplinary ways to prevent both its occurrence and recurrence. It gives the most current information on the definition and scope and impact of neglect and describes risk and protective factors, assessment, prevention and intervention.

DeRoberts-Moore, N. (2006). A system that serves caseworkers and clients. Policy & Practice of Public Human Services, 64, 18-20. The article focuses on the development of the Statewide Automated Child Welfare Information System (SACWIS) in Ohio. This initiative was designed to compile and help enforce a comprehensive set of child welfare and protection practices that can achieve the best outcomes for clients. It will monitor and reach children and families helped by state child welfare agencies. In addition, Congress authorized matching finances for SACWIS.

Dore, M. (2007). Children in family contexts: Perspectives on treatment. Research on Social Work Practice, 17, 156-157. The article reviews the book "Children in Family Contexts: Perspectives on Treatment," 2nd edition, edited by L. Combrinck -Graham.

Downs, A. C., & James, S. E. (2006). Gay, lesbian, and bisexual foster parents: Strengths and challenges for the child welfare system. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 281-298. This article documents the challenges and successes of a group of 60 LGB foster parents. All participants provided foster parenting for public (state or county) agencies. The primary successes of this group included meaningful and gratifying parenting and successful testing of whether adoption might be a natural next step after foster parenting. The primary challenges included insensitive, inappropriate, and difficult social workers; state or local laws that worked against successful foster parenting by LGB adults; failure to recognize parents' partners; and lack of support by the system to acknowledge the important role of LGB parents. Numerous recommendations are identified for improving how LGB foster parents are supported within child welfare systems including foster parent and social worker training in LGB issues.

Dozier, M., Peloso, E., Lindhiem, O., Gordon, M. K., Manni, M., & Sepulveda, S., et al. (2006). Developing evidence-based interventions for foster children: An example of a randomized clinical trial with infants and toddlers. Journal of Social Issues, 62, 767-785. Children who enter foster care have usually experienced maltreatment as well as disruptions in relationships with primary caregivers. These children are at risk for a host of problematic outcomes. However, there are few evidence-based interventions that target foster children. This article presents preliminary data testing the effectiveness of an intervention, Attachment and Bio-behavioral Catch-up, to target relationship formation in young children in the foster care system. Results provide preliminary evidence of the effectiveness of an intervention that targets children's regulatory capabilities and serve as an example of how interventions can effectively target foster children in the child welfare system.

Finkelhor, D., & Jones, L. (2006). Why have child maltreatment and child victimization declined? Journal of Social Issues, 62, 685-716. Various forms of child maltreatment and child victimization declined as much as 40–70% from 1993 until 2004, including sexual abuse, physical abuse, sexual assault, homicide, aggravated assault, robbery, and larceny. Other child welfare indicators also improved during the same period, including teen pregnancy, teen suicide, and children living in poverty. This article reviews a wide variety of possible explanations for these changes: demography, fertility and abortion legalization, economic prosperity, increased incarceration of offenders, increased agents of social intervention, changing social norms and practices, the dissipation of the social changes from the 1960s, and psychiatric pharmacology.

Green, B. L., Rockhill, A., & Furrer, C. (2006). Understanding patterns of substance abuse treatment for women involved with child welfare: The influence of the adoption and safe families act (ASFA). American Journal of Drug & Alcohol Abuse, 32, 149-176. The passage of the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act (AFSA) has led to increased attention to the need for timely and appropriate treatment services to families with substance abuse issues who are involved with child welfare. Using statewide administrative data collected before and after the implementation of ASFA, the present study explores the influence of ASFA, as well as other family characteristics, on patterns of treatment service utilization by child-welfare involved clients. Results are interpreted in terms of the changing treatment service context, enhanced collaboration between child welfare and treatment systems, and the possible influence of the legislation on parents' motivation to enter treatment.

Jones, W.,G. (2006). Working with the courts in child protection. (3rd Edition. Chid Abuse and Neglect User Manual Series ed.). Washington, D.C.: Child Welfare Information Gateway. This is an overall user manual of improvements and best practices to prepare the Child Welfare worker for entry into the court system. The manual gives a detailed description of differing court systems, processes and jurisdictions. It describes the powers and rights of parents and children and the interplay between child maltreatment legislation and caseworker practice. It also describes issues involved in going to court and the relationship between the caseworker and the court.

Kahan, M. (2006). "Put up" on platforms: A history of twentieth century adoption policy in the united states. Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare, 33, 51-72. Adoption is closely intertwined with many issues that are central to public policy in this country; welfare and poverty, race and class, and gender. An analysis of the history of adoption shows how it has been shaped by the nation's mores and demographics. In order to better understand this phenomenon, and its significance to larger societal issues, this analysis reviews its history, focusing on four key periods in which this country's adoption policy was shaped: the late Nineteenth Century's `orphan trains'; the family preservation and Mothers' Pensions of the Progressive Era; World War II through the 1950s, with secrecy and the beginnings of international adoption; and the 1970s-1990s, when reproductive controls were more obtainable, and relinquishing children became more uncommon.

Leathers, S. J., & Testa, M. F. (2006). Foster youth emancipating from care: Caseworkers' reports on needs and services. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 463-498. This article presents findings from a survey mailed caseworkers, who answered questions about special needs, independent living skills, educational attainment, 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 were underserved relative to other youth. Youth with more behavior problems and educational and job skill deficits were less likely than other youth to continue receive child welfare services past age 18, suggesting that services must be provided throughout adolescence to meet the needs of the most vulnerable clients.

Matthews, J. D., & Cramer, E. P. (2006). Envisaging the adoption process to strengthen gay- and lesbian-headed families: Recommendations for adoption professionals. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 317-340. Although a growing number of child placement agencies are serving lesbians and gay men, a dearth of literature exists for adoption agency policies and practices related to working with this population. This article explores the unique characteristics and strengths of prospective gay and lesbian adoptive parents throughout each of the three phases of the adoption process--preplacement, placement, and postplacement--as well as provides suggestions for adoption professionals working with gays and lesbians.

McGlade, K., & Ackerman, J. (2006). A hope for foster care: Agency executives in partnerships with parent leaders. Journal of Emotional Abuse, 6(2), 97-112. Two foster care executives encourage agency and parent leaders to rethink their relationships to improve the lives of children in their shared custody. When mothers-of-color charged that white privilege harmed rather than helped children, the white executives connected the accusation to their experience as closeted gay leaders in a religiously-run organization. That unexpected insight became the sharper lens through which they saw some emotional damage caused by their decisions. The executives examined their behavior and transformed their adversarial relationship with parents into a partnership. Their suggestions are based on efforts with parents, mistakes with trustees, and hard lessons learned.

Mitchell, L. B., Barth, R. P., Green, R., Wall, A., Biemer, P., & Berrick, J. D., et al. (2005). Child welfare reform in the united states: Findings from a local agency survey. Child Welfare League of America, 84, 5-24. Efforts to improve the public welfare and child welfare system sparked an unprecedented amount of federal legislation in the 1990s, including the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (ASFA), the Multiethnic Placement Act of 1994 and Interethnic Adoption Provisions of 1996 (MEPA-IEP), and welfare reform. Such reforms allow an unprecedented degree of flexibility, but little is known about their implementation. Researchers administered the Local Agency Survey to the first national probability sample of public child welfare agencies from 1999 to 2000. Findings indicate that ASFA has had the most effect on child welfare service delivery. Welfare reform has had less effect, and MEPA-IEP seems to have had little effect at all.

Morrison, J., & Mishna, F. Knowing the child: An ecological approach to the treatment of children in foster care. Clinical Social Work Journal, 34(Winter), 467-481. Social workers in agencies and school settings often deal with high risk, multi problem children such as those in foster care. Increasingly, there is widespread recognition that a coordinated, multifaceted approach is required to address the range of cognitive, social, and mental health problems with which they present. This article recommends utilization of an ecological treatment intervention that is specifically tailored to the needs of the child based on a formulation of the child’s experience and developmental deficits. A case example comprising the treatment of an eight-year-old boy in foster care with comorbid diagnoses of alcohol related neurodevelpomental disorder, failure to thrive, and attachment disorder, illustrates this approach. The article concludes with implications for social work practice.

Moyers, S., Farmer, E., & Lipscombe, J. (2006). Contact with family members and its impact on adolescents and their foster placements. British Journal of Social Work, 36, 541-559. This paper discusses findings from a recently completed study of adolescent foster care, which included a detailed assessment of the fostering skills and supports of carers and of the contact that adolescents had with parents, siblings and other family members during a long-term foster placement. This paper describes the contact the young people had with their families, its impact on them and on the foster families and how it changed over time. The findings revealed that contact for the majority of adolescents was problematic and had a significant impact on placement outcomes. Ways of managing contact are highlighted, and the corresponding implications for policy and practice discussed.

Nesmith, A. (2006). Predictors of running away from family foster care. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 585-609. Running away is a frequent but little studied phenomenon among adolescents in foster care. Repeated running from care often leads to premature discharge and homelessness for youth. This article uses cumulative risk theory in the context of normative adolescent development to investigate predicators of running away from foster care. Results indicate risks stemming from individual, foster home, and child welfare system sources, which offer some insight for prevention and intervention.

Noonan, K., & Burke, K. (2005). Termination of parental rights: Which foster care children are affected? Social Science Journal, 42, 241-256. In 1997, the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) was passed with a primary goal of expediting the process of placing foster children with permanent or adoptive families. In order to meet this goal, ASFA requires states to terminate parental rights if a child has been in foster care for 15 of the most recent 22 months. Prior empirical research on foster care dependence supports the provision in ASFA to expedite the discharge process because over time children are progressively less likely to be discharged from foster care. However, very little research has examined what impact terminating parental rights will have on this goal. One of the first steps is to examine which children are most likely to see the rights of their parents terminated and how these children differ from those children who are returned home. Using a competing risks hazard model we find many differences between the children who are sent home and those children whose parents have their rights terminated.

Orme, J. G., Cuddeback, G. S., Buehler, C., & Cox, M. E. (2007). Measuring foster parent potential: Casey foster parent inventory-applicant version. Research on Social Work Practice, 17, 77-92. The Casey Foster Applicant Inventory-Applicant Version (CFAI-A) is a new standardized self-report measure designed to assess the potential to foster parent successfully. The CFAI-A is described, and results concerning its psychometric properties are presented. The CFAI-A shows promise for use in research and practice, where it might be used to improve decisions about how to support, monitor, and retain foster families and to match, place, and maintain foster children with foster families.

Pacifici, C., Delaney, R., White, L., Cummings, K., & Nelson, C. (2005). Foster parent college: Interactive multimedia training for foster parents. Social Work Research, 29, 243-251. The article discusses interactive multimedia training for foster parents. Research studies have long demonstrated the benefits of training for foster parents, children, and agencies. Early landmark studies showed that training produced key changes within the family unit, such as improved parent attitudes, parent-child interactions, and a reduction of child problem behavior. DVD and Web technology offer parents convenience and flexibility through home-based training. For the foster care agency, these formats are far more cost-effective than live training. Agencies can buy and then lend copies of a program or have low-cost site licensing arrangements.

Reifsteck, J. (2005). Failure and success in foster care programs. North American Journal of Psychology, 7, 313-326. The purpose of the current study was to classify types of services provided for youth in one sample (N=208) of children in foster care. A review of utilization trends and omissions in service suggests that even though some youth and their families benefit slightly from prevention efforts. It appears that satisfactory services for youth referred for child abuse and neglect are not readily apparent for all children in need.

Romney, S. C., Litrownik, A. J., Newton, R. R., & Lau, A. (2006). The relationship between child disability and living arrangement in child welfare. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 965-984. The influence of disabilities on placement outcomes was examined for 277 children who were removed from their biological parents due to substantiated maltreatment. Results indicated that children with a disability were less likely to reunify and more likely to reside in nonkin foster care two years later than typical children. Children with cognitive, emotional / behavioral, and physical disabilities were over four times more likely to be permanently living in nonkin foster care than to be reunified.

Rosenthal, J. A., & Waters, E. (2006). Predictors of child welfare worker retention and performance: Focus on Title IV-E-funded social work education. Journal of Social Service Research, 32, 67-85. Using administrative records, this paper tracks for up to four years using Cox survival methods the retention of 839 public child welfare workers who began child welfare work in 1999. Participation in a IV-E-funded social work educational program predicted better retention. In particular, risk of termination decreased by 52% during the mandated contractual employment period in which the educational stipend was "worked off". Other predictors of longer retention included prior non-child welfare employment at the public agency and working in the state office setting. Regression analyses revealed an association between an ethnic group's representation in the population of child welfare workers and supervisory evaluation; the greater that representation, the higher the overall evaluation for the group.

Rubin, D. M., O'Reilly, A. L. R., Xianqun Luan, & Localio, A. R. (2007). The impact of placement stability on behavioral well-being for children in foster care. Pediatrics, 119, 336-344. This is a 2007 research article identiying the problems children have upon entering foster care and explains prior research findings that frequent placement changes are associated with poor outcomes. This study sought to disentangle this cascading relationship in order to identify the independent impact of placement stability on behavioral outcomes downstream. The goal was to identify the innate contribution of a child's placement stability toward his or her risk for behavioral problems 18 months after entering foster care.The article concludes that children in foster care experience placement instability unrelated to their baseline problems, and this instability has a significant impact on their behavioral well-being.

Sellick, C. (2006). From famine to feast. A review of the foster care research literature. Children & Society, 20, 67-74. Foster care has become the principal placement of choice for children and young people in public care in the United Kingdom (UK). This has been accompanied by a significant growth in its research scrutiny connected to a busy policy agenda, especially since 1997. With its increased usage, fostering has encountered both difficulties and developments. Children often have emotional and behavioral problems which strain their foster families to their limits and risk placement breakdown. Public sector foster carers continue to be in short supply and keeping them engaged in fostering remains a challenge. Major developments have occurred in response to these difficulties. The use of relatives as kinship carers has increased substantially and the non-governmental or independent fostering sector has grown rapidly. Until comparatively recently, the knowledge base of foster care in Britain was limited, but the past decade has seen that change and now a substantial body of research knowledge is available in the UK.

Shirk, M., & Strangler, G. (2005). On their own: What happens to kids when they age out of the foster care system. Journal of Social Work Education, 41(Winter), 161-161. This article focuses on the book "On Their own: What Happens to Kids When They Age Out of the Foster Care System," by M. Shirk and G. Stangler. Every year, nearly 25,000 teenagers age out of foster care by the time they turn eighteen. The discussed book with a foreword written by the U.S. President Jimmy Carters, is a collection of compelling stories about such teenagers. The authors not only document the struggles of these teenagers, they also call for action in order to provide youth in foster care the opportunities that most teens take for granted.

Shlonsky, A. (2006). Beyond common sense: Child welfare, child well-being, and the evidence for policy reform. Social Service Review, 80, 756-761. This article presents a review of a book entitled "Beyond Common Sense: Child Welfare, Child Well-Being, and the Evidence for Policy Reform,".

Smith, N. A. Empowering the "unfit" mother. Affilia: Journal of Women & Social Work, 21(Winter), 448-457. This article presents the results of a qualitative study that examined the experiences of women who were deemed ‘unfit’ to care for their children. The voices of these mothers call attention to the difficult process of recovery from addiction while trying to regain custody of one's children. A strengths-based empowerment approach is emphasized in work with these women, beginning with a redefinition of the label ‘unfit.’

Survey finds diverse state initiatives with a common focus on improving child care.(2006). Policy & Practice of Public Human Services, 64, 35-35.

Swann, C. A., & Sheran Sylvester, M. (2006). The foster care crisis: What caused caseloads to grow? Demography, 43, 309-335. Foster care caseloads more than doubled from 1985 to 2000. This article provides the first comprehensive study of this growth by relating state-level foster care caseloads to state-specific characteristics and policies. We present evidence that increases in female incarcerations and reductions in cash welfare benefits played dominant roles in explaining the growth in foster care caseloads over this period. Our results highlight the need for child welfare policies designed specifically for the children of incarcerated parents and parents who are facing less generous welfare programs.

Timmer, S. G., Llrquiza, A. I., Herschell, A. D., McGrath, J. M., Zebell, N. M., & Porter, A. L., et al. (2006). Parent-child interaction therapy: Application of an empirically supported treatment to maltreated children in foster care. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 919-939. One of the more serious problems faced by child welfare services involves the management of children with serious behavioral and mental health problems. Aggressive and defiant foster children are more likely to have multiple foster care placements, require extraordinary social services resources, and have poor short- and long-term mental health outcomes. Interventions that work with challenging foster children and enhance foster parents' skills in managing problem behaviors are necessary. This article presents the successful results of a single case study examining the application of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) with an aggressive young boy and his foster-adoptive parent. PCIT is a dyadic intervention that has been identified as an empirically supported treatment for abused children and for children with different types of behavioral disruption. The application of PCIT to assist foster parents is a promising direction for child welfare services.

Vig, S., Chinitz, S., & Shulman, L. (2005). Young children in foster care. Infants & Young Children: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Special Care Practices, 18, 147-160. Young children who have been removed from their biological families and placed in foster care are at significant risk for poor developmental outcomes. Their vulnerability is often the result of adverse biological and psychosocial influences: prenatal exposure to alcohol and other drugs, premature birth, abuse and neglect leading to foster placement, and failure to form adequate attachments to their primary caregivers. The purpose of the following discussion is to describe the foster care population and the kinds of medical conditions, mental health problems, and developmental disabilities experienced by young children in foster care, and to explore implications for intervention.

Wilcox, B. L., Weisz, P. V., & Miller, M. K. (2005). Practical guidelines for educating policymakers: The family impact seminar as an approach to advancing the interests of children and families in the policy arena. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 34, 638-645. Psychologists are well positioned to contribute to policymaking on issues affecting the well-being of children, youth, and families. A good deal of psychological research is relevant to policy issues such as child mental health services, child care, adoption and foster care, and children's media. In this article we offer an alternative to direct policy advocacy as a means for psychologists' involvement in the policy arena. Policy education, a nonpartisan and nonadversarial approach to working with policymakers, is described and differentiated from child advocacy. We then present an example of 1 approach to policy education, the Family Impact Seminar. The article closes with a discussion of lessons we have learned regarding effectively communicating research to policymakers.

Williams, J., McWilliams, A., Mainieri, T., Pecora, P. J., & La Belle, K. (2006). Enhancing the validity of foster care follow-up studies through multiple alumni location strategies. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 499-521. While family-based placement prevention services, family reunification programs, subsidized guardianship, and aggressive adoption programs are reducing the numbers of children spending long periods of time in substitute care, a significant number of America's children will come of age in foster care. Agencies and policymakers should use research and evaluation to assess the effectiveness of foster care in nurturing healthy adults and to explore ways to improve services. Outcome studies that have focused on locating and interviewing young or middle-aged adults emancipated from foster care have been hampered by modest response rates, limiting the field's ability to evaluate the efficacy of foster care programs. This article describes a set of strategies that were used to achieve higher response rates in two recent follow-up studies.

Recent Publications on Foster Care and Adoption: Empirical Research to Enhance Best Practices

(prepared by Tiffany Armstrong, March 2007)

Becker, M., Jordan, N., & Larsen, R. (2006). Behavioral health service use and costs among children in foster care. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 633-647. This article compares behavioral health service use and cost for foster care versus nonfoster care children; children before, during, and after foster care placement; and successfully reunified versus nonsuccessfully reunified foster care children.

Berge, J. M., Mendenhall, T. J., Wrobel, G. M., Grotevant, H. D., & McRoy, R. G. (2006). Adolescents' feelings about openness in adoption: Implications for adoption agencies. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 1011-1039. Adoption research commonly uses parents' reports of satisfaction when examining openness in adoption arrangements. This qualitative study aimed to fill a gap in the adoption research by using adolescents' voices to gain a better understanding of their adoption experiences. Adopted adolescents (n = 152) were interviewed concerning their satisfaction with the openness in their adoption arrangements with their birthmothers. Results and implications from this study may affect how adoption agencies work with adopted adolescents and their families, and may influence a broader understanding of the recent trend toward open adoption arrangements.

Bogolub, E. B. Child welfare for the twenty-first century: A handbook of practices, policies, and programs. Affilia: Journal of Women & Social Work, 21, 462-463. The article reviews the book "Child Welfare for the Twenty-First Century: A Handbook of Practices, Policies and Programs," edited by G. P. Mallon and P. M. Hess.

Bottoms, B. L., & Quas, J. A. (2006). Recent advances and new challenges in child maltreatment research, practice, and policy: Previewing the issues. Journal of Social Issues, 62, 653-662. Few issues are of such grave importance to society and to the science and practice of psychology as child maltreatment. Our goal in editing this issue of JSI was to inform scientists across various sub-fields of psychology about the most current knowledge in the field of child maltreatment, broadly defined. The authors of the articles have gone further, pushing past the edge of current knowledge and setting aggressive agendas for future empirical and policy-relevant work. We believe that the result will be enriched future research, practice, policy, and law, and in turn, the increased well-being of children and their families

Brenner, E., & Freundlich, M. (2006). Enhancing the safety of children in foster care and family support programs: Automated critical incident reporting. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 611-632. The Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 has made child safety an explicit focus in child welfare. The authors describe an automated critical incident reporting program designed for use in foster care and family-support programs. The program, which is based in Lotus Notes and uses e-mail to route incident reports from direct service staff to supervisors and administrators, facilitates timely clinical oversight and risk management and ensures the security of clients' protected health information. The authors present data collected using the program to illustrate how it can be used to monitor abuse and neglect allegations in a foster care program. survey of users found that the program saved time, was easy to use, and helped manage critical incident reports.

Cole, S. A. (2005). Infants in foster care: Relational and environmental factors affecting attachment. Journal of Reproductive & Infant Psychology, 23(02), 43-61. The present study investigated the effect of relational and environmental factors affecting attachment security in 46 infants placed in foster homes. The study found that a majority of infants (67%) in the participant group were securely attached. Additionally, of the insecurely attached, a larger percentage of infants than anticipated displayed disorganized/disoriented patterns of attachment. The study found that organization of the foster home environment and appropriate learning materials predicted secure attachment while foster caregiver childhood trauma and involvement predicted insecure attachment. Strategies are proposed for better training and support of foster caregivers for developing secure relationships with the infants.

Connolly, M. (2006). Up front and personal: Confronting dynamics in the family group conference. Family process, 45, 345-357. The Family Group Conference is a participatory model of decision making with families in child protection. It is a legal process that brings together the family, including the extended family, and the professionals in a family-led decision-making forum. This article briefly describes the development and practice of family group conferencing as a family-centered legal process in Aotearoa, New Zealand. It then examines the findings of a study exploring the dynamics emerging from family group conference practice from the perspective of the coordinators who convene them. Family group conferencing as a family strengthening practice is discussed.

