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

The Lives of Young Adults Who Have Graduated from Residential Children\u27s Mental Health Programs (FULL REPORT)

This report presents the results of a research process in which 59 young adults who had received residential mental health treatment in the past were sorted into descriptive profiles based on the information they shared about their lives and personal functioning with researchers. Five different groups of young adults emerged from this process and represent the clearest categorizations for understanding this particular sample of young adults from across Southern Ontario who received residential treatment. Sorting young adults into distinct groups based on their functioning within key life domains (like education, employment, social connections, personal functioning) is useful to understanding the long term community adaptation of youth previously involved in children’s residential mental health treatment. Through a process of describing the defining characteristics of particular groups of young adults we can begin to think about adapting services and supports to meet the unique needs of distinct groups of youth as they transition into young adulthood

Working Report #1: Service Model Accessibility (Service Provider Perspectives)

This report examines the differences in service accessibility across central, integrated, and school/community based child welfare service delivery models including geographic proximity to families, acceptability of the setting to families, and accessibility expectations of service providers. Results suggest that accessibility characteristics of the model can make a significant difference to front-line service delivery from the perspective of front-line protection workers. A defining feature of the community and school based child welfare models was increased accessibility for families and workers. Through making themselves more accessible, the community and school based settings had some significant service delivery advantages including more regular, varied, and timely contact with children and families. It seems likely that location along with a culture of accessibility has the potential to contribute to key child protection goals

Bridging or Maintaining Distance: A Matched Comparison of Parent and Service Provider Realities (FULL REPORT)

When service providers and parents engage with each other to improve family circumstances, do they have similar impressions of what is important and what is helpful? Our purpose in interviewing parents who have been involved in child protection services and their service providers was to understand how parents and service providers view each other, their interactions, and the services they are engaged in. We were also interested in the “official record”—the files that describe parents, children, their needs, and the services provided in response. A comparison of the perspectives of service providers, parents, and files highlights some of the barriers and assumptions at work when service providers and parents engage with each other to improve family functioning. Contrasting these three versions of events highlights how differences are bridged or maintained. To begin our matched comparison of parent, file, and service provider realities we present a “case study” summarizing a parent’s perspective, the corresponding service provider’s perspective, as well as an excerpt taken from this particular parent’s file with the Children’s Aid Society. In presenting this individual matched comparison, we offer a glimpse of the data that was used to form the basis for this report. It illustrates the nature of the information, the types of comparisons undertaken, as well as more generally to provide a sense of the three perspectives included

Working Report #4: Range of Services (Service Provider Perspectives)

This working report examines the differences in range of services across central, integrated, and school/community based sites including referrals to other services, direct support, advocacy, and collaborative efforts to provide services to families. Which models provide the most service options for families? How do service providers view the service options available to them in their work with families? How helpful are services to families? The range of services available within agency based settings seemed the narrowest in comparison to other types of service delivery settings. Integrated service models appeared to increase the range and access to many formal services. Community and school based programs seemed to increase the range of services available to families by broadening the scope of service options, using formal and informal partnerships and linkages, and participating in some preventative and community development approaches

Stories of Mothers and Child Welfare (SUMMARY REPORT)

The voices we hear describing the lives of mothers who come into contact with child welfare agencies are usually those of service providers and researchers. How do mothers make sense of their own lives and what happened to their families when they became involved with child welfare? This report provides an opportunity to listen to what 16 of these mothers had to say over conversations averaging 5 - 6 hours with each woman. Aspects of these stories will be familiar to some readers. Nonetheless, these stories challenge both popular and professional perceptions of who these mothers are and how they confront the obstacles in their lives. The stories also ask us to consider how we might make our helping more welcome and congruent with the lives of these mothers, their children and families. (Full version of report also available.

The Lives of Young Adults Who Have Graduated from Residential Children\u27s Mental Health Programs (SUMMARY REPORT)

What happens to children and youth after they leave residential mental health treatment? How do these youth navigate normative developmental transitions like finishing school, getting a job, and finding a place to live? What types of assistance might facilitate these transitions? Despite the critical importance of these questions for youth themselves, for the educational, justice, and mental health systems, and for the development of more appropriate transitions to community programming, surprisingly little is known about what happens to these children and youth over time. This report presents the results of a research process in which 59 young adults who had received residential mental health treatment in the past were sorted into descriptive profiles based on the information they shared about their lives and personal functioning with researchers. Five different groups of young adults emerged from this process and represent the clearest categorizations for understanding this particular sample of young adults from across Southern Ontario who received residential treatment. Sorting young adults into distinct groups based on their functioning within key life domains (like education, employment, social connections, personal functioning) is useful to understanding the long term community adaptation of youth previously involved in children’s residential mental health treatment. Through a process of describing the defining characteristics of particular groups of young adults we can begin to think about adapting services and supports to meet the unique needs of distinct groups of youth as they transition into young adulthood

Stories of Mothers and Child Welfare (FULL REPORT)

The voices we hear describing the lives of mothers who come into contact with child welfare agencies are usually those of service providers and researchers. How do mothers make sense of their own lives and what happened to their families when they became involved with child welfare? This report provides an opportunity to listen to what 16 of these mothers had to say over conversations averaging 5 - 6 hours with each woman. Aspects of these stories will be familiar to some readers. Nonetheless, these stories challenge both popular and professional perceptions of who these mothers are and how they confront the obstacles in their lives. The stories also ask us to consider how we might make our helping more welcome and congruent with the lives of these mothers, their children and families. (Summary version of report also available.

Working Report #3: Use of Legal Measures and Formal Authority (Service Provider Perspectives)

The focus of this report is, across service delivery models, how front-line protection workers viewed their formal authority role and the extent to which they relied on legal measures in order to achieve protection goals. The analysis is guided by several overarching questions including (1) how does each model view the use of legal measures and formal authority? (2) How does each model impact service providers’ actual use of legal measures? (3) What value do workers place on the authority figure role? And (4) how effective is the use of formal authority in reaching child protection goals? Type of program model and setting can impact the use of legal measures in a number of ways including fundamental beliefs about the effectiveness of cooperative vs. legal measures, supervisory guidance, the presence or absence of legal apparatus, and the access, time and 4 support to seek creative alternatives to legal measures. Across all community based and school based models there seemed to be an expressed desire to avoid legal and authoritative measures and authoritarian approaches. Agency based sites did not have the same homogeneity and in some sites there was strong support for use of legal and authoritative measures. There also appeared to be a stronger identification with the authoritarian role in the discourse of workers. One cannot conclusively say that authoritative and legal approaches are more prevalent in one type of model than in another but one can surmise from the data that community based and school based programs are strongly in favour of alternatives to these measures

Working Report #2: Client and Community Relations (Service Provider Perspectives)

This report addresses two important questions: how much emphasis is placed on building positive relationships with families and communities across agency based, integrated service, and community and school based models of service delivery? And, how successful is each model at building relationships, minimizing stigma for families, and improving the image of child welfare in the community? Educating clients and the community about child welfare services was identified as an important role for workers in some sites and not in others. While families’ fears of child protection services were a concern, some workers also expressed a fear of their clients and feared for their own personal safety in their work. Service providers within each model seemed to be oriented to different aspects of relationship building and also had different advantages and disadvantages. For example, community based and school based models provided unique forums for engaging with clients and other service providers. Heightened awareness and concern about stigma in many agency based settings was noted; while, in community based and school based settings workers saw themselves on the front-line of improving the agency’s image and building relationships with the community