Family Preservation Research: Where We\u27ve Been, Where We Should Be Going

Although the literature has provided many critiques of research done on family preservation programs, these critiques have usually been limited to the studies \u27 assumptions, approach, or methodology. Because of the nature of these critiques, suggestions for future research in this field of practice have been scattered throughout the literature and have not benefitted from a wider historical perspective. This paper examines the historical evolution of family preservation studies in child welfare and suggests future directions for research in the field. Among the suggestions the authors posit are (1) research questions should be framed by what we know about improvements in the lives of families and children served by family preservation programs; (2) future explorations should include areas that have received relatively little attention in current research, including the impact of organizational conditions on service fidelity and worker performance; (3) newer treatment models, particularly those that provide both intensive services during a crisis period and less intensive services for maintenance, should be tested; (4) data collection points in longitudinal studies should be guided by theory, and measures should change over time to reflect the theoretically expected changes in families; (5) complex measures of placement prevention and other measures that capture changes in family functioning, child well-being, and child safety, should be utilized to obtain a full picture of program effects; and (6) multiple informants should be used to provide data about program effectiveness. In addition, the authors will argue that the field should carefully consider the amount of change that should be expected from the service models delivered

Translating Rhetoric to Reality: The Future of Family and Children\u27s Services

These remarks were first prepared by the author for the inauguration of the Marion Elizabeth Blue Endowed Professorship in Children and Families at the University of Michigan School of Social Work. They were delivered on October 5, 1999, and originally appeared as a monograph published by the University of Michigan School of Social Work in December 1999. They are reprinted here by permission

Program Orientation as a Factor in Workers' Attitudes and Perceptions of the Need for Placement in Child Welfare

In recent years the child welfare system in New York City has come under criticism for placing most of its resources in providing services to the child away from home. Due to the reimbursement agreement between the public sector responsible for these children and the voluntary agencies which provide care, few "in home" or preventive services have been available. In response to this criticism the Preventive Service Demonstration Project was established, in which intensive family services were provided to families of children in jeopardy of being placed. Evaluation of this project showed that such services did, in fact, reduce the number of children entering foster care and the time spent in care of those who entered. This research investigates the impact of preventive service units on the workers' attitudes and perceptions of the need for placement. Five groups of child welfare workers were participants in the study. Two of the groups were primarily concerned with providing preventive services (n=55), while three provided traditional under care services (n=109). The subjects in the research were administered an instrument which collected social/demographic information and measures of six attitudes. In addition, the subjects were presented five case analogues and asked to judge six case elements and whether the child should be placed in an appropriate foster care setting. Results of the analysis showed that workers in preventive units were different in their attitudes than workers in traditional settings -- they were more likely to feel preventive services were useful, to see the continuing importance of biological parents and to feel that foster care was a damaging experience for children. In addition. while all workers saw the elements of the five cases in about the same way, workers in preventive units placed fewer of the five children in the case analogues (a Guttman scale of Placement Proneness) than other workers. The greatest variation in the placement decision occurred in the "mid-range" case, confirming the results in a number of other studies. Several of the social/demographic variables were also related to the workers' attitudes. and these variables as well as the workers' attitudes were related to the judgment of case elements and the decision to place a child. In order to determine the importance of the variables in explaining a workers' placement proneness score a number of regression analyses were performed. The worker's setting was shown to be a strong predictor of the placement proneness score. In addition, the worker's attitude toward preventive services, judgments of a number of case elements, attendance at courses, ethnicity and the client group with which he/she had contact were also found to be predictive of this score. A total of 34% of the variance in the placement proneness score and 48% of the variance in the placement decision on the mid-range case was explained by these variables. The research gave rise to the following recommendations: (1) the creation of educational preventive units which, at least initially, are administratively separate from the under care units of the agency and the establishment of new funding patterns in the foster care system in order to facilitate their creation; (2) the redefinition of jobs within the foster care system so as to encourage contact between all workers and all parties in· the foster care triangle; (3) the education and training of workers in the area of preventive services in order to increase the workers perceptions of their effectiveness; and (4) an increased emphasis in the training of workers on the skills needed to discern strengths in clients

Improving Family Functioning Through Family Preservation Services: Results of the Los Angeles Experiment

This article describes a study of the outcomes of home-based family preservation services for abusive and neglectful families in Los Angeles County. It focuses on changes in family functioning during the 3 month service period and one year after case closing. Families known to the public child welfare agency were referred to the project based on caseworker judgement of the need for services rather than on the criteria of imminent risk of placement. Two hundred forty families were randomly assigned to either the service group receiving family preservation services from two non-profit agencies or to the comparison group receiving regular public agency services. Both caseworkers and families reported small but significant improvements in family functioning for the service group families, but not for the comparison group families. Study findings also suggest the aspects of family functioning most changed by services, the characteristics of families most affected by services, and variables which predicted service success