DePanfilis, D. (2006). Child neglect: A guide for prevention, assessment, and intervention (User Manual Series ed.). Washington, D.C.: Child Welfare Information Gateway. This is the 3rd edition user manual that addresses in depth issues of child abuse and neglect and describes the root causes, symptoms, and consequences of neglect, as well as the interdisciplinary ways to prevent both its occurrence and recurrence. It gives the most current information on the definition and scope and impact of neglect and describes risk and protective factors, assessment, prevention and intervention.

DeRoberts-Moore, N. (2006). A system that serves caseworkers and clients. Policy & Practice of Public Human Services, 64, 18-20. The article focuses on the development of the Statewide Automated Child Welfare Information System (SACWIS) in Ohio. This initiative was designed to compile and help enforce a comprehensive set of child welfare and protection practices that can achieve the best outcomes for clients. It will monitor and reach children and families helped by state child welfare agencies. In addition, Congress authorized matching finances for SACWIS.

Dore, M. (2007). Children in family contexts: Perspectives on treatment. Research on Social Work Practice, 17, 156-157. The article reviews the book "Children in Family Contexts: Perspectives on Treatment," 2nd edition, edited by L. Combrinck -Graham.

Downs, A. C., & James, S. E. (2006). Gay, lesbian, and bisexual foster parents: Strengths and challenges for the child welfare system. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 281-298. This article documents the challenges and successes of a group of 60 LGB foster parents. All participants provided foster parenting for public (state or county) agencies. The primary successes of this group included meaningful and gratifying parenting and successful testing of whether adoption might be a natural next step after foster parenting. The primary challenges included insensitive, inappropriate, and difficult social workers; state or local laws that worked against successful foster parenting by LGB adults; failure to recognize parents' partners; and lack of support by the system to acknowledge the important role of LGB parents. Numerous recommendations are identified for improving how LGB foster parents are supported within child welfare systems including foster parent and social worker training in LGB issues.

Dozier, M., Peloso, E., Lindhiem, O., Gordon, M. K., Manni, M., & Sepulveda, S., et al. (2006). Developing evidence-based interventions for foster children: An example of a randomized clinical trial with infants and toddlers. Journal of Social Issues, 62, 767-785. Children who enter foster care have usually experienced maltreatment as well as disruptions in relationships with primary caregivers. These children are at risk for a host of problematic outcomes. However, there are few evidence-based interventions that target foster children. This article presents preliminary data testing the effectiveness of an intervention, Attachment and Bio-behavioral Catch-up, to target relationship formation in young children in the foster care system. Results provide preliminary evidence of the effectiveness of an intervention that targets children's regulatory capabilities and serve as an example of how interventions can effectively target foster children in the child welfare system.

Finkelhor, D., & Jones, L. (2006). Why have child maltreatment and child victimization declined? Journal of Social Issues, 62, 685-716. Various forms of child maltreatment and child victimization declined as much as 40–70% from 1993 until 2004, including sexual abuse, physical abuse, sexual assault, homicide, aggravated assault, robbery, and larceny. Other child welfare indicators also improved during the same period, including teen pregnancy, teen suicide, and children living in poverty. This article reviews a wide variety of possible explanations for these changes: demography, fertility and abortion legalization, economic prosperity, increased incarceration of offenders, increased agents of social intervention, changing social norms and practices, the dissipation of the social changes from the 1960s, and psychiatric pharmacology.

Green, B. L., Rockhill, A., & Furrer, C. (2006). Understanding patterns of substance abuse treatment for women involved with child welfare: The influence of the adoption and safe families act (ASFA). American Journal of Drug & Alcohol Abuse, 32, 149-176. The passage of the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act (AFSA) has led to increased attention to the need for timely and appropriate treatment services to families with substance abuse issues who are involved with child welfare. Using statewide administrative data collected before and after the implementation of ASFA, the present study explores the influence of ASFA, as well as other family characteristics, on patterns of treatment service utilization by child-welfare involved clients. Results are interpreted in terms of the changing treatment service context, enhanced collaboration between child welfare and treatment systems, and the possible influence of the legislation on parents' motivation to enter treatment.

Jones, W.,G. (2006). Working with the courts in child protection. (3rd Edition. Chid Abuse and Neglect User Manual Series ed.). Washington, D.C.: Child Welfare Information Gateway. This is an overall user manual of improvements and best practices to prepare the Child Welfare worker for entry into the court system. The manual gives a detailed description of differing court systems, processes and jurisdictions. It describes the powers and rights of parents and children and the interplay between child maltreatment legislation and caseworker practice. It also describes issues involved in going to court and the relationship between the caseworker and the court.

Kahan, M. (2006). "Put up" on platforms: A history of twentieth century adoption policy in the united states. Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare, 33, 51-72. Adoption is closely intertwined with many issues that are central to public policy in this country; welfare and poverty, race and class, and gender. An analysis of the history of adoption shows how it has been shaped by the nation's mores and demographics. In order to better understand this phenomenon, and its significance to larger societal issues, this analysis reviews its history, focusing on four key periods in which this country's adoption policy was shaped: the late Nineteenth Century's `orphan trains'; the family preservation and Mothers' Pensions of the Progressive Era; World War II through the 1950s, with secrecy and the beginnings of international adoption; and the 1970s-1990s, when reproductive controls were more obtainable, and relinquishing children became more uncommon.

Leathers, S. J., & Testa, M. F. (2006). Foster youth emancipating from care: Caseworkers' reports on needs and services. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 463-498. This article presents findings from a survey mailed caseworkers, who answered questions about special needs, independent living skills, educational attainment, 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 were underserved relative to other youth. Youth with more behavior problems and educational and job skill deficits were less likely than other youth to continue receive child welfare services past age 18, suggesting that services must be provided throughout adolescence to meet the needs of the most vulnerable clients.

Matthews, J. D., & Cramer, E. P. (2006). Envisaging the adoption process to strengthen gay- and lesbian-headed families: Recommendations for adoption professionals. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 317-340. Although a growing number of child placement agencies are serving lesbians and gay men, a dearth of literature exists for adoption agency policies and practices related to working with this population. This article explores the unique characteristics and strengths of prospective gay and lesbian adoptive parents throughout each of the three phases of the adoption process--preplacement, placement, and postplacement--as well as provides suggestions for adoption professionals working with gays and lesbians.

McGlade, K., & Ackerman, J. (2006). A hope for foster care: Agency executives in partnerships with parent leaders. Journal of Emotional Abuse, 6(2), 97-112. Two foster care executives encourage agency and parent leaders to rethink their relationships to improve the lives of children in their shared custody. When mothers-of-color charged that white privilege harmed rather than helped children, the white executives connected the accusation to their experience as closeted gay leaders in a religiously-run organization. That unexpected insight became the sharper lens through which they saw some emotional damage caused by their decisions. The executives examined their behavior and transformed their adversarial relationship with parents into a partnership. Their suggestions are based on efforts with parents, mistakes with trustees, and hard lessons learned.

Mitchell, L. B., Barth, R. P., Green, R., Wall, A., Biemer, P., & Berrick, J. D., et al. (2005). Child welfare reform in the united states: Findings from a local agency survey. Child Welfare League of America, 84, 5-24. Efforts to improve the public welfare and child welfare system sparked an unprecedented amount of federal legislation in the 1990s, including the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (ASFA), the Multiethnic Placement Act of 1994 and Interethnic Adoption Provisions of 1996 (MEPA-IEP), and welfare reform. Such reforms allow an unprecedented degree of flexibility, but little is known about their implementation. Researchers administered the Local Agency Survey to the first national probability sample of public child welfare agencies from 1999 to 2000. Findings indicate that ASFA has had the most effect on child welfare service delivery. Welfare reform has had less effect, and MEPA-IEP seems to have had little effect at all.

Morrison, J., & Mishna, F. Knowing the child: An ecological approach to the treatment of children in foster care. Clinical Social Work Journal, 34(Winter), 467-481. Social workers in agencies and school settings often deal with high risk, multi problem children such as those in foster care. Increasingly, there is widespread recognition that a coordinated, multifaceted approach is required to address the range of cognitive, social, and mental health problems with which they present. This article recommends utilization of an ecological treatment intervention that is specifically tailored to the needs of the child based on a formulation of the child’s experience and developmental deficits. A case example comprising the treatment of an eight-year-old boy in foster care with comorbid diagnoses of alcohol related neurodevelpomental disorder, failure to thrive, and attachment disorder, illustrates this approach. The article concludes with implications for social work practice.

Moyers, S., Farmer, E., & Lipscombe, J. (2006). Contact with family members and its impact on adolescents and their foster placements. British Journal of Social Work, 36, 541-559. This paper discusses findings from a recently completed study of adolescent foster care, which included a detailed assessment of the fostering skills and supports of carers and of the contact that adolescents had with parents, siblings and other family members during a long-term foster placement. This paper describes the contact the young people had with their families, its impact on them and on the foster families and how it changed over time. The findings revealed that contact for the majority of adolescents was problematic and had a significant impact on placement outcomes. Ways of managing contact are highlighted, and the corresponding implications for policy and practice discussed.

Nesmith, A. (2006). Predictors of running away from family foster care. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 585-609. Running away is a frequent but little studied phenomenon among adolescents in foster care. Repeated running from care often leads to premature discharge and homelessness for youth. This article uses cumulative risk theory in the context of normative adolescent development to investigate predicators of running away from foster care. Results indicate risks stemming from individual, foster home, and child welfare system sources, which offer some insight for prevention and intervention.

Noonan, K., & Burke, K. (2005). Termination of parental rights: Which foster care children are affected? Social Science Journal, 42, 241-256. In 1997, the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) was passed with a primary goal of expediting the process of placing foster children with permanent or adoptive families. In order to meet this goal, ASFA requires states to terminate parental rights if a child has been in foster care for 15 of the most recent 22 months. Prior empirical research on foster care dependence supports the provision in ASFA to expedite the discharge process because over time children are progressively less likely to be discharged from foster care. However, very little research has examined what impact terminating parental rights will have on this goal. One of the first steps is to examine which children are most likely to see the rights of their parents terminated and how these children differ from those children who are returned home. Using a competing risks hazard model we find many differences between the children who are sent home and those children whose parents have their rights terminated.

Orme, J. G., Cuddeback, G. S., Buehler, C., & Cox, M. E. (2007). Measuring foster parent potential: Casey foster parent inventory-applicant version. Research on Social Work Practice, 17, 77-92. The Casey Foster Applicant Inventory-Applicant Version (CFAI-A) is a new standardized self-report measure designed to assess the potential to foster parent successfully. The CFAI-A is described, and results concerning its psychometric properties are presented. The CFAI-A shows promise for use in research and practice, where it might be used to improve decisions about how to support, monitor, and retain foster families and to match, place, and maintain foster children with foster families.

Pacifici, C., Delaney, R., White, L., Cummings, K., & Nelson, C. (2005). Foster parent college: Interactive multimedia training for foster parents. Social Work Research, 29, 243-251. The article discusses interactive multimedia training for foster parents. Research studies have long demonstrated the benefits of training for foster parents, children, and agencies. Early landmark studies showed that training produced key changes within the family unit, such as improved parent attitudes, parent-child interactions, and a reduction of child problem behavior. DVD and Web technology offer parents convenience and flexibility through home-based training. For the foster care agency, these formats are far more cost-effective than live training. Agencies can buy and then lend copies of a program or have low-cost site licensing arrangements.

Reifsteck, J. (2005). Failure and success in foster care programs. North American Journal of Psychology, 7, 313-326. The purpose of the current study was to classify types of services provided for youth in one sample (N=208) of children in foster care. A review of utilization trends and omissions in service suggests that even though some youth and their families benefit slightly from prevention efforts. It appears that satisfactory services for youth referred for child abuse and neglect are not readily apparent for all children in need.

Romney, S. C., Litrownik, A. J., Newton, R. R., & Lau, A. (2006). The relationship between child disability and living arrangement in child welfare. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 965-984. The influence of disabilities on placement outcomes was examined for 277 children who were removed from their biological parents due to substantiated maltreatment. Results indicated that children with a disability were less likely to reunify and more likely to reside in nonkin foster care two years later than typical children. Children with cognitive, emotional / behavioral, and physical disabilities were over four times more likely to be permanently living in nonkin foster care than to be reunified.

Rosenthal, J. A., & Waters, E. (2006). Predictors of child welfare worker retention and performance: Focus on Title IV-E-funded social work education. Journal of Social Service Research, 32, 67-85. Using administrative records, this paper tracks for up to four years using Cox survival methods the retention of 839 public child welfare workers who began child welfare work in 1999. Participation in a IV-E-funded social work educational program predicted better retention. In particular, risk of termination decreased by 52% during the mandated contractual employment period in which the educational stipend was "worked off". Other predictors of longer retention included prior non-child welfare employment at the public agency and working in the state office setting. Regression analyses revealed an association between an ethnic group's representation in the population of child welfare workers and supervisory evaluation; the greater that representation, the higher the overall evaluation for the group.

Rubin, D. M., O'Reilly, A. L. R., Xianqun Luan, & Localio, A. R. (2007). The impact of placement stability on behavioral well-being for children in foster care. Pediatrics, 119, 336-344. This is a 2007 research article identiying the problems children have upon entering foster care and explains prior research findings that frequent placement changes are associated with poor outcomes. This study sought to disentangle this cascading relationship in order to identify the independent impact of placement stability on behavioral outcomes downstream. The goal was to identify the innate contribution of a child's placement stability toward his or her risk for behavioral problems 18 months after entering foster care.The article concludes that children in foster care experience placement instability unrelated to their baseline problems, and this instability has a significant impact on their behavioral well-being.

Sellick, C. (2006). From famine to feast. A review of the foster care research literature. Children & Society, 20, 67-74. Foster care has become the principal placement of choice for children and young people in public care in the United Kingdom (UK). This has been accompanied by a significant growth in its research scrutiny connected to a busy policy agenda, especially since 1997. With its increased usage, fostering has encountered both difficulties and developments. Children often have emotional and behavioral problems which strain their foster families to their limits and risk placement breakdown. Public sector foster carers continue to be in short supply and keeping them engaged in fostering remains a challenge. Major developments have occurred in response to these difficulties. The use of relatives as kinship carers has increased substantially and the non-governmental or independent fostering sector has grown rapidly. Until comparatively recently, the knowledge base of foster care in Britain was limited, but the past decade has seen that change and now a substantial body of research knowledge is available in the UK.

Shirk, M., & Strangler, G. (2005). On their own: What happens to kids when they age out of the foster care system. Journal of Social Work Education, 41(Winter), 161-161. This article focuses on the book "On Their own: What Happens to Kids When They Age Out of the Foster Care System," by M. Shirk and G. Stangler. Every year, nearly 25,000 teenagers age out of foster care by the time they turn eighteen. The discussed book with a foreword written by the U.S. President Jimmy Carters, is a collection of compelling stories about such teenagers. The authors not only document the struggles of these teenagers, they also call for action in order to provide youth in foster care the opportunities that most teens take for granted.

Shlonsky, A. (2006). Beyond common sense: Child welfare, child well-being, and the evidence for policy reform. Social Service Review, 80, 756-761. This article presents a review of a book entitled "Beyond Common Sense: Child Welfare, Child Well-Being, and the Evidence for Policy Reform,".

Smith, N. A. Empowering the "unfit" mother. Affilia: Journal of Women & Social Work, 21(Winter), 448-457. This article presents the results of a qualitative study that examined the experiences of women who were deemed ‘unfit’ to care for their children. The voices of these mothers call attention to the difficult process of recovery from addiction while trying to regain custody of one's children. A strengths-based empowerment approach is emphasized in work with these women, beginning with a redefinition of the label ‘unfit.’

Survey finds diverse state initiatives with a common focus on improving child care.(2006). Policy & Practice of Public Human Services, 64, 35-35.

Swann, C. A., & Sheran Sylvester, M. (2006). The foster care crisis: What caused caseloads to grow? Demography, 43, 309-335. Foster care caseloads more than doubled from 1985 to 2000. This article provides the first comprehensive study of this growth by relating state-level foster care caseloads to state-specific characteristics and policies. We present evidence that increases in female incarcerations and reductions in cash welfare benefits played dominant roles in explaining the growth in foster care caseloads over this period. Our results highlight the need for child welfare policies designed specifically for the children of incarcerated parents and parents who are facing less generous welfare programs.

Timmer, S. G., Llrquiza, A. I., Herschell, A. D., McGrath, J. M., Zebell, N. M., & Porter, A. L., et al. (2006). Parent-child interaction therapy: Application of an empirically supported treatment to maltreated children in foster care. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 919-939. One of the more serious problems faced by child welfare services involves the management of children with serious behavioral and mental health problems. Aggressive and defiant foster children are more likely to have multiple foster care placements, require extraordinary social services resources, and have poor short- and long-term mental health outcomes. Interventions that work with challenging foster children and enhance foster parents' skills in managing problem behaviors are necessary. This article presents the successful results of a single case study examining the application of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) with an aggressive young boy and his foster-adoptive parent. PCIT is a dyadic intervention that has been identified as an empirically supported treatment for abused children and for children with different types of behavioral disruption. The application of PCIT to assist foster parents is a promising direction for child welfare services.

Vig, S., Chinitz, S., & Shulman, L. (2005). Young children in foster care. Infants & Young Children: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Special Care Practices, 18, 147-160. Young children who have been removed from their biological families and placed in foster care are at significant risk for poor developmental outcomes. Their vulnerability is often the result of adverse biological and psychosocial influences: prenatal exposure to alcohol and other drugs, premature birth, abuse and neglect leading to foster placement, and failure to form adequate attachments to their primary caregivers. The purpose of the following discussion is to describe the foster care population and the kinds of medical conditions, mental health problems, and developmental disabilities experienced by young children in foster care, and to explore implications for intervention.

Wilcox, B. L., Weisz, P. V., & Miller, M. K. (2005). Practical guidelines for educating policymakers: The family impact seminar as an approach to advancing the interests of children and families in the policy arena. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 34, 638-645. Psychologists are well positioned to contribute to policymaking on issues affecting the well-being of children, youth, and families. A good deal of psychological research is relevant to policy issues such as child mental health services, child care, adoption and foster care, and children's media. In this article we offer an alternative to direct policy advocacy as a means for psychologists' involvement in the policy arena. Policy education, a nonpartisan and nonadversarial approach to working with policymakers, is described and differentiated from child advocacy. We then present an example of 1 approach to policy education, the Family Impact Seminar. The article closes with a discussion of lessons we have learned regarding effectively communicating research to policymakers.

Williams, J., McWilliams, A., Mainieri, T., Pecora, P. J., & La Belle, K. (2006). Enhancing the validity of foster care follow-up studies through multiple alumni location strategies. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 499-521. While family-based placement prevention services, family reunification programs, subsidized guardianship, and aggressive adoption programs are reducing the numbers of children spending long periods of time in substitute care, a significant number of America's children will come of age in foster care. Agencies and policymakers should use research and evaluation to assess the effectiveness of foster care in nurturing healthy adults and to explore ways to improve services. Outcome studies that have focused on locating and interviewing young or middle-aged adults emancipated from foster care have been hampered by modest response rates, limiting the field's ability to evaluate the efficacy of foster care programs. This article describes a set of strategies that were used to achieve higher response rates in two recent follow-up studies.

Recent Publications on Foster Care and Adoption: Empirical Research to Enhance Best Practices

(prepared by Tiffany Armstrong, March 2007)

Becker, M., Jordan, N., & Larsen, R. (2006). Behavioral health service use and costs among children in foster care. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 633-647. This article compares behavioral health service use and cost for foster care versus nonfoster care children; children before, during, and after foster care placement; and successfully reunified versus nonsuccessfully reunified foster care children.

Berge, J. M., Mendenhall, T. J., Wrobel, G. M., Grotevant, H. D., & McRoy, R. G. (2006). Adolescents' feelings about openness in adoption: Implications for adoption agencies. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 1011-1039. Adoption research commonly uses parents' reports of satisfaction when examining openness in adoption arrangements. This qualitative study aimed to fill a gap in the adoption research by using adolescents' voices to gain a better understanding of their adoption experiences. Adopted adolescents (n = 152) were interviewed concerning their satisfaction with the openness in their adoption arrangements with their birthmothers. Results and implications from this study may affect how adoption agencies work with adopted adolescents and their families, and may influence a broader understanding of the recent trend toward open adoption arrangements.

Bogolub, E. B. Child welfare for the twenty-first century: A handbook of practices, policies, and programs. Affilia: Journal of Women & Social Work, 21, 462-463. The article reviews the book "Child Welfare for the Twenty-First Century: A Handbook of Practices, Policies and Programs," edited by G. P. Mallon and P. M. Hess.

Bottoms, B. L., & Quas, J. A. (2006). Recent advances and new challenges in child maltreatment research, practice, and policy: Previewing the issues. Journal of Social Issues, 62, 653-662. Few issues are of such grave importance to society and to the science and practice of psychology as child maltreatment. Our goal in editing this issue of JSI was to inform scientists across various sub-fields of psychology about the most current knowledge in the field of child maltreatment, broadly defined. The authors of the articles have gone further, pushing past the edge of current knowledge and setting aggressive agendas for future empirical and policy-relevant work. We believe that the result will be enriched future research, practice, policy, and law, and in turn, the increased well-being of children and their families

Brenner, E., & Freundlich, M. (2006). Enhancing the safety of children in foster care and family support programs: Automated critical incident reporting. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 611-632. The Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 has made child safety an explicit focus in child welfare. The authors describe an automated critical incident reporting program designed for use in foster care and family-support programs. The program, which is based in Lotus Notes and uses e-mail to route incident reports from direct service staff to supervisors and administrators, facilitates timely clinical oversight and risk management and ensures the security of clients' protected health information. The authors present data collected using the program to illustrate how it can be used to monitor abuse and neglect allegations in a foster care program. survey of users found that the program saved time, was easy to use, and helped manage critical incident reports.

Cole, S. A. (2005). Infants in foster care: Relational and environmental factors affecting attachment. Journal of Reproductive & Infant Psychology, 23(02), 43-61. The present study investigated the effect of relational and environmental factors affecting attachment security in 46 infants placed in foster homes. The study found that a majority of infants (67%) in the participant group were securely attached. Additionally, of the insecurely attached, a larger percentage of infants than anticipated displayed disorganized/disoriented patterns of attachment. The study found that organization of the foster home environment and appropriate learning materials predicted secure attachment while foster caregiver childhood trauma and involvement predicted insecure attachment. Strategies are proposed for better training and support of foster caregivers for developing secure relationships with the infants.

