2012, Urban Institute: This sixth annual Kids’ Share report examines federal expenditures on children in 2011, when the temporary boost in federal funding to address the recession was dwindling, yet states and families were still struggling to recover from the recession. This report provides in-depth analysis of dozens of federal programs and tax provisions that allocate resources to children and places these expenditures in the broader context of the overall federal budget. Includes: foster care, adoption assistance, social services block grants and other social services expenditures. Link to pdf Report
Category Archives: CA&N Resources
Improving The Lives Of Adolescents And Young Adults: Out-Of-School Time Programs That Have Significant Positive Impacts
July 2012, Child Trends: The Lifecourse Interventions to Nurture Kids Successfully (LINKS) database aims to help decision makers identify the most effective out-of-school time programs and avoid programs that do not work. LINKS is an online compendium of more than 575 experimental evaluations of social interventions for children and young adults. This fact sheet highlights programs for adolescents and/or young adults that have relatively sizeable impacts for at least one outcome. This Fact Sheet, identifies out-of-school time programs for adolescents or young adults that have statistically significant positive impacts on select outcome categories. Outcome categories include behavior problems, substance use, reproductive health, social-emotional health, life skills, education, and physical health. Link to pdf Fact Sheet
The Therapeutic Preschool: An Intensive Intervention for Traumatized 3-6 Year Olds
Summer 2012, Infant Crier, pp 4-8, Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health: A certain number of children with significant challenges need continuing intervention past age 3. They and their parents have trouble making the transition from intensive home-based therapy to more limited or no services during the preschool years. For children, the difficulties of this transition show up as behavioral and emotional problems in childcare or Head Start programs that are not organized to provide therapeutic support. How might services be organized? Treatment would be organized to stress helping preschoolers master self-regulation difficulties by providing them with experiences of mutual regulation with parents and other adults. In addition, more intensive services would be available to preschoolers with significant histories of neglect, abuse, trauma, and loss. Discusses the Building Blocks Therapeutic Preschool program in Oakland, California. Many of the kids at Building Blocks, probably most at any given time, do not live with biological parents; they live instead with relatives and foster parents. Nearly all of the children have significant histories of early trauma and neglect. Link to pdf Infant Crier Issue
Neural Development Resulting from Institutionalization in Early Childhood
We examined the effect of institutionalization on neural structure and function, capitalizing on our RCT design in which some children were randomized to foster care intervention, to evaluate whether removal from institutional care ameliorated the neural effects of early-life deprivation. Using structural MRI, we demonstrated that children who were assigned to care as usual had smaller total white matter volume and smaller posterior CC volume than children who were never institutionalized. For children who were randomized into foster care, neither total white matter volume nor posterior CC volume was significantly different from those of children who had never between the CAUG and the FCG. In contrast, total cortical gray matter was significantly smaller among children who were ever institutionalized, regardless of placement into foster care, compared with children who had never been institutionalized. These findings replicate previous studies. Link to Journal Article
Education Stability Guidance – New York
The purpose of this guidance document is to provide information to child welfare staff of local departments of social services and voluntary agencies, local educational agencies and the judiciary about requirements related to the educational stability of foster children. Congress enacted the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008. That legislation was designed to improve educational stability. The educational stability provisions were amended by the Child and Family Services Improvement and Innovation Act in October 2011. This guidance provides information about the significance of educational stability in the life of a foster child; detail the specific statutory requirements pertaining to educational stability; and address recommended implementation strategies for the child welfare agency, school district, and the court. Link to Guidance Memo
Measuring Happiness
Report by the Children’s Rights Director for England: At the start of our work on ‘happiness’, we wanted to get an idea of what children from care and children living in residential and boarding schools themselves thought ‘happiness’ was. To help us do this, we held two separate focus discussion groups with children to discuss the subject of happiness, and what they thought it meant. We have summarized what all these groups of children and young people told us. The resulting scale is also presented. Link to pdf Report