In the United States, child welfare systems encounter many vulnerable children and their families each year. This report from the Center on the Developing Child examines how new science on child development can be applied to policies and practices to enhance child welfare systems, thereby improving outcomes for children and their families.

The U.S. incarceration rate remains exceptionally high, especially for socioeconomically disadvantaged groups, and the incidence of involvement in child protective services (CPS) is also quite high among disadvantaged groups. This confluence of incarceration and CPS involvement may have various impacts for parents, children, and families as a whole. The authors of this Institute for Research on Poverty brief examined data from Wisconsin to demonstrate and describe the overlap between parental incarceration and child CPS involvement, as well as between adolescent CPS involvement and later incarceration in young adulthood.

In this study, published by the Alliance for Strong Families and Communities, caseworkers provided information regarding a mother’s number and quality of social supports and whether an infant was removed from her care. Analyses indicated that infants were less likely to be removed from the mother’s care when caseworkers viewed maternal social supports as positive. This association was strongest when the caseworker identified only positive supports, with no contacts defined as non-positive. Mothers who were assessed to have no intimate relationship or a low level of commitment were nearly twice as likely to have their children in foster care compared to mothers assessed to be in a mid-to-high level of committed relationship. Results suggest that caseworkers’ distinctions between positive and non-positive social networks influence removal decisions. (author abstract)

This publication, designed for public and private direct service child welfare workers and community and faith based organizations, outlines a 12-hour curriculum which provides a model of practice for collaborating with kinship caregivers. The purposes of the training program are to: help achieve the outcomes of child safety, well-being, and permanency that are identified in the 1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA); and provide meaningful support to kinship families, including use of the resources in the 2008 Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act. This curriculum was designed by the Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) as an integral part of CWLA’s Kinship Care Traditions of Caring and Collaborating Model of Practice.

Child Trends provided commentary on the state of rural child poverty. In the commentary, they cite Save the Children’s State of the World’s Mothers 2015 report, which evaluates the devastating health disparities between the rich and poor living in major cities around the world. Additionally, the report assesses the well-being of mothers and children in 179 countries. Authors also mention a recent analysis by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service (ERS), which notes that more than one in four rural children are living in families with incomes below the official poverty line.

This report from Portland State University summarizes the discussion that took place at the 2011 Summer Institute on Youth Mentoring, a gathering of over 50 mentoring researchers, practitioners, service providers, and policymakers that focused on mentoring youth in the juvenile justice, child welfare, public welfare, mental health, and drug and alcohol treatment systems. For multi-service programs using mentoring, the key takeaways from this gathering include the importance of understanding how mentoring fits into an organization’s theory of change, having high expectations of mentors, researching and testing the mentoring model, and ensuring that the mentoring program is sustainable.

This toolkit from the Child Welfare Information Gateway and National Technical Assistance and Evaluation Center for Systems of Care Resources was developed for the Administration for Children and Families, Children’s Bureau Demonstration Initiative, “Improving Child Welfare Outcomes Through Systems of Care.” The toolkit provides practical information to help communities plan, build, and sustain systems to improve outcomes for children and families. The focus is on staff training, workshops, coaching, mentoring, and other learning opportunities that challenge employees to perform to the best of their ability. The resource also provides real-life examples from states that have implemented systems change models.

Adolescent pregnancy and parenthood are closely associated with a host of social and economic issues that affect teen parents, their children and society. Teenage mothers are less likely to finish high school and are more likely to live in poverty, depend on public assistance, and be in poor health than slightly older mothers. Their children are more likely to suffer health and cognitive disadvantages, come in contact with the child welfare and correctional systems, live in poverty, drop out of high school and become teen parents themselves. The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) examines teen pregnancy prevention and provides statistics and resources related to teen pregnancy and educational achievement, economic wellbeing, youth in foster care, and federally funded initiatives.