Connolly, M. (2006). Up front and personal: Confronting dynamics in the family group conference. Family process, 45, 345-357. The Family Group Conference is a participatory model of decision making with families in child protection. It is a legal process that brings together the family, including the extended family, and the professionals in a family-led decision-making forum. This article briefly describes the development and practice of family group conferencing as a family-centered legal process in Aotearoa, New Zealand. It then examines the findings of a study exploring the dynamics emerging from family group conference practice from the perspective of the coordinators who convene them. Family group conferencing as a family strengthening practice is discussed.

DePanfilis, D. (2006). Child neglect: A guide for prevention, assessment, and intervention (User Manual Series ed.). Washington, D.C.: Child Welfare Information Gateway. This is the 3rd edition user manual that addresses in depth issues of child abuse and neglect and describes the root causes, symptoms, and consequences of neglect, as well as the interdisciplinary ways to prevent both its occurrence and recurrence. It gives the most current information on the definition and scope and impact of neglect and describes risk and protective factors, assessment, prevention and intervention.

DeRoberts-Moore, N. (2006). A system that serves caseworkers and clients. Policy & Practice of Public Human Services, 64, 18-20. The article focuses on the development of the Statewide Automated Child Welfare Information System (SACWIS) in Ohio. This initiative was designed to compile and help enforce a comprehensive set of child welfare and protection practices that can achieve the best outcomes for clients. It will monitor and reach children and families helped by state child welfare agencies. In addition, Congress authorized matching finances for SACWIS.

Dore, M. (2007). Children in family contexts: Perspectives on treatment. Research on Social Work Practice, 17, 156-157. The article reviews the book "Children in Family Contexts: Perspectives on Treatment," 2nd edition, edited by L. Combrinck -Graham.

Downs, A. C., & James, S. E. (2006). Gay, lesbian, and bisexual foster parents: Strengths and challenges for the child welfare system. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 281-298. This article documents the challenges and successes of a group of 60 LGB foster parents. All participants provided foster parenting for public (state or county) agencies. The primary successes of this group included meaningful and gratifying parenting and successful testing of whether adoption might be a natural next step after foster parenting. The primary challenges included insensitive, inappropriate, and difficult social workers; state or local laws that worked against successful foster parenting by LGB adults; failure to recognize parents' partners; and lack of support by the system to acknowledge the important role of LGB parents. Numerous recommendations are identified for improving how LGB foster parents are supported within child welfare systems including foster parent and social worker training in LGB issues.

Dozier, M., Peloso, E., Lindhiem, O., Gordon, M. K., Manni, M., & Sepulveda, S., et al. (2006). Developing evidence-based interventions for foster children: An example of a randomized clinical trial with infants and toddlers. Journal of Social Issues, 62, 767-785. Children who enter foster care have usually experienced maltreatment as well as disruptions in relationships with primary caregivers. These children are at risk for a host of problematic outcomes. However, there are few evidence-based interventions that target foster children. This article presents preliminary data testing the effectiveness of an intervention, Attachment and Bio-behavioral Catch-up, to target relationship formation in young children in the foster care system. Results provide preliminary evidence of the effectiveness of an intervention that targets children's regulatory capabilities and serve as an example of how interventions can effectively target foster children in the child welfare system.

Finkelhor, D., & Jones, L. (2006). Why have child maltreatment and child victimization declined? Journal of Social Issues, 62, 685-716. Various forms of child maltreatment and child victimization declined as much as 40–70% from 1993 until 2004, including sexual abuse, physical abuse, sexual assault, homicide, aggravated assault, robbery, and larceny. Other child welfare indicators also improved during the same period, including teen pregnancy, teen suicide, and children living in poverty. This article reviews a wide variety of possible explanations for these changes: demography, fertility and abortion legalization, economic prosperity, increased incarceration of offenders, increased agents of social intervention, changing social norms and practices, the dissipation of the social changes from the 1960s, and psychiatric pharmacology.

Green, B. L., Rockhill, A., & Furrer, C. (2006). Understanding patterns of substance abuse treatment for women involved with child welfare: The influence of the adoption and safe families act (ASFA). American Journal of Drug & Alcohol Abuse, 32, 149-176. The passage of the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act (AFSA) has led to increased attention to the need for timely and appropriate treatment services to families with substance abuse issues who are involved with child welfare. Using statewide administrative data collected before and after the implementation of ASFA, the present study explores the influence of ASFA, as well as other family characteristics, on patterns of treatment service utilization by child-welfare involved clients. Results are interpreted in terms of the changing treatment service context, enhanced collaboration between child welfare and treatment systems, and the possible influence of the legislation on parents' motivation to enter treatment.

Jones, W.,G. (2006). Working with the courts in child protection. (3rd Edition. Chid Abuse and Neglect User Manual Series ed.). Washington, D.C.: Child Welfare Information Gateway. This is an overall user manual of improvements and best practices to prepare the Child Welfare worker for entry into the court system. The manual gives a detailed description of differing court systems, processes and jurisdictions. It describes the powers and rights of parents and children and the interplay between child maltreatment legislation and caseworker practice. It also describes issues involved in going to court and the relationship between the caseworker and the court.

Kahan, M. (2006). "Put up" on platforms: A history of twentieth century adoption policy in the united states. Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare, 33, 51-72. Adoption is closely intertwined with many issues that are central to public policy in this country; welfare and poverty, race and class, and gender. An analysis of the history of adoption shows how it has been shaped by the nation's mores and demographics. In order to better understand this phenomenon, and its significance to larger societal issues, this analysis reviews its history, focusing on four key periods in which this country's adoption policy was shaped: the late Nineteenth Century's `orphan trains'; the family preservation and Mothers' Pensions of the Progressive Era; World War II through the 1950s, with secrecy and the beginnings of international adoption; and the 1970s-1990s, when reproductive controls were more obtainable, and relinquishing children became more uncommon.

Leathers, S. J., & Testa, M. F. (2006). Foster youth emancipating from care: Caseworkers' reports on needs and services. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 463-498. This article presents findings from a survey mailed caseworkers, who answered questions about special needs, independent living skills, educational attainment, 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 were underserved relative to other youth. Youth with more behavior problems and educational and job skill deficits were less likely than other youth to continue receive child welfare services past age 18, suggesting that services must be provided throughout adolescence to meet the needs of the most vulnerable clients.

Matthews, J. D., & Cramer, E. P. (2006). Envisaging the adoption process to strengthen gay- and lesbian-headed families: Recommendations for adoption professionals. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 317-340. Although a growing number of child placement agencies are serving lesbians and gay men, a dearth of literature exists for adoption agency policies and practices related to working with this population. This article explores the unique characteristics and strengths of prospective gay and lesbian adoptive parents throughout each of the three phases of the adoption process--preplacement, placement, and postplacement--as well as provides suggestions for adoption professionals working with gays and lesbians.

McGlade, K., & Ackerman, J. (2006). A hope for foster care: Agency executives in partnerships with parent leaders. Journal of Emotional Abuse, 6(2), 97-112. Two foster care executives encourage agency and parent leaders to rethink their relationships to improve the lives of children in their shared custody. When mothers-of-color charged that white privilege harmed rather than helped children, the white executives connected the accusation to their experience as closeted gay leaders in a religiously-run organization. That unexpected insight became the sharper lens through which they saw some emotional damage caused by their decisions. The executives examined their behavior and transformed their adversarial relationship with parents into a partnership. Their suggestions are based on efforts with parents, mistakes with trustees, and hard lessons learned.

Mitchell, L. B., Barth, R. P., Green, R., Wall, A., Biemer, P., & Berrick, J. D., et al. (2005). Child welfare reform in the united states: Findings from a local agency survey. Child Welfare League of America, 84, 5-24. Efforts to improve the public welfare and child welfare system sparked an unprecedented amount of federal legislation in the 1990s, including the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (ASFA), the Multiethnic Placement Act of 1994 and Interethnic Adoption Provisions of 1996 (MEPA-IEP), and welfare reform. Such reforms allow an unprecedented degree of flexibility, but little is known about their implementation. Researchers administered the Local Agency Survey to the first national probability sample of public child welfare agencies from 1999 to 2000. Findings indicate that ASFA has had the most effect on child welfare service delivery. Welfare reform has had less effect, and MEPA-IEP seems to have had little effect at all.

Morrison, J., & Mishna, F. Knowing the child: An ecological approach to the treatment of children in foster care. Clinical Social Work Journal, 34(Winter), 467-481. Social workers in agencies and school settings often deal with high risk, multi problem children such as those in foster care. Increasingly, there is widespread recognition that a coordinated, multifaceted approach is required to address the range of cognitive, social, and mental health problems with which they present. This article recommends utilization of an ecological treatment intervention that is specifically tailored to the needs of the child based on a formulation of the child’s experience and developmental deficits. A case example comprising the treatment of an eight-year-old boy in foster care with comorbid diagnoses of alcohol related neurodevelpomental disorder, failure to thrive, and attachment disorder, illustrates this approach. The article concludes with implications for social work practice.

Moyers, S., Farmer, E., & Lipscombe, J. (2006). Contact with family members and its impact on adolescents and their foster placements. British Journal of Social Work, 36, 541-559. This paper discusses findings from a recently completed study of adolescent foster care, which included a detailed assessment of the fostering skills and supports of carers and of the contact that adolescents had with parents, siblings and other family members during a long-term foster placement. This paper describes the contact the young people had with their families, its impact on them and on the foster families and how it changed over time. The findings revealed that contact for the majority of adolescents was problematic and had a significant impact on placement outcomes. Ways of managing contact are highlighted, and the corresponding implications for policy and practice discussed.

Nesmith, A. (2006). Predictors of running away from family foster care. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 585-609. Running away is a frequent but little studied phenomenon among adolescents in foster care. Repeated running from care often leads to premature discharge and homelessness for youth. This article uses cumulative risk theory in the context of normative adolescent development to investigate predicators of running away from foster care. Results indicate risks stemming from individual, foster home, and child welfare system sources, which offer some insight for prevention and intervention.

Noonan, K., & Burke, K. (2005). Termination of parental rights: Which foster care children are affected? Social Science Journal, 42, 241-256. In 1997, the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) was passed with a primary goal of expediting the process of placing foster children with permanent or adoptive families. In order to meet this goal, ASFA requires states to terminate parental rights if a child has been in foster care for 15 of the most recent 22 months. Prior empirical research on foster care dependence supports the provision in ASFA to expedite the discharge process because over time children are progressively less likely to be discharged from foster care. However, very little research has examined what impact terminating parental rights will have on this goal. One of the first steps is to examine which children are most likely to see the rights of their parents terminated and how these children differ from those children who are returned home. Using a competing risks hazard model we find many differences between the children who are sent home and those children whose parents have their rights terminated.

Orme, J. G., Cuddeback, G. S., Buehler, C., & Cox, M. E. (2007). Measuring foster parent potential: Casey foster parent inventory-applicant version. Research on Social Work Practice, 17, 77-92. The Casey Foster Applicant Inventory-Applicant Version (CFAI-A) is a new standardized self-report measure designed to assess the potential to foster parent successfully. The CFAI-A is described, and results concerning its psychometric properties are presented. The CFAI-A shows promise for use in research and practice, where it might be used to improve decisions about how to support, monitor, and retain foster families and to match, place, and maintain foster children with foster families.

Pacifici, C., Delaney, R., White, L., Cummings, K., & Nelson, C. (2005). Foster parent college: Interactive multimedia training for foster parents. Social Work Research, 29, 243-251. The article discusses interactive multimedia training for foster parents. Research studies have long demonstrated the benefits of training for foster parents, children, and agencies. Early landmark studies showed that training produced key changes within the family unit, such as improved parent attitudes, parent-child interactions, and a reduction of child problem behavior. DVD and Web technology offer parents convenience and flexibility through home-based training. For the foster care agency, these formats are far more cost-effective than live training. Agencies can buy and then lend copies of a program or have low-cost site licensing arrangements.

Reifsteck, J. (2005). Failure and success in foster care programs. North American Journal of Psychology, 7, 313-326. The purpose of the current study was to classify types of services provided for youth in one sample (N=208) of children in foster care. A review of utilization trends and omissions in service suggests that even though some youth and their families benefit slightly from prevention efforts. It appears that satisfactory services for youth referred for child abuse and neglect are not readily apparent for all children in need.

Romney, S. C., Litrownik, A. J., Newton, R. R., & Lau, A. (2006). The relationship between child disability and living arrangement in child welfare. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 965-984. The influence of disabilities on placement outcomes was examined for 277 children who were removed from their biological parents due to substantiated maltreatment. Results indicated that children with a disability were less likely to reunify and more likely to reside in nonkin foster care two years later than typical children. Children with cognitive, emotional / behavioral, and physical disabilities were over four times more likely to be permanently living in nonkin foster care than to be reunified.

Rosenthal, J. A., & Waters, E. (2006). Predictors of child welfare worker retention and performance: Focus on Title IV-E-funded social work education. Journal of Social Service Research, 32, 67-85. Using administrative records, this paper tracks for up to four years using Cox survival methods the retention of 839 public child welfare workers who began child welfare work in 1999. Participation in a IV-E-funded social work educational program predicted better retention. In particular, risk of termination decreased by 52% during the mandated contractual employment period in which the educational stipend was "worked off". Other predictors of longer retention included prior non-child welfare employment at the public agency and working in the state office setting. Regression analyses revealed an association between an ethnic group's representation in the population of child welfare workers and supervisory evaluation; the greater that representation, the higher the overall evaluation for the group.

Rubin, D. M., O'Reilly, A. L. R., Xianqun Luan, & Localio, A. R. (2007). The impact of placement stability on behavioral well-being for children in foster care. Pediatrics, 119, 336-344. This is a 2007 research article identiying the problems children have upon entering foster care and explains prior research findings that frequent placement changes are associated with poor outcomes. This study sought to disentangle this cascading relationship in order to identify the independent impact of placement stability on behavioral outcomes downstream. The goal was to identify the innate contribution of a child's placement stability toward his or her risk for behavioral problems 18 months after entering foster care.The article concludes that children in foster care experience placement instability unrelated to their baseline problems, and this instability has a significant impact on their behavioral well-being.

Sellick, C. (2006). From famine to feast. A review of the foster care research literature. Children & Society, 20, 67-74. Foster care has become the principal placement of choice for children and young people in public care in the United Kingdom (UK). This has been accompanied by a significant growth in its research scrutiny connected to a busy policy agenda, especially since 1997. With its increased usage, fostering has encountered both difficulties and developments. Children often have emotional and behavioral problems which strain their foster families to their limits and risk placement breakdown. Public sector foster carers continue to be in short supply and keeping them engaged in fostering remains a challenge. Major developments have occurred in response to these difficulties. The use of relatives as kinship carers has increased substantially and the non-governmental or independent fostering sector has grown rapidly. Until comparatively recently, the knowledge base of foster care in Britain was limited, but the past decade has seen that change and now a substantial body of research knowledge is available in the UK.

Shirk, M., & Strangler, G. (2005). On their own: What happens to kids when they age out of the foster care system. Journal of Social Work Education, 41(Winter), 161-161. This article focuses on the book "On Their own: What Happens to Kids When They Age Out of the Foster Care System," by M. Shirk and G. Stangler. Every year, nearly 25,000 teenagers age out of foster care by the time they turn eighteen. The discussed book with a foreword written by the U.S. President Jimmy Carters, is a collection of compelling stories about such teenagers. The authors not only document the struggles of these teenagers, they also call for action in order to provide youth in foster care the opportunities that most teens take for granted.

Shlonsky, A. (2006). Beyond common sense: Child welfare, child well-being, and the evidence for policy reform. Social Service Review, 80, 756-761. This article presents a review of a book entitled "Beyond Common Sense: Child Welfare, Child Well-Being, and the Evidence for Policy Reform,".

Smith, N. A. Empowering the "unfit" mother. Affilia: Journal of Women & Social Work, 21(Winter), 448-457. This article presents the results of a qualitative study that examined the experiences of women who were deemed ‘unfit’ to care for their children. The voices of these mothers call attention to the difficult process of recovery from addiction while trying to regain custody of one's children. A strengths-based empowerment approach is emphasized in work with these women, beginning with a redefinition of the label ‘unfit.’

Survey finds diverse state initiatives with a common focus on improving child care.(2006). Policy & Practice of Public Human Services, 64, 35-35.

Swann, C. A., & Sheran Sylvester, M. (2006). The foster care crisis: What caused caseloads to grow? Demography, 43, 309-335. Foster care caseloads more than doubled from 1985 to 2000. This article provides the first comprehensive study of this growth by relating state-level foster care caseloads to state-specific characteristics and policies. We present evidence that increases in female incarcerations and reductions in cash welfare benefits played dominant roles in explaining the growth in foster care caseloads over this period. Our results highlight the need for child welfare policies designed specifically for the children of incarcerated parents and parents who are facing less generous welfare programs.

Timmer, S. G., Llrquiza, A. I., Herschell, A. D., McGrath, J. M., Zebell, N. M., & Porter, A. L., et al. (2006). Parent-child interaction therapy: Application of an empirically supported treatment to maltreated children in foster care. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 919-939. One of the more serious problems faced by child welfare services involves the management of children with serious behavioral and mental health problems. Aggressive and defiant foster children are more likely to have multiple foster care placements, require extraordinary social services resources, and have poor short- and long-term mental health outcomes. Interventions that work with challenging foster children and enhance foster parents' skills in managing problem behaviors are necessary. This article presents the successful results of a single case study examining the application of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) with an aggressive young boy and his foster-adoptive parent. PCIT is a dyadic intervention that has been identified as an empirically supported treatment for abused children and for children with different types of behavioral disruption. The application of PCIT to assist foster parents is a promising direction for child welfare services.

Vig, S., Chinitz, S., & Shulman, L. (2005). Young children in foster care. Infants & Young Children: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Special Care Practices, 18, 147-160. Young children who have been removed from their biological families and placed in foster care are at significant risk for poor developmental outcomes. Their vulnerability is often the result of adverse biological and psychosocial influences: prenatal exposure to alcohol and other drugs, premature birth, abuse and neglect leading to foster placement, and failure to form adequate attachments to their primary caregivers. The purpose of the following discussion is to describe the foster care population and the kinds of medical conditions, mental health problems, and developmental disabilities experienced by young children in foster care, and to explore implications for intervention.

Wilcox, B. L., Weisz, P. V., & Miller, M. K. (2005). Practical guidelines for educating policymakers: The family impact seminar as an approach to advancing the interests of children and families in the policy arena. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 34, 638-645. Psychologists are well positioned to contribute to policymaking on issues affecting the well-being of children, youth, and families. A good deal of psychological research is relevant to policy issues such as child mental health services, child care, adoption and foster care, and children's media. In this article we offer an alternative to direct policy advocacy as a means for psychologists' involvement in the policy arena. Policy education, a nonpartisan and nonadversarial approach to working with policymakers, is described and differentiated from child advocacy. We then present an example of 1 approach to policy education, the Family Impact Seminar. The article closes with a discussion of lessons we have learned regarding effectively communicating research to policymakers.

Williams, J., McWilliams, A., Mainieri, T., Pecora, P. J., & La Belle, K. (2006). Enhancing the validity of foster care follow-up studies through multiple alumni location strategies. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 499-521. While family-based placement prevention services, family reunification programs, subsidized guardianship, and aggressive adoption programs are reducing the numbers of children spending long periods of time in substitute care, a significant number of America's children will come of age in foster care. Agencies and policymakers should use research and evaluation to assess the effectiveness of foster care in nurturing healthy adults and to explore ways to improve services. Outcome studies that have focused on locating and interviewing young or middle-aged adults emancipated from foster care have been hampered by modest response rates, limiting the field's ability to evaluate the efficacy of foster care programs. This article describes a set of strategies that were used to achieve higher response rates in two recent follow-up studies.

Recent Publications on Foster Care and Adoption: Empirical Research to Enhance Best Practices

(prepared by Tiffany Armstrong, March 2007)

Becker, M., Jordan, N., & Larsen, R. (2006). Behavioral health service use and costs among children in foster care. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 633-647. This article compares behavioral health service use and cost for foster care versus nonfoster care children; children before, during, and after foster care placement; and successfully reunified versus nonsuccessfully reunified foster care children.

Berge, J. M., Mendenhall, T. J., Wrobel, G. M., Grotevant, H. D., & McRoy, R. G. (2006). Adolescents' feelings about openness in adoption: Implications for adoption agencies. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 1011-1039. Adoption research commonly uses parents' reports of satisfaction when examining openness in adoption arrangements. This qualitative study aimed to fill a gap in the adoption research by using adolescents' voices to gain a better understanding of their adoption experiences. Adopted adolescents (n = 152) were interviewed concerning their satisfaction with the openness in their adoption arrangements with their birthmothers. Results and implications from this study may affect how adoption agencies work with adopted adolescents and their families, and may influence a broader understanding of the recent trend toward open adoption arrangements.

Bogolub, E. B. Child welfare for the twenty-first century: A handbook of practices, policies, and programs. Affilia: Journal of Women & Social Work, 21, 462-463. The article reviews the book "Child Welfare for the Twenty-First Century: A Handbook of Practices, Policies and Programs," edited by G. P. Mallon and P. M. Hess.

Bottoms, B. L., & Quas, J. A. (2006). Recent advances and new challenges in child maltreatment research, practice, and policy: Previewing the issues. Journal of Social Issues, 62, 653-662. Few issues are of such grave importance to society and to the science and practice of psychology as child maltreatment. Our goal in editing this issue of JSI was to inform scientists across various sub-fields of psychology about the most current knowledge in the field of child maltreatment, broadly defined. The authors of the articles have gone further, pushing past the edge of current knowledge and setting aggressive agendas for future empirical and policy-relevant work. We believe that the result will be enriched future research, practice, policy, and law, and in turn, the increased well-being of children and their families

Brenner, E., & Freundlich, M. (2006). Enhancing the safety of children in foster care and family support programs: Automated critical incident reporting. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 611-632. The Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 has made child safety an explicit focus in child welfare. The authors describe an automated critical incident reporting program designed for use in foster care and family-support programs. The program, which is based in Lotus Notes and uses e-mail to route incident reports from direct service staff to supervisors and administrators, facilitates timely clinical oversight and risk management and ensures the security of clients' protected health information. The authors present data collected using the program to illustrate how it can be used to monitor abuse and neglect allegations in a foster care program. survey of users found that the program saved time, was easy to use, and helped manage critical incident reports.

