Expediting Permanency: Legal Representation for Foster Children in Palm Beach County

This report describes the evaluation of the Foster Children's Project (FCP) of the Legal Aid Society of Palm Beach County, Florida, which provides legal representation to children who have been placed in substitute care as a result of child abuse or neglect. The primary purpose of this study was to examine the impact of FCP on the nature and timing of children's permanency outcomes and juvenile court milestones. The study also identifies and describes the program elements or practices that serve to define FCP, and explores the broader impact that FCP has had on the child protective service system in Palm Beach County. Data were drawn from several sources, including juvenile court case files, child welfare administrative records, and interviews with legal and social service professionals. Children represented by FCP were found to have a significantly higher rate of exit to permanency than children not served by FCP. In the main, this difference appears to be a function of much higher rates of adoption and long-term custody among FCP children. Interestingly, the higher rates of adoption and long-term custody experienced by FCP children were not found to be offset by significantly lower rates of reunification. Together, study findings suggest that FCP's efforts to individualize children's court-approved case plans served to clarify the basis of, and thus expedite, court decisions concerning parent and agency compliance with parent's case plan requirements. The study also discusses implications for other jurisdictions seeking to expedite permanency though juvenile court reforms, including the provision of representation to children

Classroom-Level Differences in Child-Level Bullying Experiences: Implications for Prevention and Intervention in School Settings

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.Bullying occurs within children’s peer groups and in classroom and school settings. Accordingly, this study aims to characterize student-level heterogeneity and change in bullying experiences by classifying students into bully/victim subgroups and to characterize how these child-level bullying experiences coalesce at the classroom and school levels. Method: A sample of 692 students in Grades 3–5 from 6 elementary schools self-reported the frequency of their involvement in bullying and victimization during the fall and spring semesters of 1 academic year. We used multilevel latent Markov modeling to identify bully/victim subgroups and classroom-level subgroup mixtures. Results: We identified 5 child-level victimization–bullying classes and 2 classroom-level mixtures, which differ in the proportions of children with few or no experiences of victimization or bullying and children who reported high levels of victimization. The proportion of classroom-level mixtures differed significantly across sampled schools, suggesting that classroom bullying climate may be partly a function of school-level phenomena. Conclusions: Classroom-level differences indicate a need for unique prevention and intervention approaches. Targeted classroom interventions may be useful for influencing students moderately involved in bullying to transition into an uninvolved state, but more intensive, individualized interventions may be needed for students who are highly involved in bullying behaviors

Eulerian orientations and the six-vertex model on planar maps

International audienceWe address the enumeration of planar 4-valent maps equipped with an Eulerian orientation by two different methods, and compare the solutions we thus obtain. With the first method we enumerate these orientations as well as a restricted class which we show to be in bijection with general Eulerian orientations. The second method, based on the work of Kostov, allows us to enumerate these 4-valent orienta-tions with a weight on some vertices, corresponding to the six vertex model. We prove that this result generalises both results obtained using the first method, although the equivalence is not immediately clear

Characteristics of Attorneys Representing Children in Child Welfare Cases

Every day in state and local courts throughout the United States, judges are called upon to decide who should have the responsibility for the immediate and long-term care of neglected and abused children. Federal recognition of the right to independent advocacy for children subject to these proceedings originates with the 1974 Federal Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA). As a condition of receiving federal funds for child abuse prevention services through CAPTA, states must provide for the appointment of an appropriately trained guardian ad litem (GAL) for every child whose case results in a judicial proceeding. A guardian ad litem (GAL) may be an attorney, a lay advocate (such as a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA)), or both. CAPTA charges child representatives to obtain first-hand a clear understanding of the situation and needs of the child; and to make recommendations to the court concerning the best interests of the child. This CAPTA requirement reflects the view that children have interests that should be represented in these proceedings that may differ from the interests of their parents and the state. Even though the state has brought the action to protect the child, the voice and needs of the child may get lost in the fray of arguments and allegations between the state\u27s lawyers, parents, and other adults that are parties to the case. Furthermore, the child needs an advocate if the state fails to deliver on necessary services and actions due to fiscal constraints and/or organizational failures

