Child Welfare: An Overview of Federal Programs and Their Current Funding

Child welfare services are intended to prevent the abuse or neglect of children; ensure that children have safe, permanent homes; and promote the well-being of children and their families. As the U.S. Constitution has been interpreted, states have the primary obligation to ensure the welfare of children and their families. At the state level, the child welfare “system” consists of public child protection and child welfare workers, private child welfare and social service workers, state and local judges, prosecutors, and law enforcement personnel. These representatives of various state and local entities assume interrelated roles while carrying out child welfare activities, including investigating allegations of child abuse and neglect, providing services to families to ensure children’s safety in the home, removing children from their homes when that is necessary for their safety, supervising and administering payments for children placed in foster care, and ensuring permanency planning and regular case review for children in foster care. Most federal dollars dedicated to child welfare purposes are provided to state child welfare agencies, and federal involvement in child welfare is primarily tied to this financial assistance. In recent years, Congress has appropriated just above or below $8 billion in federal support dedicated to child welfare purposes. As a condition of receiving these foster care and other child welfare program funds, states must typically provide nonfederal funds of between 20Apart from the federal funding provided for programs described in this report, state child welfare agencies tap significant program resources—as much as$5.6 billion—from other federal funding streams, including the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant, the Social Services Block Grant (SSBG), and Medicaid. These federal funding streams have federal statutory goals, or support activities, that overlap with child welfare purposes. However, they are not solely dedicated to child welfare purposes and states are not necessarily required to use them for those specific purposes. Neither do states need to meet federal requirements specific to the conduct of their child welfare programs as a condition of receiving this “nondedicated” funding. This report begins with a review of federal appropriations activity in FY2014 as it relates to child welfare programs, including the effect of the automatic spending cuts, known as sequestration. The bulk of the report provides a short description of each federal child welfare program, including its purpose and recent (FY2012-FY2014) funding levels

Transforming Front-Line Child Welfare Practice: The Impacts of Institutional Settings on Services, Employment Environments, Children, and Families (SYNTHESIS REPORT)

In 2006, the Ontario government launched an ambitious and multi-faceted Transformation Agenda for child welfare services. Among this Agenda’s objectives was the development of more cooperative helping relationships in child welfare, reducing the system’s reliance on legal authority to engage families, creating community and service partnerships and increasing child welfare capacity to respond differentially to families. Within this shifting child welfare context, the Transforming Front-line Child Welfare Practice Project research’s main purpose was to understand how centrally located service delivery settings and service delivery settings that were more accessible to families affected front-line child protection practice. A second encompassing objective was to examine how partnerships with other service organizations and neighbourhood associations affected front line child welfare practice. This Transforming Front-line Child Welfare Practice research examined eleven separate accessible and central child welfare service delivery sites at six child welfare agencies in Ontario. These sites were selected to vary on these two dimensions of accessibility and partnerships. These two dimensions have also been identified in the literature as contributing to child welfare capacity to respond differentially or flexibly to familes (Cameron, Freymond, & Roy, 2003; Schene, 2001, 2005). With one exception, accessible service delivery models in this research embedded front line child protection service providers in neighbourhoods or schools so that service providers would be more familiar and accessible to families. The philosophies of accessible programs emphasized collaboration with other community service providers, local community building and prevention. Central models located child protection service providers in agency premises that generally were not physically close to most of the families served. This was the more common service delivery setting for child protection services in the participating agencies and in other Children’s Aid Societies in Ontario. Earlier exploratory research through the Partnerships for Children and Families program of research (Frensch, Cameron, & Hazineh, 2005a) at Wilfrid Laurier University found that different child protection service delivery settings had notable impacts on child protection service delivery including: (1) service provider accessibility to children and families, (2) the development of cooperative helping relationships with children and families, (3) the development of partnerships with other service organizations, (4) the development of partnerships with neighbourhood associations, (5) the levels and types of assistance provided to children and families, and (6) client and community image the child welfare agency. This more extensive research built upon this earlier exploratory research. More specifically, this multi-faceted longitudinal research incorporated: An assessment of the impacts of accessible and central service delivery models on family functioning indicators and child protection system indicators (e.g. formal court applications, out-of-home placements of children, etc.). An exploration of how these different child welfare service delivery settings affected front line child protection service providers’ satisfaction with their work with children and families. An exploration of how these different child welfare service delivery settings affected parents’ satisfaction with their child welfare service involvements. An examination of how these different child welfare service delivery settings influenced the services and supports available to families. An assessment of the impacts of accessible and central service delivery settings on front line helping relationships in child welfare. An exploration of how accessible and central service delivery settings affected employment satisfaction and sustainability. This research also discusses the development requirements of the accessible service delivery models and what practical lessons can be gleaned from these experiences. Finally, it looks at broader implications for how we understand and organize our efforts to keep children safe and help families