Cole, S. A. (2005). Infants in foster care: Relational and environmental factors affecting attachment. Journal of Reproductive & Infant Psychology, 23(02), 43-61. The present study investigated the effect of relational and environmental factors affecting attachment security in 46 infants placed in foster homes. The study found that a majority of infants (67%) in the participant group were securely attached. Additionally, of the insecurely attached, a larger percentage of infants than anticipated displayed disorganized/disoriented patterns of attachment. The study found that organization of the foster home environment and appropriate learning materials predicted secure attachment while foster caregiver childhood trauma and involvement predicted insecure attachment. Strategies are proposed for better training and support of foster caregivers for developing secure relationships with the infants.

Connolly, M. (2006). Up front and personal: Confronting dynamics in the family group conference. Family process, 45, 345-357. The Family Group Conference is a participatory model of decision making with families in child protection. It is a legal process that brings together the family, including the extended family, and the professionals in a family-led decision-making forum. This article briefly describes the development and practice of family group conferencing as a family-centered legal process in Aotearoa, New Zealand. It then examines the findings of a study exploring the dynamics emerging from family group conference practice from the perspective of the coordinators who convene them. Family group conferencing as a family strengthening practice is discussed.

DePanfilis, D. (2006). Child neglect: A guide for prevention, assessment, and intervention (User Manual Series ed.). Washington, D.C.: Child Welfare Information Gateway. This is the 3rd edition user manual that addresses in depth issues of child abuse and neglect and describes the root causes, symptoms, and consequences of neglect, as well as the interdisciplinary ways to prevent both its occurrence and recurrence. It gives the most current information on the definition and scope and impact of neglect and describes risk and protective factors, assessment, prevention and intervention.

DeRoberts-Moore, N. (2006). A system that serves caseworkers and clients. Policy & Practice of Public Human Services, 64, 18-20. The article focuses on the development of the Statewide Automated Child Welfare Information System (SACWIS) in Ohio. This initiative was designed to compile and help enforce a comprehensive set of child welfare and protection practices that can achieve the best outcomes for clients. It will monitor and reach children and families helped by state child welfare agencies. In addition, Congress authorized matching finances for SACWIS.

Dore, M. (2007). Children in family contexts: Perspectives on treatment. Research on Social Work Practice, 17, 156-157. The article reviews the book "Children in Family Contexts: Perspectives on Treatment," 2nd edition, edited by L. Combrinck -Graham.

Downs, A. C., & James, S. E. (2006). Gay, lesbian, and bisexual foster parents: Strengths and challenges for the child welfare system. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 281-298. This article documents the challenges and successes of a group of 60 LGB foster parents. All participants provided foster parenting for public (state or county) agencies. The primary successes of this group included meaningful and gratifying parenting and successful testing of whether adoption might be a natural next step after foster parenting. The primary challenges included insensitive, inappropriate, and difficult social workers; state or local laws that worked against successful foster parenting by LGB adults; failure to recognize parents' partners; and lack of support by the system to acknowledge the important role of LGB parents. Numerous recommendations are identified for improving how LGB foster parents are supported within child welfare systems including foster parent and social worker training in LGB issues.

Dozier, M., Peloso, E., Lindhiem, O., Gordon, M. K., Manni, M., & Sepulveda, S., et al. (2006). Developing evidence-based interventions for foster children: An example of a randomized clinical trial with infants and toddlers. Journal of Social Issues, 62, 767-785. Children who enter foster care have usually experienced maltreatment as well as disruptions in relationships with primary caregivers. These children are at risk for a host of problematic outcomes. However, there are few evidence-based interventions that target foster children. This article presents preliminary data testing the effectiveness of an intervention, Attachment and Bio-behavioral Catch-up, to target relationship formation in young children in the foster care system. Results provide preliminary evidence of the effectiveness of an intervention that targets children's regulatory capabilities and serve as an example of how interventions can effectively target foster children in the child welfare system.

Finkelhor, D., & Jones, L. (2006). Why have child maltreatment and child victimization declined? Journal of Social Issues, 62, 685-716. Various forms of child maltreatment and child victimization declined as much as 40–70% from 1993 until 2004, including sexual abuse, physical abuse, sexual assault, homicide, aggravated assault, robbery, and larceny. Other child welfare indicators also improved during the same period, including teen pregnancy, teen suicide, and children living in poverty. This article reviews a wide variety of possible explanations for these changes: demography, fertility and abortion legalization, economic prosperity, increased incarceration of offenders, increased agents of social intervention, changing social norms and practices, the dissipation of the social changes from the 1960s, and psychiatric pharmacology.

Green, B. L., Rockhill, A., & Furrer, C. (2006). Understanding patterns of substance abuse treatment for women involved with child welfare: The influence of the adoption and safe families act (ASFA). American Journal of Drug & Alcohol Abuse, 32, 149-176. The passage of the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act (AFSA) has led to increased attention to the need for timely and appropriate treatment services to families with substance abuse issues who are involved with child welfare. Using statewide administrative data collected before and after the implementation of ASFA, the present study explores the influence of ASFA, as well as other family characteristics, on patterns of treatment service utilization by child-welfare involved clients. Results are interpreted in terms of the changing treatment service context, enhanced collaboration between child welfare and treatment systems, and the possible influence of the legislation on parents' motivation to enter treatment.

Jones, W.,G. (2006). Working with the courts in child protection. (3rd Edition. Chid Abuse and Neglect User Manual Series ed.). Washington, D.C.: Child Welfare Information Gateway. This is an overall user manual of improvements and best practices to prepare the Child Welfare worker for entry into the court system. The manual gives a detailed description of differing court systems, processes and jurisdictions. It describes the powers and rights of parents and children and the interplay between child maltreatment legislation and caseworker practice. It also describes issues involved in going to court and the relationship between the caseworker and the court.

Kahan, M. (2006). "Put up" on platforms: A history of twentieth century adoption policy in the united states. Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare, 33, 51-72. Adoption is closely intertwined with many issues that are central to public policy in this country; welfare and poverty, race and class, and gender. An analysis of the history of adoption shows how it has been shaped by the nation's mores and demographics. In order to better understand this phenomenon, and its significance to larger societal issues, this analysis reviews its history, focusing on four key periods in which this country's adoption policy was shaped: the late Nineteenth Century's `orphan trains'; the family preservation and Mothers' Pensions of the Progressive Era; World War II through the 1950s, with secrecy and the beginnings of international adoption; and the 1970s-1990s, when reproductive controls were more obtainable, and relinquishing children became more uncommon.

Leathers, S. J., & Testa, M. F. (2006). Foster youth emancipating from care: Caseworkers' reports on needs and services. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 463-498. This article presents findings from a survey mailed caseworkers, who answered questions about special needs, independent living skills, educational attainment, 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 were underserved relative to other youth. Youth with more behavior problems and educational and job skill deficits were less likely than other youth to continue receive child welfare services past age 18, suggesting that services must be provided throughout adolescence to meet the needs of the most vulnerable clients.

Matthews, J. D., & Cramer, E. P. (2006). Envisaging the adoption process to strengthen gay- and lesbian-headed families: Recommendations for adoption professionals. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 317-340. Although a growing number of child placement agencies are serving lesbians and gay men, a dearth of literature exists for adoption agency policies and practices related to working with this population. This article explores the unique characteristics and strengths of prospective gay and lesbian adoptive parents throughout each of the three phases of the adoption process--preplacement, placement, and postplacement--as well as provides suggestions for adoption professionals working with gays and lesbians.

McGlade, K., & Ackerman, J. (2006). A hope for foster care: Agency executives in partnerships with parent leaders. Journal of Emotional Abuse, 6(2), 97-112. Two foster care executives encourage agency and parent leaders to rethink their relationships to improve the lives of children in their shared custody. When mothers-of-color charged that white privilege harmed rather than helped children, the white executives connected the accusation to their experience as closeted gay leaders in a religiously-run organization. That unexpected insight became the sharper lens through which they saw some emotional damage caused by their decisions. The executives examined their behavior and transformed their adversarial relationship with parents into a partnership. Their suggestions are based on efforts with parents, mistakes with trustees, and hard lessons learned.

Mitchell, L. B., Barth, R. P., Green, R., Wall, A., Biemer, P., & Berrick, J. D., et al. (2005). Child welfare reform in the united states: Findings from a local agency survey. Child Welfare League of America, 84, 5-24. Efforts to improve the public welfare and child welfare system sparked an unprecedented amount of federal legislation in the 1990s, including the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (ASFA), the Multiethnic Placement Act of 1994 and Interethnic Adoption Provisions of 1996 (MEPA-IEP), and welfare reform. Such reforms allow an unprecedented degree of flexibility, but little is known about their implementation. Researchers administered the Local Agency Survey to the first national probability sample of public child welfare agencies from 1999 to 2000. Findings indicate that ASFA has had the most effect on child welfare service delivery. Welfare reform has had less effect, and MEPA-IEP seems to have had little effect at all.

Morrison, J., & Mishna, F. Knowing the child: An ecological approach to the treatment of children in foster care. Clinical Social Work Journal, 34(Winter), 467-481. Social workers in agencies and school settings often deal with high risk, multi problem children such as those in foster care. Increasingly, there is widespread recognition that a coordinated, multifaceted approach is required to address the range of cognitive, social, and mental health problems with which they present. This article recommends utilization of an ecological treatment intervention that is specifically tailored to the needs of the child based on a formulation of the child’s experience and developmental deficits. A case example comprising the treatment of an eight-year-old boy in foster care with comorbid diagnoses of alcohol related neurodevelpomental disorder, failure to thrive, and attachment disorder, illustrates this approach. The article concludes with implications for social work practice.

Moyers, S., Farmer, E., & Lipscombe, J. (2006). Contact with family members and its impact on adolescents and their foster placements. British Journal of Social Work, 36, 541-559. This paper discusses findings from a recently completed study of adolescent foster care, which included a detailed assessment of the fostering skills and supports of carers and of the contact that adolescents had with parents, siblings and other family members during a long-term foster placement. This paper describes the contact the young people had with their families, its impact on them and on the foster families and how it changed over time. The findings revealed that contact for the majority of adolescents was problematic and had a significant impact on placement outcomes. Ways of managing contact are highlighted, and the corresponding implications for policy and practice discussed.

Nesmith, A. (2006). Predictors of running away from family foster care. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 585-609. Running away is a frequent but little studied phenomenon among adolescents in foster care. Repeated running from care often leads to premature discharge and homelessness for youth. This article uses cumulative risk theory in the context of normative adolescent development to investigate predicators of running away from foster care. Results indicate risks stemming from individual, foster home, and child welfare system sources, which offer some insight for prevention and intervention.

Noonan, K., & Burke, K. (2005). Termination of parental rights: Which foster care children are affected? Social Science Journal, 42, 241-256. In 1997, the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) was passed with a primary goal of expediting the process of placing foster children with permanent or adoptive families. In order to meet this goal, ASFA requires states to terminate parental rights if a child has been in foster care for 15 of the most recent 22 months. Prior empirical research on foster care dependence supports the provision in ASFA to expedite the discharge process because over time children are progressively less likely to be discharged from foster care. However, very little research has examined what impact terminating parental rights will have on this goal. One of the first steps is to examine which children are most likely to see the rights of their parents terminated and how these children differ from those children who are returned home. Using a competing risks hazard model we find many differences between the children who are sent home and those children whose parents have their rights terminated.

Orme, J. G., Cuddeback, G. S., Buehler, C., & Cox, M. E. (2007). Measuring foster parent potential: Casey foster parent inventory-applicant version. Research on Social Work Practice, 17, 77-92. The Casey Foster Applicant Inventory-Applicant Version (CFAI-A) is a new standardized self-report measure designed to assess the potential to foster parent successfully. The CFAI-A is described, and results concerning its psychometric properties are presented. The CFAI-A shows promise for use in research and practice, where it might be used to improve decisions about how to support, monitor, and retain foster families and to match, place, and maintain foster children with foster families.

Pacifici, C., Delaney, R., White, L., Cummings, K., & Nelson, C. (2005). Foster parent college: Interactive multimedia training for foster parents. Social Work Research, 29, 243-251. The article discusses interactive multimedia training for foster parents. Research studies have long demonstrated the benefits of training for foster parents, children, and agencies. Early landmark studies showed that training produced key changes within the family unit, such as improved parent attitudes, parent-child interactions, and a reduction of child problem behavior. DVD and Web technology offer parents convenience and flexibility through home-based training. For the foster care agency, these formats are far more cost-effective than live training. Agencies can buy and then lend copies of a program or have low-cost site licensing arrangements.

Reifsteck, J. (2005). Failure and success in foster care programs. North American Journal of Psychology, 7, 313-326. The purpose of the current study was to classify types of services provided for youth in one sample (N=208) of children in foster care. A review of utilization trends and omissions in service suggests that even though some youth and their families benefit slightly from prevention efforts. It appears that satisfactory services for youth referred for child abuse and neglect are not readily apparent for all children in need.

Romney, S. C., Litrownik, A. J., Newton, R. R., & Lau, A. (2006). The relationship between child disability and living arrangement in child welfare. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 965-984. The influence of disabilities on placement outcomes was examined for 277 children who were removed from their biological parents due to substantiated maltreatment. Results indicated that children with a disability were less likely to reunify and more likely to reside in nonkin foster care two years later than typical children. Children with cognitive, emotional / behavioral, and physical disabilities were over four times more likely to be permanently living in nonkin foster care than to be reunified.

Rosenthal, J. A., & Waters, E. (2006). Predictors of child welfare worker retention and performance: Focus on Title IV-E-funded social work education. Journal of Social Service Research, 32, 67-85. Using administrative records, this paper tracks for up to four years using Cox survival methods the retention of 839 public child welfare workers who began child welfare work in 1999. Participation in a IV-E-funded social work educational program predicted better retention. In particular, risk of termination decreased by 52% during the mandated contractual employment period in which the educational stipend was "worked off". Other predictors of longer retention included prior non-child welfare employment at the public agency and working in the state office setting. Regression analyses revealed an association between an ethnic group's representation in the population of child welfare workers and supervisory evaluation; the greater that representation, the higher the overall evaluation for the group.

Rubin, D. M., O'Reilly, A. L. R., Xianqun Luan, & Localio, A. R. (2007). The impact of placement stability on behavioral well-being for children in foster care. Pediatrics, 119, 336-344. This is a 2007 research article identiying the problems children have upon entering foster care and explains prior research findings that frequent placement changes are associated with poor outcomes. This study sought to disentangle this cascading relationship in order to identify the independent impact of placement stability on behavioral outcomes downstream. The goal was to identify the innate contribution of a child's placement stability toward his or her risk for behavioral problems 18 months after entering foster care.The article concludes that children in foster care experience placement instability unrelated to their baseline problems, and this instability has a significant impact on their behavioral well-being.

Sellick, C. (2006). From famine to feast. A review of the foster care research literature. Children & Society, 20, 67-74. Foster care has become the principal placement of choice for children and young people in public care in the United Kingdom (UK). This has been accompanied by a significant growth in its research scrutiny connected to a busy policy agenda, especially since 1997. With its increased usage, fostering has encountered both difficulties and developments. Children often have emotional and behavioral problems which strain their foster families to their limits and risk placement breakdown. Public sector foster carers continue to be in short supply and keeping them engaged in fostering remains a challenge. Major developments have occurred in response to these difficulties. The use of relatives as kinship carers has increased substantially and the non-governmental or independent fostering sector has grown rapidly. Until comparatively recently, the knowledge base of foster care in Britain was limited, but the past decade has seen that change and now a substantial body of research knowledge is available in the UK.

Shirk, M., & Strangler, G. (2005). On their own: What happens to kids when they age out of the foster care system. Journal of Social Work Education, 41(Winter), 161-161. This article focuses on the book "On Their own: What Happens to Kids When They Age Out of the Foster Care System," by M. Shirk and G. Stangler. Every year, nearly 25,000 teenagers age out of foster care by the time they turn eighteen. The discussed book with a foreword written by the U.S. President Jimmy Carters, is a collection of compelling stories about such teenagers. The authors not only document the struggles of these teenagers, they also call for action in order to provide youth in foster care the opportunities that most teens take for granted.

Shlonsky, A. (2006). Beyond common sense: Child welfare, child well-being, and the evidence for policy reform. Social Service Review, 80, 756-761. This article presents a review of a book entitled "Beyond Common Sense: Child Welfare, Child Well-Being, and the Evidence for Policy Reform,".

Smith, N. A. Empowering the "unfit" mother. Affilia: Journal of Women & Social Work, 21(Winter), 448-457. This article presents the results of a qualitative study that examined the experiences of women who were deemed ‘unfit’ to care for their children. The voices of these mothers call attention to the difficult process of recovery from addiction while trying to regain custody of one's children. A strengths-based empowerment approach is emphasized in work with these women, beginning with a redefinition of the label ‘unfit.’

Survey finds diverse state initiatives with a common focus on improving child care.(2006). Policy & Practice of Public Human Services, 64, 35-35.

Swann, C. A., & Sheran Sylvester, M. (2006). The foster care crisis: What caused caseloads to grow? Demography, 43, 309-335. Foster care caseloads more than doubled from 1985 to 2000. This article provides the first comprehensive study of this growth by relating state-level foster care caseloads to state-specific characteristics and policies. We present evidence that increases in female incarcerations and reductions in cash welfare benefits played dominant roles in explaining the growth in foster care caseloads over this period. Our results highlight the need for child welfare policies designed specifically for the children of incarcerated parents and parents who are facing less generous welfare programs.

Timmer, S. G., Llrquiza, A. I., Herschell, A. D., McGrath, J. M., Zebell, N. M., & Porter, A. L., et al. (2006). Parent-child interaction therapy: Application of an empirically supported treatment to maltreated children in foster care. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 919-939. One of the more serious problems faced by child welfare services involves the management of children with serious behavioral and mental health problems. Aggressive and defiant foster children are more likely to have multiple foster care placements, require extraordinary social services resources, and have poor short- and long-term mental health outcomes. Interventions that work with challenging foster children and enhance foster parents' skills in managing problem behaviors are necessary. This article presents the successful results of a single case study examining the application of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) with an aggressive young boy and his foster-adoptive parent. PCIT is a dyadic intervention that has been identified as an empirically supported treatment for abused children and for children with different types of behavioral disruption. The application of PCIT to assist foster parents is a promising direction for child welfare services.

Vig, S., Chinitz, S., & Shulman, L. (2005). Young children in foster care. Infants & Young Children: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Special Care Practices, 18, 147-160. Young children who have been removed from their biological families and placed in foster care are at significant risk for poor developmental outcomes. Their vulnerability is often the result of adverse biological and psychosocial influences: prenatal exposure to alcohol and other drugs, premature birth, abuse and neglect leading to foster placement, and failure to form adequate attachments to their primary caregivers. The purpose of the following discussion is to describe the foster care population and the kinds of medical conditions, mental health problems, and developmental disabilities experienced by young children in foster care, and to explore implications for intervention.

Wilcox, B. L., Weisz, P. V., & Miller, M. K. (2005). Practical guidelines for educating policymakers: The family impact seminar as an approach to advancing the interests of children and families in the policy arena. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 34, 638-645. Psychologists are well positioned to contribute to policymaking on issues affecting the well-being of children, youth, and families. A good deal of psychological research is relevant to policy issues such as child mental health services, child care, adoption and foster care, and children's media. In this article we offer an alternative to direct policy advocacy as a means for psychologists' involvement in the policy arena. Policy education, a nonpartisan and nonadversarial approach to working with policymakers, is described and differentiated from child advocacy. We then present an example of 1 approach to policy education, the Family Impact Seminar. The article closes with a discussion of lessons we have learned regarding effectively communicating research to policymakers.

Williams, J., McWilliams, A., Mainieri, T., Pecora, P. J., & La Belle, K. (2006). Enhancing the validity of foster care follow-up studies through multiple alumni location strategies. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 499-521. While family-based placement prevention services, family reunification programs, subsidized guardianship, and aggressive adoption programs are reducing the numbers of children spending long periods of time in substitute care, a significant number of America's children will come of age in foster care. Agencies and policymakers should use research and evaluation to assess the effectiveness of foster care in nurturing healthy adults and to explore ways to improve services. Outcome studies that have focused on locating and interviewing young or middle-aged adults emancipated from foster care have been hampered by modest response rates, limiting the field's ability to evaluate the efficacy of foster care programs. This article describes a set of strategies that were used to achieve higher response rates in two recent follow-up studies.

Recent Publications on Foster Care and Adoption: Empirical Research to Enhance Best Practices

(prepared by Tiffany Armstrong, March 2007)

Becker, M., Jordan, N., & Larsen, R. (2006). Behavioral health service use and costs among children in foster care. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 633-647. This article compares behavioral health service use and cost for foster care versus nonfoster care children; children before, during, and after foster care placement; and successfully reunified versus nonsuccessfully reunified foster care children.

Berge, J. M., Mendenhall, T. J., Wrobel, G. M., Grotevant, H. D., & McRoy, R. G. (2006). Adolescents' feelings about openness in adoption: Implications for adoption agencies. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 1011-1039. Adoption research commonly uses parents' reports of satisfaction when examining openness in adoption arrangements. This qualitative study aimed to fill a gap in the adoption research by using adolescents' voices to gain a better understanding of their adoption experiences. Adopted adolescents (n = 152) were interviewed concerning their satisfaction with the openness in their adoption arrangements with their birthmothers. Results and implications from this study may affect how adoption agencies work with adopted adolescents and their families, and may influence a broader understanding of the recent trend toward open adoption arrangements.

Bogolub, E. B. Child welfare for the twenty-first century: A handbook of practices, policies, and programs. Affilia: Journal of Women & Social Work, 21, 462-463. The article reviews the book "Child Welfare for the Twenty-First Century: A Handbook of Practices, Policies and Programs," edited by G. P. Mallon and P. M. Hess.

Bottoms, B. L., & Quas, J. A. (2006). Recent advances and new challenges in child maltreatment research, practice, and policy: Previewing the issues. Journal of Social Issues, 62, 653-662. Few issues are of such grave importance to society and to the science and practice of psychology as child maltreatment. Our goal in editing this issue of JSI was to inform scientists across various sub-fields of psychology about the most current knowledge in the field of child maltreatment, broadly defined. The authors of the articles have gone further, pushing past the edge of current knowledge and setting aggressive agendas for future empirical and policy-relevant work. We believe that the result will be enriched future research, practice, policy, and law, and in turn, the increased well-being of children and their families

Brenner, E., & Freundlich, M. (2006). Enhancing the safety of children in foster care and family support programs: Automated critical incident reporting. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 611-632. The Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 has made child safety an explicit focus in child welfare. The authors describe an automated critical incident reporting program designed for use in foster care and family-support programs. The program, which is based in Lotus Notes and uses e-mail to route incident reports from direct service staff to supervisors and administrators, facilitates timely clinical oversight and risk management and ensures the security of clients' protected health information. The authors present data collected using the program to illustrate how it can be used to monitor abuse and neglect allegations in a foster care program. survey of users found that the program saved time, was easy to use, and helped manage critical incident reports.