Behavior Problems of Maltreated Children Receiving In-Home Child Welfare Services

This study evaluates the level of behavior problems in a previously little studied group—children with founded cases of abuse and neglect receiving child welfare services in their own homes. A sample of 149 maltreated children, living at home, were evaluated on the CBCL as they entered a service program to which they were referred by a large public child protective service system. These children were found to have elevated levels of behavior problems, with 43.6% scoring in the problematic range, a rate similar to children entering foster care. Practice and policy implications of these findings are discussed and highlighted

The 1999 Leon and Josephine Winkelman Lecture, University of Michigan School of Social Work

The Leon and Josephine Winkelman Memorial Lecture was established at the U-M School of Social Work by the Winkelman brothers (Stanley J., John H., Frederick R., and Henry R.) as a memorial to their parents. The lecture provides a forum for presenting new and emerging knowledge from the social sciences and helping professions, and discussion of the application of that knowledge to the development of social policy, the organization and management of social welfare services, and the delivery of social work services. The selection of topics and scholars reflects the interdisciplinary character of the lecture. This is in keeping with the representation of several disciplines in the Social Work faculty, the School's links with social sciences through its interdisciplinary Joint Doctoral Program in Social Work and Social Science, and the School's collaborations with the School of Public Health, the Medical Center, and the Institute of Gerontology.The Leon and Josephine Winkelman Family; School of Social Work; alumni, faculty, and friends of the School of Social Workhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/49501/3/1999 Winkelman Lecture Meezan.pd

First Record of Epizoic Diatom Presence on Poricellaria ratoniensis (Bryozoa, Cheilostomata) from Java Sea, Indonesia

Indonesian waters cover a high diversity of marine organisms (micros- and macros-) of interest to scientists. Among this diversity, the neglected bryozoan had been scarcely reported due to lack of information from this area, especially on the epizoic diatoms since they are favorable as their dietary. This preliminary study aimed to investigate and witness the presence of epizoic diatom on bryozoan Poricellaria ratoniensis. Our data revealed an assemblage of diatoms attached to bryozoan surfaces and exhibiting taxonomic diversity. In total, members of five genera Amphora, Cocconeis, Neodetonia, Staurophora, and Thalassiosira were found, including the measurement of their cell size, respectively. The attached diatoms were mainly within the bryozoan operculum (op) range, functioning as feeding organs. However, further study is needed to understand the interaction between bryozoan and diatoms aiming for ecological services

How much laser power can propagate through fusion plasma?

Propagation of intense laser beams is crucial for inertial confinement fusion, which requires precise beam control to achieve the compression and heating necessary to ignite the fusion reaction. The National Ignition Facility (NIF), where fusion will be attempted, is now under construction. Control of intense beam propagation may be ruined by laser beam self-focusing. We have identified the maximum laser beam power that can propagate through fusion plasma without significant self-focusing and have found excellent agreement with recent experimental data, and suggest a way to increase that maximum by appropriate choice of plasma composition with implication for NIF designs. Our theory also leads to the prediction of anti-correlation between beam spray and backscatter and suggests the indirect control of backscatter through manipulation of plasma ionization state or acoustic damping.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusio

Target designs for energetics experiments on the National Ignition Facility

The goal of the first hohlraum energetics experiments on the National Ignition Facility (NIF) [G. H. Miller et al , Optical Eng. 43, 2841 (2004)] is to select the hohlraum design for the first ignition experiments. Sub-scale hohlraums heated by 96 of the 192 laser beams on the NIF are used to emulate the laser-plasma interaction behavior of ignition hohlraums. These ''plasma emulator'' targets are 70% scale versions of the 1.05 MJ, 300 eV ignition hohlraum and have the same energy-density as the full-scale ignition designs. Radiation-hydrodynamics simulations show that the sub-scale target is a good emulator of plasma conditions inside the ignition hohlraum, reproducing density ne within 10% and temperature Te within 15% along a laser beam path. Linear backscatter gain analysis shows the backscatter risk to be comparable to that of the ignition target. A successful energetics campaign will allow the National Ignition Campaign to focus its efforts on optimizing ignition hohlraums with efficient laser coupling

Laser Plasma instability reduction by coherence disruption

The saturation levels of stimulated scattering of intense laser light in plasmas and techniques to reduce these levels are of great interest. A simple model is used to highlight the dependence of the reflectivity on the coherence length for the density fluctuations producing the scattering. Sometimes the coherence lengths can be determined nonlinearly. For NIF hohlraum plasmas, a reduction in the coherence lengths might be engineered in several ways. Finally, electron trapping in ion sound waves is briefly examined as a potentially important effect for the saturation of stimulated Brillouin scattering