Mothers’ Everyday Realities and Child Placement Experiences (SUMMARY REPORT)

Placing a child in substitute care is one of the most challenging aspects of child welfare work. In situations of apprehension, child welfare workers may be required to make quick decisions about child placement sometimes with very limited information. This paper is based on interviews with mothers whose children were placed in substitute care. Mothers’ daily lives, including the nature of adversity in their lives, will be discussed. Mothers’ response to adversity and how they are impacted both positively and negatively by child welfare interventions will also be explored. Their experiences of placement reveals there is a disconnection between the primary interventions used by child welfare workers and the daily living realities of mothers. How the views of mothers might inform child welfare interventions and broader systems will be explored

Transforming Front-Line Child Welfare Practice: The Impacts of Institutional Settings on Services, Employment Environments, Children, and Families (SUMMARY OF FINAL REPORT)

In 2006, the Ontario government launched an ambitious and multi-faceted Transformation Agenda for child welfare services. Among this Agenda’s objectives was the development of more cooperative helping relationships in child welfare, reducing the system’s reliance on legal authority to engage families, creating community and service partnerships and increasing child welfare capacity to respond differentially to families. Within this shifting child welfare context, the Transforming Front-line Child Welfare Practice Project research’s main purpose was to understand how centrally located service delivery settings and service delivery settings that were more accessible to families affected front-line child protection practice. A second encompassing objective was to examine how partnerships with other service organizations and neighbourhood associations affected front line child welfare practice. This Transforming Front-line Child Welfare Practice research examined eleven separate accessible and central child welfare service delivery sites at six child welfare agencies in Ontario. These sites were selected to vary on these two dimensions of accessibility and partnerships. These two dimensions have also been identified in the literature as contributing to child welfare capacity to respond differentially or flexibly to familes (Cameron, Freymond, & Roy, 2003; Schene, 2001, 2005). With one exception, accessible service delivery models in this research embedded front line child protection service providers in neighbourhoods or schools so that service providers would be more familiar and accessible to families. The philosophies of accessible programs emphasized collaboration with other community service providers, local community building and prevention. Central models located child protection service providers in agency premises that generally were not physically close to most of the families served. This was the more common service delivery setting for child protection services in the participating agencies and in other Children’s Aid Societies in Ontario. Earlier exploratory research through the Partnerships for Children and Families program of research (Frensch, Cameron, & Hazineh, 2005a) at Wilfrid Laurier University found that different child protection service delivery settings had notable impacts on child protection service delivery including: (1) service provider accessibility to children and families, (2) the development of cooperative helping relationships with children and families, (3) the development of partnerships with other service organizations, (4) the development of partnerships with neighbourhood associations, (5) the levels and types of assistance provided to children and families, and (6) client and community image the child welfare agency. This more extensive research built upon this earlier exploratory research. More specifically, this multi-faceted longitudinal research incorporated: An assessment of the impacts of accessible and central service delivery models on family functioning indicators and child protection system indicators (e.g. formal court applications, out-of-home placements of children, etc.). An exploration of how these different child welfare service delivery settings affected front line child protection service providers’ satisfaction with their work with children and families. An exploration of how these different child welfare service delivery settings affected parents’ satisfaction with their child welfare service involvements. An examination of how these different child welfare service delivery settings influenced the services and supports available to families. An assessment of the impacts of accessible and central service delivery settings on front line helping relationships in child welfare. An exploration of how accessible and central service delivery settings affected employment satisfaction and sustainability. This research also discusses the development requirements of the accessible service delivery models and what practical lessons can be gleaned from these experiences. Finally, it looks at broader implications for how we understand and organize our efforts to keep children safe and help families