Cole, S. A. (2005). Infants in foster care: Relational and environmental factors affecting attachment. Journal of Reproductive & Infant Psychology, 23(02), 43-61. The present study investigated the effect of relational and environmental factors affecting attachment security in 46 infants placed in foster homes. The study found that a majority of infants (67%) in the participant group were securely attached. Additionally, of the insecurely attached, a larger percentage of infants than anticipated displayed disorganized/disoriented patterns of attachment. The study found that organization of the foster home environment and appropriate learning materials predicted secure attachment while foster caregiver childhood trauma and involvement predicted insecure attachment. Strategies are proposed for better training and support of foster caregivers for developing secure relationships with the infants.

Connolly, M. (2006). Up front and personal: Confronting dynamics in the family group conference. Family process, 45, 345-357. The Family Group Conference is a participatory model of decision making with families in child protection. It is a legal process that brings together the family, including the extended family, and the professionals in a family-led decision-making forum. This article briefly describes the development and practice of family group conferencing as a family-centered legal process in Aotearoa, New Zealand. It then examines the findings of a study exploring the dynamics emerging from family group conference practice from the perspective of the coordinators who convene them. Family group conferencing as a family strengthening practice is discussed.

DePanfilis, D. (2006). Child neglect: A guide for prevention, assessment, and intervention (User Manual Series ed.). Washington, D.C.: Child Welfare Information Gateway. This is the 3rd edition user manual that addresses in depth issues of child abuse and neglect and describes the root causes, symptoms, and consequences of neglect, as well as the interdisciplinary ways to prevent both its occurrence and recurrence. It gives the most current information on the definition and scope and impact of neglect and describes risk and protective factors, assessment, prevention and intervention.

DeRoberts-Moore, N. (2006). A system that serves caseworkers and clients. Policy & Practice of Public Human Services, 64, 18-20. The article focuses on the development of the Statewide Automated Child Welfare Information System (SACWIS) in Ohio. This initiative was designed to compile and help enforce a comprehensive set of child welfare and protection practices that can achieve the best outcomes for clients. It will monitor and reach children and families helped by state child welfare agencies. In addition, Congress authorized matching finances for SACWIS.

Dore, M. (2007). Children in family contexts: Perspectives on treatment. Research on Social Work Practice, 17, 156-157. The article reviews the book "Children in Family Contexts: Perspectives on Treatment," 2nd edition, edited by L. Combrinck -Graham.

Downs, A. C., & James, S. E. (2006). Gay, lesbian, and bisexual foster parents: Strengths and challenges for the child welfare system. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 281-298. This article documents the challenges and successes of a group of 60 LGB foster parents. All participants provided foster parenting for public (state or county) agencies. The primary successes of this group included meaningful and gratifying parenting and successful testing of whether adoption might be a natural next step after foster parenting. The primary challenges included insensitive, inappropriate, and difficult social workers; state or local laws that worked against successful foster parenting by LGB adults; failure to recognize parents' partners; and lack of support by the system to acknowledge the important role of LGB parents. Numerous recommendations are identified for improving how LGB foster parents are supported within child welfare systems including foster parent and social worker training in LGB issues.

Dozier, M., Peloso, E., Lindhiem, O., Gordon, M. K., Manni, M., & Sepulveda, S., et al. (2006). Developing evidence-based interventions for foster children: An example of a randomized clinical trial with infants and toddlers. Journal of Social Issues, 62, 767-785. Children who enter foster care have usually experienced maltreatment as well as disruptions in relationships with primary caregivers. These children are at risk for a host of problematic outcomes. However, there are few evidence-based interventions that target foster children. This article presents preliminary data testing the effectiveness of an intervention, Attachment and Bio-behavioral Catch-up, to target relationship formation in young children in the foster care system. Results provide preliminary evidence of the effectiveness of an intervention that targets children's regulatory capabilities and serve as an example of how interventions can effectively target foster children in the child welfare system.

Finkelhor, D., & Jones, L. (2006). Why have child maltreatment and child victimization declined? Journal of Social Issues, 62, 685-716. Various forms of child maltreatment and child victimization declined as much as 40–70% from 1993 until 2004, including sexual abuse, physical abuse, sexual assault, homicide, aggravated assault, robbery, and larceny. Other child welfare indicators also improved during the same period, including teen pregnancy, teen suicide, and children living in poverty. This article reviews a wide variety of possible explanations for these changes: demography, fertility and abortion legalization, economic prosperity, increased incarceration of offenders, increased agents of social intervention, changing social norms and practices, the dissipation of the social changes from the 1960s, and psychiatric pharmacology.

Green, B. L., Rockhill, A., & Furrer, C. (2006). Understanding patterns of substance abuse treatment for women involved with child welfare: The influence of the adoption and safe families act (ASFA). American Journal of Drug & Alcohol Abuse, 32, 149-176. The passage of the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act (AFSA) has led to increased attention to the need for timely and appropriate treatment services to families with substance abuse issues who are involved with child welfare. Using statewide administrative data collected before and after the implementation of ASFA, the present study explores the influence of ASFA, as well as other family characteristics, on patterns of treatment service utilization by child-welfare involved clients. Results are interpreted in terms of the changing treatment service context, enhanced collaboration between child welfare and treatment systems, and the possible influence of the legislation on parents' motivation to enter treatment.

Jones, W.,G. (2006). Working with the courts in child protection. (3rd Edition. Chid Abuse and Neglect User Manual Series ed.). Washington, D.C.: Child Welfare Information Gateway. This is an overall user manual of improvements and best practices to prepare the Child Welfare worker for entry into the court system. The manual gives a detailed description of differing court systems, processes and jurisdictions. It describes the powers and rights of parents and children and the interplay between child maltreatment legislation and caseworker practice. It also describes issues involved in going to court and the relationship between the caseworker and the court.

Kahan, M. (2006). "Put up" on platforms: A history of twentieth century adoption policy in the united states. Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare, 33, 51-72. Adoption is closely intertwined with many issues that are central to public policy in this country; welfare and poverty, race and class, and gender. An analysis of the history of adoption shows how it has been shaped by the nation's mores and demographics. In order to better understand this phenomenon, and its significance to larger societal issues, this analysis reviews its history, focusing on four key periods in which this country's adoption policy was shaped: the late Nineteenth Century's `orphan trains'; the family preservation and Mothers' Pensions of the Progressive Era; World War II through the 1950s, with secrecy and the beginnings of international adoption; and the 1970s-1990s, when reproductive controls were more obtainable, and relinquishing children became more uncommon.

Leathers, S. J., & Testa, M. F. (2006). Foster youth emancipating from care: Caseworkers' reports on needs and services. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 463-498. This article presents findings from a survey mailed caseworkers, who answered questions about special needs, independent living skills, educational attainment, 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 were underserved relative to other youth. Youth with more behavior problems and educational and job skill deficits were less likely than other youth to continue receive child welfare services past age 18, suggesting that services must be provided throughout adolescence to meet the needs of the most vulnerable clients.

Matthews, J. D., & Cramer, E. P. (2006). Envisaging the adoption process to strengthen gay- and lesbian-headed families: Recommendations for adoption professionals. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 317-340. Although a growing number of child placement agencies are serving lesbians and gay men, a dearth of literature exists for adoption agency policies and practices related to working with this population. This article explores the unique characteristics and strengths of prospective gay and lesbian adoptive parents throughout each of the three phases of the adoption process--preplacement, placement, and postplacement--as well as provides suggestions for adoption professionals working with gays and lesbians.

McGlade, K., & Ackerman, J. (2006). A hope for foster care: Agency executives in partnerships with parent leaders. Journal of Emotional Abuse, 6(2), 97-112. Two foster care executives encourage agency and parent leaders to rethink their relationships to improve the lives of children in their shared custody. When mothers-of-color charged that white privilege harmed rather than helped children, the white executives connected the accusation to their experience as closeted gay leaders in a religiously-run organization. That unexpected insight became the sharper lens through which they saw some emotional damage caused by their decisions. The executives examined their behavior and transformed their adversarial relationship with parents into a partnership. Their suggestions are based on efforts with parents, mistakes with trustees, and hard lessons learned.

Mitchell, L. B., Barth, R. P., Green, R., Wall, A., Biemer, P., & Berrick, J. D., et al. (2005). Child welfare reform in the united states: Findings from a local agency survey. Child Welfare League of America, 84, 5-24. Efforts to improve the public welfare and child welfare system sparked an unprecedented amount of federal legislation in the 1990s, including the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (ASFA), the Multiethnic Placement Act of 1994 and Interethnic Adoption Provisions of 1996 (MEPA-IEP), and welfare reform. Such reforms allow an unprecedented degree of flexibility, but little is known about their implementation. Researchers administered the Local Agency Survey to the first national probability sample of public child welfare agencies from 1999 to 2000. Findings indicate that ASFA has had the most effect on child welfare service delivery. Welfare reform has had less effect, and MEPA-IEP seems to have had little effect at all.

Morrison, J., & Mishna, F. Knowing the child: An ecological approach to the treatment of children in foster care. Clinical Social Work Journal, 34(Winter), 467-481. Social workers in agencies and school settings often deal with high risk, multi problem children such as those in foster care. Increasingly, there is widespread recognition that a coordinated, multifaceted approach is required to address the range of cognitive, social, and mental health problems with which they present. This article recommends utilization of an ecological treatment intervention that is specifically tailored to the needs of the child based on a formulation of the child’s experience and developmental deficits. A case example comprising the treatment of an eight-year-old boy in foster care with comorbid diagnoses of alcohol related neurodevelpomental disorder, failure to thrive, and attachment disorder, illustrates this approach. The article concludes with implications for social work practice.

Moyers, S., Farmer, E., & Lipscombe, J. (2006). Contact with family members and its impact on adolescents and their foster placements. British Journal of Social Work, 36, 541-559. This paper discusses findings from a recently completed study of adolescent foster care, which included a detailed assessment of the fostering skills and supports of carers and of the contact that adolescents had with parents, siblings and other family members during a long-term foster placement. This paper describes the contact the young people had with their families, its impact on them and on the foster families and how it changed over time. The findings revealed that contact for the majority of adolescents was problematic and had a significant impact on placement outcomes. Ways of managing contact are highlighted, and the corresponding implications for policy and practice discussed.

Nesmith, A. (2006). Predictors of running away from family foster care. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 585-609. Running away is a frequent but little studied phenomenon among adolescents in foster care. Repeated running from care often leads to premature discharge and homelessness for youth. This article uses cumulative risk theory in the context of normative adolescent development to investigate predicators of running away from foster care. Results indicate risks stemming from individual, foster home, and child welfare system sources, which offer some insight for prevention and intervention.

Noonan, K., & Burke, K. (2005). Termination of parental rights: Which foster care children are affected? Social Science Journal, 42, 241-256. In 1997, the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) was passed with a primary goal of expediting the process of placing foster children with permanent or adoptive families. In order to meet this goal, ASFA requires states to terminate parental rights if a child has been in foster care for 15 of the most recent 22 months. Prior empirical research on foster care dependence supports the provision in ASFA to expedite the discharge process because over time children are progressively less likely to be discharged from foster care. However, very little research has examined what impact terminating parental rights will have on this goal. One of the first steps is to examine which children are most likely to see the rights of their parents terminated and how these children differ from those children who are returned home. Using a competing risks hazard model we find many differences between the children who are sent home and those children whose parents have their rights terminated.

Orme, J. G., Cuddeback, G. S., Buehler, C., & Cox, M. E. (2007). Measuring foster parent potential: Casey foster parent inventory-applicant version. Research on Social Work Practice, 17, 77-92. The Casey Foster Applicant Inventory-Applicant Version (CFAI-A) is a new standardized self-report measure designed to assess the potential to foster parent successfully. The CFAI-A is described, and results concerning its psychometric properties are presented. The CFAI-A shows promise for use in research and practice, where it might be used to improve decisions about how to support, monitor, and retain foster families and to match, place, and maintain foster children with foster families.

Pacifici, C., Delaney, R., White, L., Cummings, K., & Nelson, C. (2005). Foster parent college: Interactive multimedia training for foster parents. Social Work Research, 29, 243-251. The article discusses interactive multimedia training for foster parents. Research studies have long demonstrated the benefits of training for foster parents, children, and agencies. Early landmark studies showed that training produced key changes within the family unit, such as improved parent attitudes, parent-child interactions, and a reduction of child problem behavior. DVD and Web technology offer parents convenience and flexibility through home-based training. For the foster care agency, these formats are far more cost-effective than live training. Agencies can buy and then lend copies of a program or have low-cost site licensing arrangements.

Reifsteck, J. (2005). Failure and success in foster care programs. North American Journal of Psychology, 7, 313-326. The purpose of the current study was to classify types of services provided for youth in one sample (N=208) of children in foster care. A review of utilization trends and omissions in service suggests that even though some youth and their families benefit slightly from prevention efforts. It appears that satisfactory services for youth referred for child abuse and neglect are not readily apparent for all children in need.

Romney, S. C., Litrownik, A. J., Newton, R. R., & Lau, A. (2006). The relationship between child disability and living arrangement in child welfare. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 965-984. The influence of disabilities on placement outcomes was examined for 277 children who were removed from their biological parents due to substantiated maltreatment. Results indicated that children with a disability were less likely to reunify and more likely to reside in nonkin foster care two years later than typical children. Children with cognitive, emotional / behavioral, and physical disabilities were over four times more likely to be permanently living in nonkin foster care than to be reunified.

Rosenthal, J. A., & Waters, E. (2006). Predictors of child welfare worker retention and performance: Focus on Title IV-E-funded social work education. Journal of Social Service Research, 32, 67-85. Using administrative records, this paper tracks for up to four years using Cox survival methods the retention of 839 public child welfare workers who began child welfare work in 1999. Participation in a IV-E-funded social work educational program predicted better retention. In particular, risk of termination decreased by 52% during the mandated contractual employment period in which the educational stipend was "worked off". Other predictors of longer retention included prior non-child welfare employment at the public agency and working in the state office setting. Regression analyses revealed an association between an ethnic group's representation in the population of child welfare workers and supervisory evaluation; the greater that representation, the higher the overall evaluation for the group.

Rubin, D. M., O'Reilly, A. L. R., Xianqun Luan, & Localio, A. R. (2007). The impact of placement stability on behavioral well-being for children in foster care. Pediatrics, 119, 336-344. This is a 2007 research article identiying the problems children have upon entering foster care and explains prior research findings that frequent placement changes are associated with poor outcomes. This study sought to disentangle this cascading relationship in order to identify the independent impact of placement stability on behavioral outcomes downstream. The goal was to identify the innate contribution of a child's placement stability toward his or her risk for behavioral problems 18 months after entering foster care.The article concludes that children in foster care experience placement instability unrelated to their baseline problems, and this instability has a significant impact on their behavioral well-being.

Sellick, C. (2006). From famine to feast. A review of the foster care research literature. Children & Society, 20, 67-74. Foster care has become the principal placement of choice for children and young people in public care in the United Kingdom (UK). This has been accompanied by a significant growth in its research scrutiny connected to a busy policy agenda, especially since 1997. With its increased usage, fostering has encountered both difficulties and developments. Children often have emotional and behavioral problems which strain their foster families to their limits and risk placement breakdown. Public sector foster carers continue to be in short supply and keeping them engaged in fostering remains a challenge. Major developments have occurred in response to these difficulties. The use of relatives as kinship carers has increased substantially and the non-governmental or independent fostering sector has grown rapidly. Until comparatively recently, the knowledge base of foster care in Britain was limited, but the past decade has seen that change and now a substantial body of research knowledge is available in the UK.

Shirk, M., & Strangler, G. (2005). On their own: What happens to kids when they age out of the foster care system. Journal of Social Work Education, 41(Winter), 161-161. This article focuses on the book "On Their own: What Happens to Kids When They Age Out of the Foster Care System," by M. Shirk and G. Stangler. Every year, nearly 25,000 teenagers age out of foster care by the time they turn eighteen. The discussed book with a foreword written by the U.S. President Jimmy Carters, is a collection of compelling stories about such teenagers. The authors not only document the struggles of these teenagers, they also call for action in order to provide youth in foster care the opportunities that most teens take for granted.

Shlonsky, A. (2006). Beyond common sense: Child welfare, child well-being, and the evidence for policy reform. Social Service Review, 80, 756-761. This article presents a review of a book entitled "Beyond Common Sense: Child Welfare, Child Well-Being, and the Evidence for Policy Reform,".

Smith, N. A. Empowering the "unfit" mother. Affilia: Journal of Women & Social Work, 21(Winter), 448-457. This article presents the results of a qualitative study that examined the experiences of women who were deemed ‘unfit’ to care for their children. The voices of these mothers call attention to the difficult process of recovery from addiction while trying to regain custody of one's children. A strengths-based empowerment approach is emphasized in work with these women, beginning with a redefinition of the label ‘unfit.’

Survey finds diverse state initiatives with a common focus on improving child care.(2006). Policy & Practice of Public Human Services, 64, 35-35.

Swann, C. A., & Sheran Sylvester, M. (2006). The foster care crisis: What caused caseloads to grow? Demography, 43, 309-335. Foster care caseloads more than doubled from 1985 to 2000. This article provides the first comprehensive study of this growth by relating state-level foster care caseloads to state-specific characteristics and policies. We present evidence that increases in female incarcerations and reductions in cash welfare benefits played dominant roles in explaining the growth in foster care caseloads over this period. Our results highlight the need for child welfare policies designed specifically for the children of incarcerated parents and parents who are facing less generous welfare programs.

Timmer, S. G., Llrquiza, A. I., Herschell, A. D., McGrath, J. M., Zebell, N. M., & Porter, A. L., et al. (2006). Parent-child interaction therapy: Application of an empirically supported treatment to maltreated children in foster care. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 919-939. One of the more serious problems faced by child welfare services involves the management of children with serious behavioral and mental health problems. Aggressive and defiant foster children are more likely to have multiple foster care placements, require extraordinary social services resources, and have poor short- and long-term mental health outcomes. Interventions that work with challenging foster children and enhance foster parents' skills in managing problem behaviors are necessary. This article presents the successful results of a single case study examining the application of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) with an aggressive young boy and his foster-adoptive parent. PCIT is a dyadic intervention that has been identified as an empirically supported treatment for abused children and for children with different types of behavioral disruption. The application of PCIT to assist foster parents is a promising direction for child welfare services.

Vig, S., Chinitz, S., & Shulman, L. (2005). Young children in foster care. Infants & Young Children: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Special Care Practices, 18, 147-160. Young children who have been removed from their biological families and placed in foster care are at significant risk for poor developmental outcomes. Their vulnerability is often the result of adverse biological and psychosocial influences: prenatal exposure to alcohol and other drugs, premature birth, abuse and neglect leading to foster placement, and failure to form adequate attachments to their primary caregivers. The purpose of the following discussion is to describe the foster care population and the kinds of medical conditions, mental health problems, and developmental disabilities experienced by young children in foster care, and to explore implications for intervention.

Wilcox, B. L., Weisz, P. V., & Miller, M. K. (2005). Practical guidelines for educating policymakers: The family impact seminar as an approach to advancing the interests of children and families in the policy arena. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 34, 638-645. Psychologists are well positioned to contribute to policymaking on issues affecting the well-being of children, youth, and families. A good deal of psychological research is relevant to policy issues such as child mental health services, child care, adoption and foster care, and children's media. In this article we offer an alternative to direct policy advocacy as a means for psychologists' involvement in the policy arena. Policy education, a nonpartisan and nonadversarial approach to working with policymakers, is described and differentiated from child advocacy. We then present an example of 1 approach to policy education, the Family Impact Seminar. The article closes with a discussion of lessons we have learned regarding effectively communicating research to policymakers.

Williams, J., McWilliams, A., Mainieri, T., Pecora, P. J., & La Belle, K. (2006). Enhancing the validity of foster care follow-up studies through multiple alumni location strategies. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 499-521. While family-based placement prevention services, family reunification programs, subsidized guardianship, and aggressive adoption programs are reducing the numbers of children spending long periods of time in substitute care, a significant number of America's children will come of age in foster care. Agencies and policymakers should use research and evaluation to assess the effectiveness of foster care in nurturing healthy adults and to explore ways to improve services. Outcome studies that have focused on locating and interviewing young or middle-aged adults emancipated from foster care have been hampered by modest response rates, limiting the field's ability to evaluate the efficacy of foster care programs. This article describes a set of strategies that were used to achieve higher response rates in two recent follow-up studies.

Recent Publications on Foster Care and Adoption: Empirical Research to Enhance Best Practices

(prepared by Tiffany Armstrong, March 2007)

Becker, M., Jordan, N., & Larsen, R. (2006). Behavioral health service use and costs among children in foster care. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 633-647. This article compares behavioral health service use and cost for foster care versus nonfoster care children; children before, during, and after foster care placement; and successfully reunified versus nonsuccessfully reunified foster care children.

Berge, J. M., Mendenhall, T. J., Wrobel, G. M., Grotevant, H. D., & McRoy, R. G. (2006). Adolescents' feelings about openness in adoption: Implications for adoption agencies. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 1011-1039. Adoption research commonly uses parents' reports of satisfaction when examining openness in adoption arrangements. This qualitative study aimed to fill a gap in the adoption research by using adolescents' voices to gain a better understanding of their adoption experiences. Adopted adolescents (n = 152) were interviewed concerning their satisfaction with the openness in their adoption arrangements with their birthmothers. Results and implications from this study may affect how adoption agencies work with adopted adolescents and their families, and may influence a broader understanding of the recent trend toward open adoption arrangements.

Bogolub, E. B. Child welfare for the twenty-first century: A handbook of practices, policies, and programs. Affilia: Journal of Women & Social Work, 21, 462-463. The article reviews the book "Child Welfare for the Twenty-First Century: A Handbook of Practices, Policies and Programs," edited by G. P. Mallon and P. M. Hess.