Children\u27s Justice: How to Improve Legal Representation of Children in the Child Welfare System

From 2009 to 2016 the University of Michigan Law School served as the National Quality Improvement Center on the Representation of Children in the Child Welfare System (QIC-ChildRep). This seven-year, multimillion dollar project, directed by Clinical Professor Don Duquette, conducted a national needs assessment that identified a substantial consensus on the role and duties of the child’s lawyer. The needs assessment led to the QIC-ChildRep Best Practice Model, an update and expansion of the 1996 ABA Standards for Lawyers Representing Children in Child Abuse and Neglect Cases. Released in 2016 as a300-page softcover book, CHILDREN\u27S JUSTICE is the final report of the QIC-ChildRep project, guiding the reader through 13 chapters and 3 appendices: Chapter 1: Challenge: Improve Child Representation in America Chapter 2: Evolution of Child Representation Chapter 3: National Needs Assessment Chapter 4: Emerging Consensus and the QIC Best Practice Model Chapter 5: Six Core Skills and the QIC Best Practice Training Chapter 6: What the Lawyers Say About Implementing the Six Core Skills Chapter 7: Sample Selection and Research Methods Chapter 8: Profile of Lawyers Representing Children Chapter 9: Lawyer Activities and Their Impact Chapter 10: Findings of the Evaluation of the QIC-ChildRep Best Practices Model Training for Attorneys Chapter 11: Reflections on QIC Empirical Findings Chapter 12: The Flint MDT Study: A Description and Evaluation of a Multidisciplinary Team Representing Children in Child Welfare Cases Chapter 13: How to Improve Legal Representation of Children in America’s Child Welfare System Appendix A: QIC Best Practice Model of Child Representation in the Child Welfare System Appendix B: 1996 American Bar Association Standards of Practice for Lawyers Who Represent Children in Abuse and Neglect Cases Appendix C: 2011 ABA Model Act Governing Representation of Children in Abuse, Neglect and Dependency Proceedings This product was created by the National Quality Improvement Center on the Representation of Children in the Child Welfare System at the University of Michigan Law School, Cooperative Agreement No. 90CO1047, funded by the Children’s Bureau, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.https://repository.law.umich.edu/books/1109/thumbnail.jp

Computing power of quantitative trait locus association mapping for haploid loci

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Statistical power calculations are a critical part of any study design for gene mapping. Most calculations assume that the locus of interest is biallelic. However, there are common situations in human genetics such as X-linked loci in males where the locus is haploid. The purpose of this work is to mathematically derive the biometric model for haploid loci, and to compute power for QTL mapping when the loci are haploid.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We have derived the biometric model for power calculations for haploid loci and have developed software to perform these calculations. We have verified our calculations with independent mathematical methods.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our results fill a need in power calculations for QTL mapping studies. Furthermore, failure to appropriately model haploid loci may cause underestimation of power.</p

Spectral networks

We introduce new geometric objects called spectral networks. Spectral networks are networks of trajectories on Riemann surfaces obeying certain local rules. Spectral networks arise naturally in four-dimensional N=2 theories coupled to surface defects, particularly the theories of class S. In these theories spectral networks provide a useful tool for the computation of BPS degeneracies: the network directly determines the degeneracies of solitons living on the surface defect, which in turn determine the degeneracies for particles living in the 4d bulk. Spectral networks also lead to a new map between flat GL(K,C) connections on a two-dimensional surface C and flat abelian connections on an appropriate branched cover Sigma of C. This construction produces natural coordinate systems on moduli spaces of flat GL(K,C) connections on C, which we conjecture are cluster coordinate systems.Comment: 87 pages, 48 figures; v2: typos, correction to general rule for signs of BPS count