Aboriginal Child Welfare

As the relationships between Canada’s Aboriginal peoples and the state undergo changes, the issue of Child Welfare is in the foreground; for it is around the well being, education and care of Aboriginal children that much of the painful historical relationship between First Nations and Canadian government has been played out. In this paper we consider the major issues in Canadian Aboriginal child welfare, drawing upon an extensive review and synthesis of current theory and research. Although there is an abundance of material available concerning Aboriginal child welfare, much of it exists outside mainstream academic child welfare literature. Some of the salient work on Aboriginal child welfare is contained in the justice literature and much is contained in evaluation reports, operational reviews, submissions to government bodies and in oral stories and testimony. Our goal has been to cull these sources in order to present a coherent understanding of Aboriginal child welfare issues that encompasses history, theoretical analysis, politics, visions, realities, education, evaluation and aspirations

Using Intermediary Structures to Support Families: An International Comparison of Practice in Child Protection

Responses to child maltreatment can be conceptualized as a continuum, ranging from a welfare-oriented approach on one end, to a legalistic emphasis at the other end. By shifting attention to structures existing at the welfare end of the continuum, this paper endeavours to look beyond the approaches of investigation and legal processing, currently emphasized in Ontario’s approach to child welfare. This paper examines how intermediary structures and roles in various international settings are constructed to offer support to families and children. Intermediary judicial and professional roles found in European child welfare systems will be discussed. In addition, the paper will examine the roles and structures found in Ontario’s child welfare system that resemble those of an intermediary nature found in Europe. It is hoped that readers can use these cross-cultural comparisons to clarify the rationale behind choices, stimulate awareness of alternative views, and rethink some of the emphases and methods that dominate the child welfare system in Ontario

The Impact of Immigration Enforcement on Child Welfare

While children of immigrants have a lot at stake in the discussions surrounding U.S. immigration policy, their interests remain largely ignored in the debate. For instance, little consideration is given to the impact of immigration enforcement on the 5.5 million children, the vast majority of whom are native-born U.S. citizens, living with at least one undocumented parent.Similarly overlooked are the significant challenges experienced by public child welfare agencies that encounter children separated from their parents due to immigration enforcement measures.The U.S. child welfare system is based on the notion of ensuring the safety and best interest of the child; however, this principle is often compromised in the face of conflicting federal immigration policies and practices. This policy brief examines the intersection of immigration enforcement and child welfare and the difficulties facing immigrant families caught between the two systems. Recommendations are provided to prioritize keeping children with their families and out of the public child welfare system whenever possible and to ensure that separated children who do encounter the child welfare system receive appropriate care and parents receive due process

Synthesis of Research on Disproportionality in Child Welfare: An Update

Examines the disproportionate representation of minority children in child welfare and summarizes current research findings on racial disparities in treatment and services within the child welfare system

Fathers and Child Welfare: Stories of Men’s Everyday Lives and Service Experiences

This volume of stories from fathers involved with child welfare services acts as both a stand-alone document and a companion document to the research reports on father’s life experiences and child welfare service experiences. This volume is intended for multiple audiences including child welfare service providers, community organizations working with men, students and instructors interested in men’s issues, and fathers. This volume of stories may be useful for teaching purposes, service provision decisions, and general interest