Bottoms, B. L., & Quas, J. A. (2006). Recent advances and new challenges in child maltreatment research, practice, and policy: Previewing the issues. Journal of Social Issues, 62, 653-662. Few issues are of such grave importance to society and to the science and practice of psychology as child maltreatment. Our goal in editing this issue of JSI was to inform scientists across various sub-fields of psychology about the most current knowledge in the field of child maltreatment, broadly defined. The authors of the articles have gone further, pushing past the edge of current knowledge and setting aggressive agendas for future empirical and policy-relevant work. We believe that the result will be enriched future research, practice, policy, and law, and in turn, the increased well-being of children and their families

Brenner, E., & Freundlich, M. (2006). Enhancing the safety of children in foster care and family support programs: Automated critical incident reporting. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 611-632. The Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 has made child safety an explicit focus in child welfare. The authors describe an automated critical incident reporting program designed for use in foster care and family-support programs. The program, which is based in Lotus Notes and uses e-mail to route incident reports from direct service staff to supervisors and administrators, facilitates timely clinical oversight and risk management and ensures the security of clients' protected health information. The authors present data collected using the program to illustrate how it can be used to monitor abuse and neglect allegations in a foster care program. survey of users found that the program saved time, was easy to use, and helped manage critical incident reports.

Cole, S. A. (2005). Infants in foster care: Relational and environmental factors affecting attachment. Journal of Reproductive & Infant Psychology, 23(02), 43-61. The present study investigated the effect of relational and environmental factors affecting attachment security in 46 infants placed in foster homes. The study found that a majority of infants (67%) in the participant group were securely attached. Additionally, of the insecurely attached, a larger percentage of infants than anticipated displayed disorganized/disoriented patterns of attachment. The study found that organization of the foster home environment and appropriate learning materials predicted secure attachment while foster caregiver childhood trauma and involvement predicted insecure attachment. Strategies are proposed for better training and support of foster caregivers for developing secure relationships with the infants.

Connolly, M. (2006). Up front and personal: Confronting dynamics in the family group conference. Family process, 45, 345-357. The Family Group Conference is a participatory model of decision making with families in child protection. It is a legal process that brings together the family, including the extended family, and the professionals in a family-led decision-making forum. This article briefly describes the development and practice of family group conferencing as a family-centered legal process in Aotearoa, New Zealand. It then examines the findings of a study exploring the dynamics emerging from family group conference practice from the perspective of the coordinators who convene them. Family group conferencing as a family strengthening practice is discussed.

DePanfilis, D. (2006). Child neglect: A guide for prevention, assessment, and intervention (User Manual Series ed.). Washington, D.C.: Child Welfare Information Gateway. This is the 3rd edition user manual that addresses in depth issues of child abuse and neglect and describes the root causes, symptoms, and consequences of neglect, as well as the interdisciplinary ways to prevent both its occurrence and recurrence. It gives the most current information on the definition and scope and impact of neglect and describes risk and protective factors, assessment, prevention and intervention.

DeRoberts-Moore, N. (2006). A system that serves caseworkers and clients. Policy & Practice of Public Human Services, 64, 18-20. The article focuses on the development of the Statewide Automated Child Welfare Information System (SACWIS) in Ohio. This initiative was designed to compile and help enforce a comprehensive set of child welfare and protection practices that can achieve the best outcomes for clients. It will monitor and reach children and families helped by state child welfare agencies. In addition, Congress authorized matching finances for SACWIS.

Dore, M. (2007). Children in family contexts: Perspectives on treatment. Research on Social Work Practice, 17, 156-157. The article reviews the book "Children in Family Contexts: Perspectives on Treatment," 2nd edition, edited by L. Combrinck -Graham.

Downs, A. C., & James, S. E. (2006). Gay, lesbian, and bisexual foster parents: Strengths and challenges for the child welfare system. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 281-298. This article documents the challenges and successes of a group of 60 LGB foster parents. All participants provided foster parenting for public (state or county) agencies. The primary successes of this group included meaningful and gratifying parenting and successful testing of whether adoption might be a natural next step after foster parenting. The primary challenges included insensitive, inappropriate, and difficult social workers; state or local laws that worked against successful foster parenting by LGB adults; failure to recognize parents' partners; and lack of support by the system to acknowledge the important role of LGB parents. Numerous recommendations are identified for improving how LGB foster parents are supported within child welfare systems including foster parent and social worker training in LGB issues.

Dozier, M., Peloso, E., Lindhiem, O., Gordon, M. K., Manni, M., & Sepulveda, S., et al. (2006). Developing evidence-based interventions for foster children: An example of a randomized clinical trial with infants and toddlers. Journal of Social Issues, 62, 767-785. Children who enter foster care have usually experienced maltreatment as well as disruptions in relationships with primary caregivers. These children are at risk for a host of problematic outcomes. However, there are few evidence-based interventions that target foster children. This article presents preliminary data testing the effectiveness of an intervention, Attachment and Bio-behavioral Catch-up, to target relationship formation in young children in the foster care system. Results provide preliminary evidence of the effectiveness of an intervention that targets children's regulatory capabilities and serve as an example of how interventions can effectively target foster children in the child welfare system.

Finkelhor, D., & Jones, L. (2006). Why have child maltreatment and child victimization declined? Journal of Social Issues, 62, 685-716. Various forms of child maltreatment and child victimization declined as much as 40–70% from 1993 until 2004, including sexual abuse, physical abuse, sexual assault, homicide, aggravated assault, robbery, and larceny. Other child welfare indicators also improved during the same period, including teen pregnancy, teen suicide, and children living in poverty. This article reviews a wide variety of possible explanations for these changes: demography, fertility and abortion legalization, economic prosperity, increased incarceration of offenders, increased agents of social intervention, changing social norms and practices, the dissipation of the social changes from the 1960s, and psychiatric pharmacology.

Green, B. L., Rockhill, A., & Furrer, C. (2006). Understanding patterns of substance abuse treatment for women involved with child welfare: The influence of the adoption and safe families act (ASFA). American Journal of Drug & Alcohol Abuse, 32, 149-176. The passage of the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act (AFSA) has led to increased attention to the need for timely and appropriate treatment services to families with substance abuse issues who are involved with child welfare. Using statewide administrative data collected before and after the implementation of ASFA, the present study explores the influence of ASFA, as well as other family characteristics, on patterns of treatment service utilization by child-welfare involved clients. Results are interpreted in terms of the changing treatment service context, enhanced collaboration between child welfare and treatment systems, and the possible influence of the legislation on parents' motivation to enter treatment.

Jones, W.,G. (2006). Working with the courts in child protection. (3rd Edition. Chid Abuse and Neglect User Manual Series ed.). Washington, D.C.: Child Welfare Information Gateway. This is an overall user manual of improvements and best practices to prepare the Child Welfare worker for entry into the court system. The manual gives a detailed description of differing court systems, processes and jurisdictions. It describes the powers and rights of parents and children and the interplay between child maltreatment legislation and caseworker practice. It also describes issues involved in going to court and the relationship between the caseworker and the court.

Kahan, M. (2006). "Put up" on platforms: A history of twentieth century adoption policy in the united states. Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare, 33, 51-72. Adoption is closely intertwined with many issues that are central to public policy in this country; welfare and poverty, race and class, and gender. An analysis of the history of adoption shows how it has been shaped by the nation's mores and demographics. In order to better understand this phenomenon, and its significance to larger societal issues, this analysis reviews its history, focusing on four key periods in which this country's adoption policy was shaped: the late Nineteenth Century's `orphan trains'; the family preservation and Mothers' Pensions of the Progressive Era; World War II through the 1950s, with secrecy and the beginnings of international adoption; and the 1970s-1990s, when reproductive controls were more obtainable, and relinquishing children became more uncommon.

Leathers, S. J., & Testa, M. F. (2006). Foster youth emancipating from care: Caseworkers' reports on needs and services. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 463-498. This article presents findings from a survey mailed caseworkers, who answered questions about special needs, independent living skills, educational attainment, 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 were underserved relative to other youth. Youth with more behavior problems and educational and job skill deficits were less likely than other youth to continue receive child welfare services past age 18, suggesting that services must be provided throughout adolescence to meet the needs of the most vulnerable clients.

Matthews, J. D., & Cramer, E. P. (2006). Envisaging the adoption process to strengthen gay- and lesbian-headed families: Recommendations for adoption professionals. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 317-340. Although a growing number of child placement agencies are serving lesbians and gay men, a dearth of literature exists for adoption agency policies and practices related to working with this population. This article explores the unique characteristics and strengths of prospective gay and lesbian adoptive parents throughout each of the three phases of the adoption process--preplacement, placement, and postplacement--as well as provides suggestions for adoption professionals working with gays and lesbians.

McGlade, K., & Ackerman, J. (2006). A hope for foster care: Agency executives in partnerships with parent leaders. Journal of Emotional Abuse, 6(2), 97-112. Two foster care executives encourage agency and parent leaders to rethink their relationships to improve the lives of children in their shared custody. When mothers-of-color charged that white privilege harmed rather than helped children, the white executives connected the accusation to their experience as closeted gay leaders in a religiously-run organization. That unexpected insight became the sharper lens through which they saw some emotional damage caused by their decisions. The executives examined their behavior and transformed their adversarial relationship with parents into a partnership. Their suggestions are based on efforts with parents, mistakes with trustees, and hard lessons learned.

Mitchell, L. B., Barth, R. P., Green, R., Wall, A., Biemer, P., & Berrick, J. D., et al. (2005). Child welfare reform in the united states: Findings from a local agency survey. Child Welfare League of America, 84, 5-24. Efforts to improve the public welfare and child welfare system sparked an unprecedented amount of federal legislation in the 1990s, including the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (ASFA), the Multiethnic Placement Act of 1994 and Interethnic Adoption Provisions of 1996 (MEPA-IEP), and welfare reform. Such reforms allow an unprecedented degree of flexibility, but little is known about their implementation. Researchers administered the Local Agency Survey to the first national probability sample of public child welfare agencies from 1999 to 2000. Findings indicate that ASFA has had the most effect on child welfare service delivery. Welfare reform has had less effect, and MEPA-IEP seems to have had little effect at all.

Morrison, J., & Mishna, F. Knowing the child: An ecological approach to the treatment of children in foster care. Clinical Social Work Journal, 34(Winter), 467-481. Social workers in agencies and school settings often deal with high risk, multi problem children such as those in foster care. Increasingly, there is widespread recognition that a coordinated, multifaceted approach is required to address the range of cognitive, social, and mental health problems with which they present. This article recommends utilization of an ecological treatment intervention that is specifically tailored to the needs of the child based on a formulation of the child’s experience and developmental deficits. A case example comprising the treatment of an eight-year-old boy in foster care with comorbid diagnoses of alcohol related neurodevelpomental disorder, failure to thrive, and attachment disorder, illustrates this approach. The article concludes with implications for social work practice.

Moyers, S., Farmer, E., & Lipscombe, J. (2006). Contact with family members and its impact on adolescents and their foster placements. British Journal of Social Work, 36, 541-559. This paper discusses findings from a recently completed study of adolescent foster care, which included a detailed assessment of the fostering skills and supports of carers and of the contact that adolescents had with parents, siblings and other family members during a long-term foster placement. This paper describes the contact the young people had with their families, its impact on them and on the foster families and how it changed over time. The findings revealed that contact for the majority of adolescents was problematic and had a significant impact on placement outcomes. Ways of managing contact are highlighted, and the corresponding implications for policy and practice discussed.

Nesmith, A. (2006). Predictors of running away from family foster care. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 585-609. Running away is a frequent but little studied phenomenon among adolescents in foster care. Repeated running from care often leads to premature discharge and homelessness for youth. This article uses cumulative risk theory in the context of normative adolescent development to investigate predicators of running away from foster care. Results indicate risks stemming from individual, foster home, and child welfare system sources, which offer some insight for prevention and intervention.

Noonan, K., & Burke, K. (2005). Termination of parental rights: Which foster care children are affected? Social Science Journal, 42, 241-256. In 1997, the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) was passed with a primary goal of expediting the process of placing foster children with permanent or adoptive families. In order to meet this goal, ASFA requires states to terminate parental rights if a child has been in foster care for 15 of the most recent 22 months. Prior empirical research on foster care dependence supports the provision in ASFA to expedite the discharge process because over time children are progressively less likely to be discharged from foster care. However, very little research has examined what impact terminating parental rights will have on this goal. One of the first steps is to examine which children are most likely to see the rights of their parents terminated and how these children differ from those children who are returned home. Using a competing risks hazard model we find many differences between the children who are sent home and those children whose parents have their rights terminated.

Orme, J. G., Cuddeback, G. S., Buehler, C., & Cox, M. E. (2007). Measuring foster parent potential: Casey foster parent inventory-applicant version. Research on Social Work Practice, 17, 77-92. The Casey Foster Applicant Inventory-Applicant Version (CFAI-A) is a new standardized self-report measure designed to assess the potential to foster parent successfully. The CFAI-A is described, and results concerning its psychometric properties are presented. The CFAI-A shows promise for use in research and practice, where it might be used to improve decisions about how to support, monitor, and retain foster families and to match, place, and maintain foster children with foster families.

Pacifici, C., Delaney, R., White, L., Cummings, K., & Nelson, C. (2005). Foster parent college: Interactive multimedia training for foster parents. Social Work Research, 29, 243-251. The article discusses interactive multimedia training for foster parents. Research studies have long demonstrated the benefits of training for foster parents, children, and agencies. Early landmark studies showed that training produced key changes within the family unit, such as improved parent attitudes, parent-child interactions, and a reduction of child problem behavior. DVD and Web technology offer parents convenience and flexibility through home-based training. For the foster care agency, these formats are far more cost-effective than live training. Agencies can buy and then lend copies of a program or have low-cost site licensing arrangements.

Reifsteck, J. (2005). Failure and success in foster care programs. North American Journal of Psychology, 7, 313-326. The purpose of the current study was to classify types of services provided for youth in one sample (N=208) of children in foster care. A review of utilization trends and omissions in service suggests that even though some youth and their families benefit slightly from prevention efforts. It appears that satisfactory services for youth referred for child abuse and neglect are not readily apparent for all children in need.

Romney, S. C., Litrownik, A. J., Newton, R. R., & Lau, A. (2006). The relationship between child disability and living arrangement in child welfare. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 965-984. The influence of disabilities on placement outcomes was examined for 277 children who were removed from their biological parents due to substantiated maltreatment. Results indicated that children with a disability were less likely to reunify and more likely to reside in nonkin foster care two years later than typical children. Children with cognitive, emotional / behavioral, and physical disabilities were over four times more likely to be permanently living in nonkin foster care than to be reunified.

Rosenthal, J. A., & Waters, E. (2006). Predictors of child welfare worker retention and performance: Focus on Title IV-E-funded social work education. Journal of Social Service Research, 32, 67-85. Using administrative records, this paper tracks for up to four years using Cox survival methods the retention of 839 public child welfare workers who began child welfare work in 1999. Participation in a IV-E-funded social work educational program predicted better retention. In particular, risk of termination decreased by 52% during the mandated contractual employment period in which the educational stipend was "worked off". Other predictors of longer retention included prior non-child welfare employment at the public agency and working in the state office setting. Regression analyses revealed an association between an ethnic group's representation in the population of child welfare workers and supervisory evaluation; the greater that representation, the higher the overall evaluation for the group.

Rubin, D. M., O'Reilly, A. L. R., Xianqun Luan, & Localio, A. R. (2007). The impact of placement stability on behavioral well-being for children in foster care. Pediatrics, 119, 336-344. This is a 2007 research article identiying the problems children have upon entering foster care and explains prior research findings that frequent placement changes are associated with poor outcomes. This study sought to disentangle this cascading relationship in order to identify the independent impact of placement stability on behavioral outcomes downstream. The goal was to identify the innate contribution of a child's placement stability toward his or her risk for behavioral problems 18 months after entering foster care.The article concludes that children in foster care experience placement instability unrelated to their baseline problems, and this instability has a significant impact on their behavioral well-being.

Sellick, C. (2006). From famine to feast. A review of the foster care research literature. Children & Society, 20, 67-74. Foster care has become the principal placement of choice for children and young people in public care in the United Kingdom (UK). This has been accompanied by a significant growth in its research scrutiny connected to a busy policy agenda, especially since 1997. With its increased usage, fostering has encountered both difficulties and developments. Children often have emotional and behavioral problems which strain their foster families to their limits and risk placement breakdown. Public sector foster carers continue to be in short supply and keeping them engaged in fostering remains a challenge. Major developments have occurred in response to these difficulties. The use of relatives as kinship carers has increased substantially and the non-governmental or independent fostering sector has grown rapidly. Until comparatively recently, the knowledge base of foster care in Britain was limited, but the past decade has seen that change and now a substantial body of research knowledge is available in the UK.

Shirk, M., & Strangler, G. (2005). On their own: What happens to kids when they age out of the foster care system. Journal of Social Work Education, 41(Winter), 161-161. This article focuses on the book "On Their own: What Happens to Kids When They Age Out of the Foster Care System," by M. Shirk and G. Stangler. Every year, nearly 25,000 teenagers age out of foster care by the time they turn eighteen. The discussed book with a foreword written by the U.S. President Jimmy Carters, is a collection of compelling stories about such teenagers. The authors not only document the struggles of these teenagers, they also call for action in order to provide youth in foster care the opportunities that most teens take for granted.

Shlonsky, A. (2006). Beyond common sense: Child welfare, child well-being, and the evidence for policy reform. Social Service Review, 80, 756-761. This article presents a review of a book entitled "Beyond Common Sense: Child Welfare, Child Well-Being, and the Evidence for Policy Reform,".

Smith, N. A. Empowering the "unfit" mother. Affilia: Journal of Women & Social Work, 21(Winter), 448-457. This article presents the results of a qualitative study that examined the experiences of women who were deemed ‘unfit’ to care for their children. The voices of these mothers call attention to the difficult process of recovery from addiction while trying to regain custody of one's children. A strengths-based empowerment approach is emphasized in work with these women, beginning with a redefinition of the label ‘unfit.’

Survey finds diverse state initiatives with a common focus on improving child care.(2006). Policy & Practice of Public Human Services, 64, 35-35.

Swann, C. A., & Sheran Sylvester, M. (2006). The foster care crisis: What caused caseloads to grow? Demography, 43, 309-335. Foster care caseloads more than doubled from 1985 to 2000. This article provides the first comprehensive study of this growth by relating state-level foster care caseloads to state-specific characteristics and policies. We present evidence that increases in female incarcerations and reductions in cash welfare benefits played dominant roles in explaining the growth in foster care caseloads over this period. Our results highlight the need for child welfare policies designed specifically for the children of incarcerated parents and parents who are facing less generous welfare programs.

Timmer, S. G., Llrquiza, A. I., Herschell, A. D., McGrath, J. M., Zebell, N. M., & Porter, A. L., et al. (2006). Parent-child interaction therapy: Application of an empirically supported treatment to maltreated children in foster care. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 919-939. One of the more serious problems faced by child welfare services involves the management of children with serious behavioral and mental health problems. Aggressive and defiant foster children are more likely to have multiple foster care placements, require extraordinary social services resources, and have poor short- and long-term mental health outcomes. Interventions that work with challenging foster children and enhance foster parents' skills in managing problem behaviors are necessary. This article presents the successful results of a single case study examining the application of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) with an aggressive young boy and his foster-adoptive parent. PCIT is a dyadic intervention that has been identified as an empirically supported treatment for abused children and for children with different types of behavioral disruption. The application of PCIT to assist foster parents is a promising direction for child welfare services.

Vig, S., Chinitz, S., & Shulman, L. (2005). Young children in foster care. Infants & Young Children: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Special Care Practices, 18, 147-160. Young children who have been removed from their biological families and placed in foster care are at significant risk for poor developmental outcomes. Their vulnerability is often the result of adverse biological and psychosocial influences: prenatal exposure to alcohol and other drugs, premature birth, abuse and neglect leading to foster placement, and failure to form adequate attachments to their primary caregivers. The purpose of the following discussion is to describe the foster care population and the kinds of medical conditions, mental health problems, and developmental disabilities experienced by young children in foster care, and to explore implications for intervention.

Wilcox, B. L., Weisz, P. V., & Miller, M. K. (2005). Practical guidelines for educating policymakers: The family impact seminar as an approach to advancing the interests of children and families in the policy arena. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 34, 638-645. Psychologists are well positioned to contribute to policymaking on issues affecting the well-being of children, youth, and families. A good deal of psychological research is relevant to policy issues such as child mental health services, child care, adoption and foster care, and children's media. In this article we offer an alternative to direct policy advocacy as a means for psychologists' involvement in the policy arena. Policy education, a nonpartisan and nonadversarial approach to working with policymakers, is described and differentiated from child advocacy. We then present an example of 1 approach to policy education, the Family Impact Seminar. The article closes with a discussion of lessons we have learned regarding effectively communicating research to policymakers.

Williams, J., McWilliams, A., Mainieri, T., Pecora, P. J., & La Belle, K. (2006). Enhancing the validity of foster care follow-up studies through multiple alumni location strategies. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 499-521. While family-based placement prevention services, family reunification programs, subsidized guardianship, and aggressive adoption programs are reducing the numbers of children spending long periods of time in substitute care, a significant number of America's children will come of age in foster care. Agencies and policymakers should use research and evaluation to assess the effectiveness of foster care in nurturing healthy adults and to explore ways to improve services. Outcome studies that have focused on locating and interviewing young or middle-aged adults emancipated from foster care have been hampered by modest response rates, limiting the field's ability to evaluate the efficacy of foster care programs. This article describes a set of strategies that were used to achieve higher response rates in two recent follow-up studies.

Recent Publications on Foster Care and Adoption: Empirical Research to Enhance Best Practices

(prepared by Tiffany Armstrong, March 2007)

Becker, M., Jordan, N., & Larsen, R. (2006). Behavioral health service use and costs among children in foster care. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 633-647. This article compares behavioral health service use and cost for foster care versus nonfoster care children; children before, during, and after foster care placement; and successfully reunified versus nonsuccessfully reunified foster care children.

Berge, J. M., Mendenhall, T. J., Wrobel, G. M., Grotevant, H. D., & McRoy, R. G. (2006). Adolescents' feelings about openness in adoption: Implications for adoption agencies. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 1011-1039. Adoption research commonly uses parents' reports of satisfaction when examining openness in adoption arrangements. This qualitative study aimed to fill a gap in the adoption research by using adolescents' voices to gain a better understanding of their adoption experiences. Adopted adolescents (n = 152) were interviewed concerning their satisfaction with the openness in their adoption arrangements with their birthmothers. Results and implications from this study may affect how adoption agencies work with adopted adolescents and their families, and may influence a broader understanding of the recent trend toward open adoption arrangements.

