Objective: Children in out-of-home placements typically display more educational, behavioral, and psychological problems than do their peers. This systematic review evaluated the effect of kinship care placement compared to foster care placement on the safety, permanency, and well-being of children removed from the home for maltreatment. Methods:…

Background: This study examined predictors of service complexity in children with comorbid intellectual developmental disorder (IDD) and mental health concerns. We examined whether patient type, safety risk, exposure to trauma, and family dysfunction were related to service complexity. Method: The study had a cross-sectional design, wherein…

Children who experience foster care, write Youngmin Yi and Christopher Wildeman, are considerably more likely than others to have contact with the criminal justice system, both during childhood and as adults. And because children of color disproportionately experience foster care, improvements to the foster care system could reduce racial/ethnic…

This report provides information for administrators, researchers, and student support staff in local education agencies who are interested in identifying students who are likely to have near-term academic problems such as absenteeism, suspensions, poor grades, and low performance on state tests. The report describes an approach for developing a…

The document are the appendixes for the full report, "Using Data from Schools and Child Welfare Agencies to Predict Near-Term Academic Risks." The study team collected and linked five academic years of student-level administrative data from Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS), Propel Schools, and the Allegheny County Department of Human…

The current "CalYOUTH Wave 2 Los Angeles County Report" presents findings from the "CalYOUTH Wave 2 Youth Survey," focusing on just study participants in Los Angeles County. Of all of the counties in California, Los Angeles County has the greatest number of children in foster care. Since child welfare services are administered…

The purpose of this study was to examine the three most common types of caregivers in the child welfare system (birth parents, relative caregivers, and foster parents), an active child welfare case, caregivers' endorsement of barriers to mental health services and mental health service use by caregivers for the children under their care. The…

This study examines families' use of behavioral health hospitalization and foster care placement before, during, and after shelter use, comparing families based on shelter pattern and type of housing exit. Results show that inpatient and foster care services use drops in the homelessness period, but rebounds after exit, regardless of pattern of…

The authors examined the role of early adverse experiences, mental health problems, and disabilities in the prediction of juvenile delinquency and recidivism, using a matched-control group design. The delinquent group comprised 99,602 youth, born between 1981 and 1988, whose cases had been processed by the South Carolina Department of Juvenile…

Objectives: To test the potential impact of a critical curriculum on psychiatric medications designed for child welfare workers. Method: In a quasiexperimental, longitudinal study, the monthly proportion of medicated foster children and the average number of prescriptions per medicated child at Agency 1 (669 clients) exposed to the…

This qualitative study explored the extent to which programs in a religiously affiliated agency in Kenya incorporate 12 internationally sanctioned strategies for supporting orphans and vulnerable children in Sub-Saharan Africa (Olson, Knight, & Foster, 2006). The results indicated that all 12 strategies were being employed, though to varying…

Strong mental and behavioral health supports on campus can improve the academic performance of students and increase their resilience and ability to handle stress, with reduced suicide rates, substance abuse, and eating disorders, but this study reveals that students with mental health disabilities continue to face barriers to accessing counseling…

Objective: This longitudinal study followed 5,978 children in out-of-home care to examine whether placement and permanency outcomes differ between children with and without a history of inpatient mental health treatment. Method: Data were drawn from child welfare and Medicaid records from the state of Illinois. Logistic regression and survival…

The use of psychotropic medications in youth with emotional disturbances in state custody is increasing and presents unique challenges concerning consent and oversight. We examine various means that state child welfare agencies use to provide consent for and oversight of psychotropic medications for children in state custody and describe benefits…

This article compares behavioral health service use and cost for foster care versus nonfoster care children; children before, during, and after foster care placement; and successfully reunified versus nonsuccessfully reunified foster care children. Behavioral health service costs for children in foster care were higher than for children not in…