Meeting Couple and Coparenting Relationship Needs of Foster Caregivers: Perceptions of Georgia Child Welfare County Directors

Foster caregivers face many unique challenges that may cause strain on their couple/coparenting relationships. Though foster caregivers receive training to help them navigate certain challenges of fostering, there is a lack of resources dedicated to supporting their couple/coparenting relationships. In the study described in this article, we examined the perceptions of Georgia Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS) county directors regarding potential effects of providing healthy marriage and relationship education (HMRE) to foster caregivers. Findings suggest that DFCS directors are in favor of providing HMRE to foster parents but that barriers to doing so must be addressed

Going it Alone: The Social and Emotional Life of Disconnected Youth

This study presents patterns across multiple dimensions of social isolation among a sample of military youth, and describes how these patterns are related to preceding risk factors and distal outcomes. The presentation will be of interest to professionals interested in strategies for fostering positive outcomes by developing and enhancing family and community support for at-risk youth populations

Fostering a Culture of Family-Centred Care: Child Welfare Professionals\u27 Beliefs About Fathers, Family Instability, and the Value of Relationship Education

Guided by the Cultural Competence Attainment Model, the purpose of this study is to examine how socio-demographic and work characteristics are associated with variations in child welfare professionals\u27 (CWPs) attitudes about father involvement and family instability and how these attitudes are linked with whether they view relationship and marriage education as relevant to their efforts to support families. Drawing from a sample of 624 CWPs and using latent profile analysis, the results revealed three latent classes of CWPs, with most professionals being labelled as either moderately or highly concerned about father involvement and family instability, with a smaller class of professionals labelled as having less concern about these family issues. Those labelled as highly concerned tended to be older, male, African American, married, and had worked longer in the child welfare field. As well, those labelled as highly concerned were more likely to agree that strengthening the couple and coparenting relationship would benefit children and were most amenable to receiving RME training. Implications for relationship and marriage education training for child welfare professionals and other practitioners are provided