Bogolub, E. B. Child welfare for the twenty-first century: A handbook of practices, policies, and programs. Affilia: Journal of Women & Social Work, 21, 462-463. The article reviews the book "Child Welfare for the Twenty-First Century: A Handbook of Practices, Policies and Programs," edited by G. P. Mallon and P. M. Hess.

Bottoms, B. L., & Quas, J. A. (2006). Recent advances and new challenges in child maltreatment research, practice, and policy: Previewing the issues. Journal of Social Issues, 62, 653-662. Few issues are of such grave importance to society and to the science and practice of psychology as child maltreatment. Our goal in editing this issue of JSI was to inform scientists across various sub-fields of psychology about the most current knowledge in the field of child maltreatment, broadly defined. The authors of the articles have gone further, pushing past the edge of current knowledge and setting aggressive agendas for future empirical and policy-relevant work. We believe that the result will be enriched future research, practice, policy, and law, and in turn, the increased well-being of children and their families

Brenner, E., & Freundlich, M. (2006). Enhancing the safety of children in foster care and family support programs: Automated critical incident reporting. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 611-632. The Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 has made child safety an explicit focus in child welfare. The authors describe an automated critical incident reporting program designed for use in foster care and family-support programs. The program, which is based in Lotus Notes and uses e-mail to route incident reports from direct service staff to supervisors and administrators, facilitates timely clinical oversight and risk management and ensures the security of clients' protected health information. The authors present data collected using the program to illustrate how it can be used to monitor abuse and neglect allegations in a foster care program. survey of users found that the program saved time, was easy to use, and helped manage critical incident reports.

Cole, S. A. (2005). Infants in foster care: Relational and environmental factors affecting attachment. Journal of Reproductive & Infant Psychology, 23(02), 43-61. The present study investigated the effect of relational and environmental factors affecting attachment security in 46 infants placed in foster homes. The study found that a majority of infants (67%) in the participant group were securely attached. Additionally, of the insecurely attached, a larger percentage of infants than anticipated displayed disorganized/disoriented patterns of attachment. The study found that organization of the foster home environment and appropriate learning materials predicted secure attachment while foster caregiver childhood trauma and involvement predicted insecure attachment. Strategies are proposed for better training and support of foster caregivers for developing secure relationships with the infants.

Connolly, M. (2006). Up front and personal: Confronting dynamics in the family group conference. Family process, 45, 345-357. The Family Group Conference is a participatory model of decision making with families in child protection. It is a legal process that brings together the family, including the extended family, and the professionals in a family-led decision-making forum. This article briefly describes the development and practice of family group conferencing as a family-centered legal process in Aotearoa, New Zealand. It then examines the findings of a study exploring the dynamics emerging from family group conference practice from the perspective of the coordinators who convene them. Family group conferencing as a family strengthening practice is discussed.

DePanfilis, D. (2006). Child neglect: A guide for prevention, assessment, and intervention (User Manual Series ed.). Washington, D.C.: Child Welfare Information Gateway. This is the 3rd edition user manual that addresses in depth issues of child abuse and neglect and describes the root causes, symptoms, and consequences of neglect, as well as the interdisciplinary ways to prevent both its occurrence and recurrence. It gives the most current information on the definition and scope and impact of neglect and describes risk and protective factors, assessment, prevention and intervention.

DeRoberts-Moore, N. (2006). A system that serves caseworkers and clients. Policy & Practice of Public Human Services, 64, 18-20. The article focuses on the development of the Statewide Automated Child Welfare Information System (SACWIS) in Ohio. This initiative was designed to compile and help enforce a comprehensive set of child welfare and protection practices that can achieve the best outcomes for clients. It will monitor and reach children and families helped by state child welfare agencies. In addition, Congress authorized matching finances for SACWIS.

Dore, M. (2007). Children in family contexts: Perspectives on treatment. Research on Social Work Practice, 17, 156-157. The article reviews the book "Children in Family Contexts: Perspectives on Treatment," 2nd edition, edited by L. Combrinck -Graham.

Downs, A. C., & James, S. E. (2006). Gay, lesbian, and bisexual foster parents: Strengths and challenges for the child welfare system. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 281-298. This article documents the challenges and successes of a group of 60 LGB foster parents. All participants provided foster parenting for public (state or county) agencies. The primary successes of this group included meaningful and gratifying parenting and successful testing of whether adoption might be a natural next step after foster parenting. The primary challenges included insensitive, inappropriate, and difficult social workers; state or local laws that worked against successful foster parenting by LGB adults; failure to recognize parents' partners; and lack of support by the system to acknowledge the important role of LGB parents. Numerous recommendations are identified for improving how LGB foster parents are supported within child welfare systems including foster parent and social worker training in LGB issues.

Dozier, M., Peloso, E., Lindhiem, O., Gordon, M. K., Manni, M., & Sepulveda, S., et al. (2006). Developing evidence-based interventions for foster children: An example of a randomized clinical trial with infants and toddlers. Journal of Social Issues, 62, 767-785. Children who enter foster care have usually experienced maltreatment as well as disruptions in relationships with primary caregivers. These children are at risk for a host of problematic outcomes. However, there are few evidence-based interventions that target foster children. This article presents preliminary data testing the effectiveness of an intervention, Attachment and Bio-behavioral Catch-up, to target relationship formation in young children in the foster care system. Results provide preliminary evidence of the effectiveness of an intervention that targets children's regulatory capabilities and serve as an example of how interventions can effectively target foster children in the child welfare system.

Finkelhor, D., & Jones, L. (2006). Why have child maltreatment and child victimization declined? Journal of Social Issues, 62, 685-716. Various forms of child maltreatment and child victimization declined as much as 40–70% from 1993 until 2004, including sexual abuse, physical abuse, sexual assault, homicide, aggravated assault, robbery, and larceny. Other child welfare indicators also improved during the same period, including teen pregnancy, teen suicide, and children living in poverty. This article reviews a wide variety of possible explanations for these changes: demography, fertility and abortion legalization, economic prosperity, increased incarceration of offenders, increased agents of social intervention, changing social norms and practices, the dissipation of the social changes from the 1960s, and psychiatric pharmacology.

Green, B. L., Rockhill, A., & Furrer, C. (2006). Understanding patterns of substance abuse treatment for women involved with child welfare: The influence of the adoption and safe families act (ASFA). American Journal of Drug & Alcohol Abuse, 32, 149-176. The passage of the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act (AFSA) has led to increased attention to the need for timely and appropriate treatment services to families with substance abuse issues who are involved with child welfare. Using statewide administrative data collected before and after the implementation of ASFA, the present study explores the influence of ASFA, as well as other family characteristics, on patterns of treatment service utilization by child-welfare involved clients. Results are interpreted in terms of the changing treatment service context, enhanced collaboration between child welfare and treatment systems, and the possible influence of the legislation on parents' motivation to enter treatment.

Jones, W.,G. (2006). Working with the courts in child protection. (3rd Edition. Chid Abuse and Neglect User Manual Series ed.). Washington, D.C.: Child Welfare Information Gateway. This is an overall user manual of improvements and best practices to prepare the Child Welfare worker for entry into the court system. The manual gives a detailed description of differing court systems, processes and jurisdictions. It describes the powers and rights of parents and children and the interplay between child maltreatment legislation and caseworker practice. It also describes issues involved in going to court and the relationship between the caseworker and the court.

Kahan, M. (2006). "Put up" on platforms: A history of twentieth century adoption policy in the united states. Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare, 33, 51-72. Adoption is closely intertwined with many issues that are central to public policy in this country; welfare and poverty, race and class, and gender. An analysis of the history of adoption shows how it has been shaped by the nation's mores and demographics. In order to better understand this phenomenon, and its significance to larger societal issues, this analysis reviews its history, focusing on four key periods in which this country's adoption policy was shaped: the late Nineteenth Century's `orphan trains'; the family preservation and Mothers' Pensions of the Progressive Era; World War II through the 1950s, with secrecy and the beginnings of international adoption; and the 1970s-1990s, when reproductive controls were more obtainable, and relinquishing children became more uncommon.

Leathers, S. J., & Testa, M. F. (2006). Foster youth emancipating from care: Caseworkers' reports on needs and services. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 463-498. This article presents findings from a survey mailed caseworkers, who answered questions about special needs, independent living skills, educational attainment, 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 were underserved relative to other youth. Youth with more behavior problems and educational and job skill deficits were less likely than other youth to continue receive child welfare services past age 18, suggesting that services must be provided throughout adolescence to meet the needs of the most vulnerable clients.

Matthews, J. D., & Cramer, E. P. (2006). Envisaging the adoption process to strengthen gay- and lesbian-headed families: Recommendations for adoption professionals. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 317-340. Although a growing number of child placement agencies are serving lesbians and gay men, a dearth of literature exists for adoption agency policies and practices related to working with this population. This article explores the unique characteristics and strengths of prospective gay and lesbian adoptive parents throughout each of the three phases of the adoption process--preplacement, placement, and postplacement--as well as provides suggestions for adoption professionals working with gays and lesbians.

McGlade, K., & Ackerman, J. (2006). A hope for foster care: Agency executives in partnerships with parent leaders. Journal of Emotional Abuse, 6(2), 97-112. Two foster care executives encourage agency and parent leaders to rethink their relationships to improve the lives of children in their shared custody. When mothers-of-color charged that white privilege harmed rather than helped children, the white executives connected the accusation to their experience as closeted gay leaders in a religiously-run organization. That unexpected insight became the sharper lens through which they saw some emotional damage caused by their decisions. The executives examined their behavior and transformed their adversarial relationship with parents into a partnership. Their suggestions are based on efforts with parents, mistakes with trustees, and hard lessons learned.

Mitchell, L. B., Barth, R. P., Green, R., Wall, A., Biemer, P., & Berrick, J. D., et al. (2005). Child welfare reform in the united states: Findings from a local agency survey. Child Welfare League of America, 84, 5-24. Efforts to improve the public welfare and child welfare system sparked an unprecedented amount of federal legislation in the 1990s, including the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (ASFA), the Multiethnic Placement Act of 1994 and Interethnic Adoption Provisions of 1996 (MEPA-IEP), and welfare reform. Such reforms allow an unprecedented degree of flexibility, but little is known about their implementation. Researchers administered the Local Agency Survey to the first national probability sample of public child welfare agencies from 1999 to 2000. Findings indicate that ASFA has had the most effect on child welfare service delivery. Welfare reform has had less effect, and MEPA-IEP seems to have had little effect at all.

Morrison, J., & Mishna, F. Knowing the child: An ecological approach to the treatment of children in foster care. Clinical Social Work Journal, 34(Winter), 467-481. Social workers in agencies and school settings often deal with high risk, multi problem children such as those in foster care. Increasingly, there is widespread recognition that a coordinated, multifaceted approach is required to address the range of cognitive, social, and mental health problems with which they present. This article recommends utilization of an ecological treatment intervention that is specifically tailored to the needs of the child based on a formulation of the child’s experience and developmental deficits. A case example comprising the treatment of an eight-year-old boy in foster care with comorbid diagnoses of alcohol related neurodevelpomental disorder, failure to thrive, and attachment disorder, illustrates this approach. The article concludes with implications for social work practice.

Moyers, S., Farmer, E., & Lipscombe, J. (2006). Contact with family members and its impact on adolescents and their foster placements. British Journal of Social Work, 36, 541-559. This paper discusses findings from a recently completed study of adolescent foster care, which included a detailed assessment of the fostering skills and supports of carers and of the contact that adolescents had with parents, siblings and other family members during a long-term foster placement. This paper describes the contact the young people had with their families, its impact on them and on the foster families and how it changed over time. The findings revealed that contact for the majority of adolescents was problematic and had a significant impact on placement outcomes. Ways of managing contact are highlighted, and the corresponding implications for policy and practice discussed.

Nesmith, A. (2006). Predictors of running away from family foster care. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 585-609. Running away is a frequent but little studied phenomenon among adolescents in foster care. Repeated running from care often leads to premature discharge and homelessness for youth. This article uses cumulative risk theory in the context of normative adolescent development to investigate predicators of running away from foster care. Results indicate risks stemming from individual, foster home, and child welfare system sources, which offer some insight for prevention and intervention.

Noonan, K., & Burke, K. (2005). Termination of parental rights: Which foster care children are affected? Social Science Journal, 42, 241-256. In 1997, the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) was passed with a primary goal of expediting the process of placing foster children with permanent or adoptive families. In order to meet this goal, ASFA requires states to terminate parental rights if a child has been in foster care for 15 of the most recent 22 months. Prior empirical research on foster care dependence supports the provision in ASFA to expedite the discharge process because over time children are progressively less likely to be discharged from foster care. However, very little research has examined what impact terminating parental rights will have on this goal. One of the first steps is to examine which children are most likely to see the rights of their parents terminated and how these children differ from those children who are returned home. Using a competing risks hazard model we find many differences between the children who are sent home and those children whose parents have their rights terminated.

Orme, J. G., Cuddeback, G. S., Buehler, C., & Cox, M. E. (2007). Measuring foster parent potential: Casey foster parent inventory-applicant version. Research on Social Work Practice, 17, 77-92. The Casey Foster Applicant Inventory-Applicant Version (CFAI-A) is a new standardized self-report measure designed to assess the potential to foster parent successfully. The CFAI-A is described, and results concerning its psychometric properties are presented. The CFAI-A shows promise for use in research and practice, where it might be used to improve decisions about how to support, monitor, and retain foster families and to match, place, and maintain foster children with foster families.

Pacifici, C., Delaney, R., White, L., Cummings, K., & Nelson, C. (2005). Foster parent college: Interactive multimedia training for foster parents. Social Work Research, 29, 243-251. The article discusses interactive multimedia training for foster parents. Research studies have long demonstrated the benefits of training for foster parents, children, and agencies. Early landmark studies showed that training produced key changes within the family unit, such as improved parent attitudes, parent-child interactions, and a reduction of child problem behavior. DVD and Web technology offer parents convenience and flexibility through home-based training. For the foster care agency, these formats are far more cost-effective than live training. Agencies can buy and then lend copies of a program or have low-cost site licensing arrangements.

Reifsteck, J. (2005). Failure and success in foster care programs. North American Journal of Psychology, 7, 313-326. The purpose of the current study was to classify types of services provided for youth in one sample (N=208) of children in foster care. A review of utilization trends and omissions in service suggests that even though some youth and their families benefit slightly from prevention efforts. It appears that satisfactory services for youth referred for child abuse and neglect are not readily apparent for all children in need.

Romney, S. C., Litrownik, A. J., Newton, R. R., & Lau, A. (2006). The relationship between child disability and living arrangement in child welfare. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 965-984. The influence of disabilities on placement outcomes was examined for 277 children who were removed from their biological parents due to substantiated maltreatment. Results indicated that children with a disability were less likely to reunify and more likely to reside in nonkin foster care two years later than typical children. Children with cognitive, emotional / behavioral, and physical disabilities were over four times more likely to be permanently living in nonkin foster care than to be reunified.

Rosenthal, J. A., & Waters, E. (2006). Predictors of child welfare worker retention and performance: Focus on Title IV-E-funded social work education. Journal of Social Service Research, 32, 67-85. Using administrative records, this paper tracks for up to four years using Cox survival methods the retention of 839 public child welfare workers who began child welfare work in 1999. Participation in a IV-E-funded social work educational program predicted better retention. In particular, risk of termination decreased by 52% during the mandated contractual employment period in which the educational stipend was "worked off". Other predictors of longer retention included prior non-child welfare employment at the public agency and working in the state office setting. Regression analyses revealed an association between an ethnic group's representation in the population of child welfare workers and supervisory evaluation; the greater that representation, the higher the overall evaluation for the group.

Rubin, D. M., O'Reilly, A. L. R., Xianqun Luan, & Localio, A. R. (2007). The impact of placement stability on behavioral well-being for children in foster care. Pediatrics, 119, 336-344. This is a 2007 research article identiying the problems children have upon entering foster care and explains prior research findings that frequent placement changes are associated with poor outcomes. This study sought to disentangle this cascading relationship in order to identify the independent impact of placement stability on behavioral outcomes downstream. The goal was to identify the innate contribution of a child's placement stability toward his or her risk for behavioral problems 18 months after entering foster care.The article concludes that children in foster care experience placement instability unrelated to their baseline problems, and this instability has a significant impact on their behavioral well-being.

Sellick, C. (2006). From famine to feast. A review of the foster care research literature. Children & Society, 20, 67-74. Foster care has become the principal placement of choice for children and young people in public care in the United Kingdom (UK). This has been accompanied by a significant growth in its research scrutiny connected to a busy policy agenda, especially since 1997. With its increased usage, fostering has encountered both difficulties and developments. Children often have emotional and behavioral problems which strain their foster families to their limits and risk placement breakdown. Public sector foster carers continue to be in short supply and keeping them engaged in fostering remains a challenge. Major developments have occurred in response to these difficulties. The use of relatives as kinship carers has increased substantially and the non-governmental or independent fostering sector has grown rapidly. Until comparatively recently, the knowledge base of foster care in Britain was limited, but the past decade has seen that change and now a substantial body of research knowledge is available in the UK.

Shirk, M., & Strangler, G. (2005). On their own: What happens to kids when they age out of the foster care system. Journal of Social Work Education, 41(Winter), 161-161. This article focuses on the book "On Their own: What Happens to Kids When They Age Out of the Foster Care System," by M. Shirk and G. Stangler. Every year, nearly 25,000 teenagers age out of foster care by the time they turn eighteen. The discussed book with a foreword written by the U.S. President Jimmy Carters, is a collection of compelling stories about such teenagers. The authors not only document the struggles of these teenagers, they also call for action in order to provide youth in foster care the opportunities that most teens take for granted.

Shlonsky, A. (2006). Beyond common sense: Child welfare, child well-being, and the evidence for policy reform. Social Service Review, 80, 756-761. This article presents a review of a book entitled "Beyond Common Sense: Child Welfare, Child Well-Being, and the Evidence for Policy Reform,".

Smith, N. A. Empowering the "unfit" mother. Affilia: Journal of Women & Social Work, 21(Winter), 448-457. This article presents the results of a qualitative study that examined the experiences of women who were deemed ‘unfit’ to care for their children. The voices of these mothers call attention to the difficult process of recovery from addiction while trying to regain custody of one's children. A strengths-based empowerment approach is emphasized in work with these women, beginning with a redefinition of the label ‘unfit.’

Survey finds diverse state initiatives with a common focus on improving child care.(2006). Policy & Practice of Public Human Services, 64, 35-35.

Swann, C. A., & Sheran Sylvester, M. (2006). The foster care crisis: What caused caseloads to grow? Demography, 43, 309-335. Foster care caseloads more than doubled from 1985 to 2000. This article provides the first comprehensive study of this growth by relating state-level foster care caseloads to state-specific characteristics and policies. We present evidence that increases in female incarcerations and reductions in cash welfare benefits played dominant roles in explaining the growth in foster care caseloads over this period. Our results highlight the need for child welfare policies designed specifically for the children of incarcerated parents and parents who are facing less generous welfare programs.

Timmer, S. G., Llrquiza, A. I., Herschell, A. D., McGrath, J. M., Zebell, N. M., & Porter, A. L., et al. (2006). Parent-child interaction therapy: Application of an empirically supported treatment to maltreated children in foster care. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 919-939. One of the more serious problems faced by child welfare services involves the management of children with serious behavioral and mental health problems. Aggressive and defiant foster children are more likely to have multiple foster care placements, require extraordinary social services resources, and have poor short- and long-term mental health outcomes. Interventions that work with challenging foster children and enhance foster parents' skills in managing problem behaviors are necessary. This article presents the successful results of a single case study examining the application of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) with an aggressive young boy and his foster-adoptive parent. PCIT is a dyadic intervention that has been identified as an empirically supported treatment for abused children and for children with different types of behavioral disruption. The application of PCIT to assist foster parents is a promising direction for child welfare services.

Vig, S., Chinitz, S., & Shulman, L. (2005). Young children in foster care. Infants & Young Children: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Special Care Practices, 18, 147-160. Young children who have been removed from their biological families and placed in foster care are at significant risk for poor developmental outcomes. Their vulnerability is often the result of adverse biological and psychosocial influences: prenatal exposure to alcohol and other drugs, premature birth, abuse and neglect leading to foster placement, and failure to form adequate attachments to their primary caregivers. The purpose of the following discussion is to describe the foster care population and the kinds of medical conditions, mental health problems, and developmental disabilities experienced by young children in foster care, and to explore implications for intervention.

Wilcox, B. L., Weisz, P. V., & Miller, M. K. (2005). Practical guidelines for educating policymakers: The family impact seminar as an approach to advancing the interests of children and families in the policy arena. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 34, 638-645. Psychologists are well positioned to contribute to policymaking on issues affecting the well-being of children, youth, and families. A good deal of psychological research is relevant to policy issues such as child mental health services, child care, adoption and foster care, and children's media. In this article we offer an alternative to direct policy advocacy as a means for psychologists' involvement in the policy arena. Policy education, a nonpartisan and nonadversarial approach to working with policymakers, is described and differentiated from child advocacy. We then present an example of 1 approach to policy education, the Family Impact Seminar. The article closes with a discussion of lessons we have learned regarding effectively communicating research to policymakers.

Williams, J., McWilliams, A., Mainieri, T., Pecora, P. J., & La Belle, K. (2006). Enhancing the validity of foster care follow-up studies through multiple alumni location strategies. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 499-521. While family-based placement prevention services, family reunification programs, subsidized guardianship, and aggressive adoption programs are reducing the numbers of children spending long periods of time in substitute care, a significant number of America's children will come of age in foster care. Agencies and policymakers should use research and evaluation to assess the effectiveness of foster care in nurturing healthy adults and to explore ways to improve services. Outcome studies that have focused on locating and interviewing young or middle-aged adults emancipated from foster care have been hampered by modest response rates, limiting the field's ability to evaluate the efficacy of foster care programs. This article describes a set of strategies that were used to achieve higher response rates in two recent follow-up studies.

Recent Publications on Foster Care and Adoption: Empirical Research to Enhance Best Practices

(prepared by Tiffany Armstrong, March 2007)

Becker, M., Jordan, N., & Larsen, R. (2006). Behavioral health service use and costs among children in foster care. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 633-647. This article compares behavioral health service use and cost for foster care versus nonfoster care children; children before, during, and after foster care placement; and successfully reunified versus nonsuccessfully reunified foster care children.

Berge, J. M., Mendenhall, T. J., Wrobel, G. M., Grotevant, H. D., & McRoy, R. G. (2006). Adolescents' feelings about openness in adoption: Implications for adoption agencies. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 1011-1039. Adoption research commonly uses parents' reports of satisfaction when examining openness in adoption arrangements. This qualitative study aimed to fill a gap in the adoption research by using adolescents' voices to gain a better understanding of their adoption experiences. Adopted adolescents (n = 152) were interviewed concerning their satisfaction with the openness in their adoption arrangements with their birthmothers. Results and implications from this study may affect how adoption agencies work with adopted adolescents and their families, and may influence a broader understanding of the recent trend toward open adoption arrangements.

Bogolub, E. B. Child welfare for the twenty-first century: A handbook of practices, policies, and programs. Affilia: Journal of Women & Social Work, 21, 462-463. The article reviews the book "Child Welfare for the Twenty-First Century: A Handbook of Practices, Policies and Programs," edited by G. P. Mallon and P. M. Hess.

Bottoms, B. L., & Quas, J. A. (2006). Recent advances and new challenges in child maltreatment research, practice, and policy: Previewing the issues. Journal of Social Issues, 62, 653-662. Few issues are of such grave importance to society and to the science and practice of psychology as child maltreatment. Our goal in editing this issue of JSI was to inform scientists across various sub-fields of psychology about the most current knowledge in the field of child maltreatment, broadly defined. The authors of the articles have gone further, pushing past the edge of current knowledge and setting aggressive agendas for future empirical and policy-relevant work. We believe that the result will be enriched future research, practice, policy, and law, and in turn, the increased well-being of children and their families

Brenner, E., & Freundlich, M. (2006). Enhancing the safety of children in foster care and family support programs: Automated critical incident reporting. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 611-632. The Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 has made child safety an explicit focus in child welfare. The authors describe an automated critical incident reporting program designed for use in foster care and family-support programs. The program, which is based in Lotus Notes and uses e-mail to route incident reports from direct service staff to supervisors and administrators, facilitates timely clinical oversight and risk management and ensures the security of clients' protected health information. The authors present data collected using the program to illustrate how it can be used to monitor abuse and neglect allegations in a foster care program. survey of users found that the program saved time, was easy to use, and helped manage critical incident reports.

Cole, S. A. (2005). Infants in foster care: Relational and environmental factors affecting attachment. Journal of Reproductive & Infant Psychology, 23(02), 43-61. The present study investigated the effect of relational and environmental factors affecting attachment security in 46 infants placed in foster homes. The study found that a majority of infants (67%) in the participant group were securely attached. Additionally, of the insecurely attached, a larger percentage of infants than anticipated displayed disorganized/disoriented patterns of attachment. The study found that organization of the foster home environment and appropriate learning materials predicted secure attachment while foster caregiver childhood trauma and involvement predicted insecure attachment. Strategies are proposed for better training and support of foster caregivers for developing secure relationships with the infants.

Connolly, M. (2006). Up front and personal: Confronting dynamics in the family group conference. Family process, 45, 345-357. The Family Group Conference is a participatory model of decision making with families in child protection. It is a legal process that brings together the family, including the extended family, and the professionals in a family-led decision-making forum. This article briefly describes the development and practice of family group conferencing as a family-centered legal process in Aotearoa, New Zealand. It then examines the findings of a study exploring the dynamics emerging from family group conference practice from the perspective of the coordinators who convene them. Family group conferencing as a family strengthening practice is discussed.

DePanfilis, D. (2006). Child neglect: A guide for prevention, assessment, and intervention (User Manual Series ed.). Washington, D.C.: Child Welfare Information Gateway. This is the 3rd edition user manual that addresses in depth issues of child abuse and neglect and describes the root causes, symptoms, and consequences of neglect, as well as the interdisciplinary ways to prevent both its occurrence and recurrence. It gives the most current information on the definition and scope and impact of neglect and describes risk and protective factors, assessment, prevention and intervention.

DeRoberts-Moore, N. (2006). A system that serves caseworkers and clients. Policy & Practice of Public Human Services, 64, 18-20. The article focuses on the development of the Statewide Automated Child Welfare Information System (SACWIS) in Ohio. This initiative was designed to compile and help enforce a comprehensive set of child welfare and protection practices that can achieve the best outcomes for clients. It will monitor and reach children and families helped by state child welfare agencies. In addition, Congress authorized matching finances for SACWIS.

Dore, M. (2007). Children in family contexts: Perspectives on treatment. Research on Social Work Practice, 17, 156-157. The article reviews the book "Children in Family Contexts: Perspectives on Treatment," 2nd edition, edited by L. Combrinck -Graham.

Downs, A. C., & James, S. E. (2006). Gay, lesbian, and bisexual foster parents: Strengths and challenges for the child welfare system. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 281-298. This article documents the challenges and successes of a group of 60 LGB foster parents. All participants provided foster parenting for public (state or county) agencies. The primary successes of this group included meaningful and gratifying parenting and successful testing of whether adoption might be a natural next step after foster parenting. The primary challenges included insensitive, inappropriate, and difficult social workers; state or local laws that worked against successful foster parenting by LGB adults; failure to recognize parents' partners; and lack of support by the system to acknowledge the important role of LGB parents. Numerous recommendations are identified for improving how LGB foster parents are supported within child welfare systems including foster parent and social worker training in LGB issues.

Dozier, M., Peloso, E., Lindhiem, O., Gordon, M. K., Manni, M., & Sepulveda, S., et al. (2006). Developing evidence-based interventions for foster children: An example of a randomized clinical trial with infants and toddlers. Journal of Social Issues, 62, 767-785. Children who enter foster care have usually experienced maltreatment as well as disruptions in relationships with primary caregivers. These children are at risk for a host of problematic outcomes. However, there are few evidence-based interventions that target foster children. This article presents preliminary data testing the effectiveness of an intervention, Attachment and Bio-behavioral Catch-up, to target relationship formation in young children in the foster care system. Results provide preliminary evidence of the effectiveness of an intervention that targets children's regulatory capabilities and serve as an example of how interventions can effectively target foster children in the child welfare system.

Finkelhor, D., & Jones, L. (2006). Why have child maltreatment and child victimization declined? Journal of Social Issues, 62, 685-716. Various forms of child maltreatment and child victimization declined as much as 40–70% from 1993 until 2004, including sexual abuse, physical abuse, sexual assault, homicide, aggravated assault, robbery, and larceny. Other child welfare indicators also improved during the same period, including teen pregnancy, teen suicide, and children living in poverty. This article reviews a wide variety of possible explanations for these changes: demography, fertility and abortion legalization, economic prosperity, increased incarceration of offenders, increased agents of social intervention, changing social norms and practices, the dissipation of the social changes from the 1960s, and psychiatric pharmacology.

Green, B. L., Rockhill, A., & Furrer, C. (2006). Understanding patterns of substance abuse treatment for women involved with child welfare: The influence of the adoption and safe families act (ASFA). American Journal of Drug & Alcohol Abuse, 32, 149-176. The passage of the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act (AFSA) has led to increased attention to the need for timely and appropriate treatment services to families with substance abuse issues who are involved with child welfare. Using statewide administrative data collected before and after the implementation of ASFA, the present study explores the influence of ASFA, as well as other family characteristics, on patterns of treatment service utilization by child-welfare involved clients. Results are interpreted in terms of the changing treatment service context, enhanced collaboration between child welfare and treatment systems, and the possible influence of the legislation on parents' motivation to enter treatment.

Jones, W.,G. (2006). Working with the courts in child protection. (3rd Edition. Chid Abuse and Neglect User Manual Series ed.). Washington, D.C.: Child Welfare Information Gateway. This is an overall user manual of improvements and best practices to prepare the Child Welfare worker for entry into the court system. The manual gives a detailed description of differing court systems, processes and jurisdictions. It describes the powers and rights of parents and children and the interplay between child maltreatment legislation and caseworker practice. It also describes issues involved in going to court and the relationship between the caseworker and the court.

Kahan, M. (2006). "Put up" on platforms: A history of twentieth century adoption policy in the united states. Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare, 33, 51-72. Adoption is closely intertwined with many issues that are central to public policy in this country; welfare and poverty, race and class, and gender. An analysis of the history of adoption shows how it has been shaped by the nation's mores and demographics. In order to better understand this phenomenon, and its significance to larger societal issues, this analysis reviews its history, focusing on four key periods in which this country's adoption policy was shaped: the late Nineteenth Century's `orphan trains'; the family preservation and Mothers' Pensions of the Progressive Era; World War II through the 1950s, with secrecy and the beginnings of international adoption; and the 1970s-1990s, when reproductive controls were more obtainable, and relinquishing children became more uncommon.

Leathers, S. J., & Testa, M. F. (2006). Foster youth emancipating from care: Caseworkers' reports on needs and services. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 463-498. This article presents findings from a survey mailed caseworkers, who answered questions about special needs, independent living skills, educational attainment, 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 were underserved relative to other youth. Youth with more behavior problems and educational and job skill deficits were less likely than other youth to continue receive child welfare services past age 18, suggesting that services must be provided throughout adolescence to meet the needs of the most vulnerable clients.

Matthews, J. D., & Cramer, E. P. (2006). Envisaging the adoption process to strengthen gay- and lesbian-headed families: Recommendations for adoption professionals. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 317-340. Although a growing number of child placement agencies are serving lesbians and gay men, a dearth of literature exists for adoption agency policies and practices related to working with this population. This article explores the unique characteristics and strengths of prospective gay and lesbian adoptive parents throughout each of the three phases of the adoption process--preplacement, placement, and postplacement--as well as provides suggestions for adoption professionals working with gays and lesbians.

McGlade, K., & Ackerman, J. (2006). A hope for foster care: Agency executives in partnerships with parent leaders. Journal of Emotional Abuse, 6(2), 97-112. Two foster care executives encourage agency and parent leaders to rethink their relationships to improve the lives of children in their shared custody. When mothers-of-color charged that white privilege harmed rather than helped children, the white executives connected the accusation to their experience as closeted gay leaders in a religiously-run organization. That unexpected insight became the sharper lens through which they saw some emotional damage caused by their decisions. The executives examined their behavior and transformed their adversarial relationship with parents into a partnership. Their suggestions are based on efforts with parents, mistakes with trustees, and hard lessons learned.

Mitchell, L. B., Barth, R. P., Green, R., Wall, A., Biemer, P., & Berrick, J. D., et al. (2005). Child welfare reform in the united states: Findings from a local agency survey. Child Welfare League of America, 84, 5-24. Efforts to improve the public welfare and child welfare system sparked an unprecedented amount of federal legislation in the 1990s, including the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (ASFA), the Multiethnic Placement Act of 1994 and Interethnic Adoption Provisions of 1996 (MEPA-IEP), and welfare reform. Such reforms allow an unprecedented degree of flexibility, but little is known about their implementation. Researchers administered the Local Agency Survey to the first national probability sample of public child welfare agencies from 1999 to 2000. Findings indicate that ASFA has had the most effect on child welfare service delivery. Welfare reform has had less effect, and MEPA-IEP seems to have had little effect at all.

Morrison, J., & Mishna, F. Knowing the child: An ecological approach to the treatment of children in foster care. Clinical Social Work Journal, 34(Winter), 467-481. Social workers in agencies and school settings often deal with high risk, multi problem children such as those in foster care. Increasingly, there is widespread recognition that a coordinated, multifaceted approach is required to address the range of cognitive, social, and mental health problems with which they present. This article recommends utilization of an ecological treatment intervention that is specifically tailored to the needs of the child based on a formulation of the child’s experience and developmental deficits. A case example comprising the treatment of an eight-year-old boy in foster care with comorbid diagnoses of alcohol related neurodevelpomental disorder, failure to thrive, and attachment disorder, illustrates this approach. The article concludes with implications for social work practice.

Moyers, S., Farmer, E., & Lipscombe, J. (2006). Contact with family members and its impact on adolescents and their foster placements. British Journal of Social Work, 36, 541-559. This paper discusses findings from a recently completed study of adolescent foster care, which included a detailed assessment of the fostering skills and supports of carers and of the contact that adolescents had with parents, siblings and other family members during a long-term foster placement. This paper describes the contact the young people had with their families, its impact on them and on the foster families and how it changed over time. The findings revealed that contact for the majority of adolescents was problematic and had a significant impact on placement outcomes. Ways of managing contact are highlighted, and the corresponding implications for policy and practice discussed.

Nesmith, A. (2006). Predictors of running away from family foster care. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 585-609. Running away is a frequent but little studied phenomenon among adolescents in foster care. Repeated running from care often leads to premature discharge and homelessness for youth. This article uses cumulative risk theory in the context of normative adolescent development to investigate predicators of running away from foster care. Results indicate risks stemming from individual, foster home, and child welfare system sources, which offer some insight for prevention and intervention.

Noonan, K., & Burke, K. (2005). Termination of parental rights: Which foster care children are affected? Social Science Journal, 42, 241-256. In 1997, the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) was passed with a primary goal of expediting the process of placing foster children with permanent or adoptive families. In order to meet this goal, ASFA requires states to terminate parental rights if a child has been in foster care for 15 of the most recent 22 months. Prior empirical research on foster care dependence supports the provision in ASFA to expedite the discharge process because over time children are progressively less likely to be discharged from foster care. However, very little research has examined what impact terminating parental rights will have on this goal. One of the first steps is to examine which children are most likely to see the rights of their parents terminated and how these children differ from those children who are returned home. Using a competing risks hazard model we find many differences between the children who are sent home and those children whose parents have their rights terminated.

Orme, J. G., Cuddeback, G. S., Buehler, C., & Cox, M. E. (2007). Measuring foster parent potential: Casey foster parent inventory-applicant version. Research on Social Work Practice, 17, 77-92. The Casey Foster Applicant Inventory-Applicant Version (CFAI-A) is a new standardized self-report measure designed to assess the potential to foster parent successfully. The CFAI-A is described, and results concerning its psychometric properties are presented. The CFAI-A shows promise for use in research and practice, where it might be used to improve decisions about how to support, monitor, and retain foster families and to match, place, and maintain foster children with foster families.

Pacifici, C., Delaney, R., White, L., Cummings, K., & Nelson, C. (2005). Foster parent college: Interactive multimedia training for foster parents. Social Work Research, 29, 243-251. The article discusses interactive multimedia training for foster parents. Research studies have long demonstrated the benefits of training for foster parents, children, and agencies. Early landmark studies showed that training produced key changes within the family unit, such as improved parent attitudes, parent-child interactions, and a reduction of child problem behavior. DVD and Web technology offer parents convenience and flexibility through home-based training. For the foster care agency, these formats are far more cost-effective than live training. Agencies can buy and then lend copies of a program or have low-cost site licensing arrangements.

Reifsteck, J. (2005). Failure and success in foster care programs. North American Journal of Psychology, 7, 313-326. The purpose of the current study was to classify types of services provided for youth in one sample (N=208) of children in foster care. A review of utilization trends and omissions in service suggests that even though some youth and their families benefit slightly from prevention efforts. It appears that satisfactory services for youth referred for child abuse and neglect are not readily apparent for all children in need.

Romney, S. C., Litrownik, A. J., Newton, R. R., & Lau, A. (2006). The relationship between child disability and living arrangement in child welfare. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 965-984. The influence of disabilities on placement outcomes was examined for 277 children who were removed from their biological parents due to substantiated maltreatment. Results indicated that children with a disability were less likely to reunify and more likely to reside in nonkin foster care two years later than typical children. Children with cognitive, emotional / behavioral, and physical disabilities were over four times more likely to be permanently living in nonkin foster care than to be reunified.

Rosenthal, J. A., & Waters, E. (2006). Predictors of child welfare worker retention and performance: Focus on Title IV-E-funded social work education. Journal of Social Service Research, 32, 67-85. Using administrative records, this paper tracks for up to four years using Cox survival methods the retention of 839 public child welfare workers who began child welfare work in 1999. Participation in a IV-E-funded social work educational program predicted better retention. In particular, risk of termination decreased by 52% during the mandated contractual employment period in which the educational stipend was "worked off". Other predictors of longer retention included prior non-child welfare employment at the public agency and working in the state office setting. Regression analyses revealed an association between an ethnic group's representation in the population of child welfare workers and supervisory evaluation; the greater that representation, the higher the overall evaluation for the group.

Rubin, D. M., O'Reilly, A. L. R., Xianqun Luan, & Localio, A. R. (2007). The impact of placement stability on behavioral well-being for children in foster care. Pediatrics, 119, 336-344. This is a 2007 research article identiying the problems children have upon entering foster care and explains prior research findings that frequent placement changes are associated with poor outcomes. This study sought to disentangle this cascading relationship in order to identify the independent impact of placement stability on behavioral outcomes downstream. The goal was to identify the innate contribution of a child's placement stability toward his or her risk for behavioral problems 18 months after entering foster care.The article concludes that children in foster care experience placement instability unrelated to their baseline problems, and this instability has a significant impact on their behavioral well-being.

Sellick, C. (2006). From famine to feast. A review of the foster care research literature. Children & Society, 20, 67-74. Foster care has become the principal placement of choice for children and young people in public care in the United Kingdom (UK). This has been accompanied by a significant growth in its research scrutiny connected to a busy policy agenda, especially since 1997. With its increased usage, fostering has encountered both difficulties and developments. Children often have emotional and behavioral problems which strain their foster families to their limits and risk placement breakdown. Public sector foster carers continue to be in short supply and keeping them engaged in fostering remains a challenge. Major developments have occurred in response to these difficulties. The use of relatives as kinship carers has increased substantially and the non-governmental or independent fostering sector has grown rapidly. Until comparatively recently, the knowledge base of foster care in Britain was limited, but the past decade has seen that change and now a substantial body of research knowledge is available in the UK.

Shirk, M., & Strangler, G. (2005). On their own: What happens to kids when they age out of the foster care system. Journal of Social Work Education, 41(Winter), 161-161. This article focuses on the book "On Their own: What Happens to Kids When They Age Out of the Foster Care System," by M. Shirk and G. Stangler. Every year, nearly 25,000 teenagers age out of foster care by the time they turn eighteen. The discussed book with a foreword written by the U.S. President Jimmy Carters, is a collection of compelling stories about such teenagers. The authors not only document the struggles of these teenagers, they also call for action in order to provide youth in foster care the opportunities that most teens take for granted.

Shlonsky, A. (2006). Beyond common sense: Child welfare, child well-being, and the evidence for policy reform. Social Service Review, 80, 756-761. This article presents a review of a book entitled "Beyond Common Sense: Child Welfare, Child Well-Being, and the Evidence for Policy Reform,".

Smith, N. A. Empowering the "unfit" mother. Affilia: Journal of Women & Social Work, 21(Winter), 448-457. This article presents the results of a qualitative study that examined the experiences of women who were deemed ‘unfit’ to care for their children. The voices of these mothers call attention to the difficult process of recovery from addiction while trying to regain custody of one's children. A strengths-based empowerment approach is emphasized in work with these women, beginning with a redefinition of the label ‘unfit.’

Survey finds diverse state initiatives with a common focus on improving child care.(2006). Policy & Practice of Public Human Services, 64, 35-35.

Swann, C. A., & Sheran Sylvester, M. (2006). The foster care crisis: What caused caseloads to grow? Demography, 43, 309-335. Foster care caseloads more than doubled from 1985 to 2000. This article provides the first comprehensive study of this growth by relating state-level foster care caseloads to state-specific characteristics and policies. We present evidence that increases in female incarcerations and reductions in cash welfare benefits played dominant roles in explaining the growth in foster care caseloads over this period. Our results highlight the need for child welfare policies designed specifically for the children of incarcerated parents and parents who are facing less generous welfare programs.

Timmer, S. G., Llrquiza, A. I., Herschell, A. D., McGrath, J. M., Zebell, N. M., & Porter, A. L., et al. (2006). Parent-child interaction therapy: Application of an empirically supported treatment to maltreated children in foster care. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 919-939. One of the more serious problems faced by child welfare services involves the management of children with serious behavioral and mental health problems. Aggressive and defiant foster children are more likely to have multiple foster care placements, require extraordinary social services resources, and have poor short- and long-term mental health outcomes. Interventions that work with challenging foster children and enhance foster parents' skills in managing problem behaviors are necessary. This article presents the successful results of a single case study examining the application of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) with an aggressive young boy and his foster-adoptive parent. PCIT is a dyadic intervention that has been identified as an empirically supported treatment for abused children and for children with different types of behavioral disruption. The application of PCIT to assist foster parents is a promising direction for child welfare services.

Vig, S., Chinitz, S., & Shulman, L. (2005). Young children in foster care. Infants & Young Children: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Special Care Practices, 18, 147-160. Young children who have been removed from their biological families and placed in foster care are at significant risk for poor developmental outcomes. Their vulnerability is often the result of adverse biological and psychosocial influences: prenatal exposure to alcohol and other drugs, premature birth, abuse and neglect leading to foster placement, and failure to form adequate attachments to their primary caregivers. The purpose of the following discussion is to describe the foster care population and the kinds of medical conditions, mental health problems, and developmental disabilities experienced by young children in foster care, and to explore implications for intervention.

Wilcox, B. L., Weisz, P. V., & Miller, M. K. (2005). Practical guidelines for educating policymakers: The family impact seminar as an approach to advancing the interests of children and families in the policy arena. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 34, 638-645. Psychologists are well positioned to contribute to policymaking on issues affecting the well-being of children, youth, and families. A good deal of psychological research is relevant to policy issues such as child mental health services, child care, adoption and foster care, and children's media. In this article we offer an alternative to direct policy advocacy as a means for psychologists' involvement in the policy arena. Policy education, a nonpartisan and nonadversarial approach to working with policymakers, is described and differentiated from child advocacy. We then present an example of 1 approach to policy education, the Family Impact Seminar. The article closes with a discussion of lessons we have learned regarding effectively communicating research to policymakers.

Williams, J., McWilliams, A., Mainieri, T., Pecora, P. J., & La Belle, K. (2006). Enhancing the validity of foster care follow-up studies through multiple alumni location strategies. Child Welfare League of America, 85, 499-521. While family-based placement prevention services, family reunification programs, subsidized guardianship, and aggressive adoption programs are reducing the numbers of children spending long periods of time in substitute care, a significant number of America's children will come of age in foster care. Agencies and policymakers should use research and evaluation to assess the effectiveness of foster care in nurturing healthy adults and to explore ways to improve services. Outcome studies that have focused on locating and interviewing young or middle-aged adults emancipated from foster care have been hampered by modest response rates, limiting the field's ability to evaluate the efficacy of foster care programs. This article describes a set of strategies that were used to achieve higher response rates in two recent follow-up studies.