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The Family First Prevention Services Act of 2018 affords child welfare agencies a new opportunity to fund evidence-supported interventions to prevent children’s removal into public foster care and ensure that youth in care receive appropriate treatment in the least restrictive (most family-like) setting. The new law has been generally heralded as a much-needed improvement over prior funding constraints, but there are concerns among a growing number of child welfare leaders, researchers, professional membership organizations, and advocacy groups that its focus on the families of children who are at immanent risk of removal because of maltreatment is too limiting and that overreliance on strict evidence standards may contribute to racial disparity. This article considers how child welfare agencies can best leverage the opportunities presented by Family First while addressing potential barriers posed by the paucity of evidence-supported prevention programs and avoiding the unintended consequences of limiting reimbursement to only selective prevention services that meet rigorous evidence standards of effectiveness.

The number of children who are removed into formal foster care in the USA remains stubbornly high. To address this concern, child welfare agencies are seeking safe ways of diverting low-risk cases from formal foster care to informal alternative care. However, little is known about the outcomes and wellbeing of children who spend some time in informal placements, particularly in the homes of unrelated caregivers. The current study reports results from a pre-registered, experimental evaluation of Safe Families for Children, a voluntary hosting program for children whose parents are being investigated for child maltreatment. Drawing on a Bayesian paradigm, it analyzes the effects of the hosting program in both formative and summative randomized controlled trials conducted in downstate Illinois. Findings indicate that the intervention deflects alleged and indicated victims of maltreatment from the formal foster care system to the voluntary alternative care of host families. The program demonstrates positive or null effects across a variety of child welfare outcomes, including subsequent episodes of indicated maltreatment and return to or maintenance in the parental home. Findings from this work contribute to the ongoing debate about the benefits and risks of informal non-kin care as a preventive alternative to the removal of children into formal foster care.

More than two decades ago, the Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) published Kinship Care: A Natural Bridge (Child Welfare League of America, 1994). The report assembled the best thinking and scholarship available at the time to address the emerging issue of kinship care in the field of child welfare. Even though the alternative care of children by extended family, tribal members, and other primary groups is deeply rooted in human evolutionary and cultural history, it was only in the last quarter of the 20th century that child welfare practitioners and policy-makers put concerted efforts into reconciling the natural-customary sources of informal kinship care with the rational-legal foundations of formal foster care. Despite some progress in reconciling the informal agency relationships of kinship solidarity and customary trust with the formal agency relationships of contractual exchange and generalized beneficence (Testa, 2013), significant challenges still remain in demarcating the boundaries between informal and formal kinship care and in ensuring that kinship caregivers, birth parents, and their children receive the support and services they need from the public child welfare system. The purpose of this introduction is to offer a conceptual framework for addressing the challenges involved in developing a coherent set of policies and practices with respect to kinship care. The challenges span two key tensions in the public protection and care of vulnerable children. The first concerns the appropriate scope of public interest in the welfare of other people's children: Should child welfare policy be constrained to a narrow set of functions that ensure children are adequately fed, sheltered, clothed, and protected from physical harm, or should it be unconstrained in the pursuit of a diffuse array of improvements in children's general well-being? The second concerns the appropriate locus of agency relationships in the protection and care of children: Should actions taken by non-parental agents on behalf of the interests in children be largely the informal responsibility of the particularistic agency relationships of extended kinship, tribal affiliation, and voluntary association, or should the universalistic agency relationships of child protective services (CPS) and court authority ultimately be held accountable for ensuring adequate safety, family permanence, and equal developmental opportunities for all vulnerable children?

More than two decades ago, the Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) published Kinship Care: A Natural Bridge (Child Welfare League of America, 1994). The report assembled the best thinking and scholarship available at the time to address the emerging issue of kinship care in the field of child welfare. Even though the alternative care of children by extended family, tribal members, and other primary groups is deeply rooted in human evolutionary and cultural history, it was only in the last quarter of the 20th century that child welfare practitioners and policy-makers put concerted efforts into reconciling the natural-customary sources of informal kinship care with the rational-legal foundations of formal foster care. Despite some progress in reconciling the informal agency relationships of kinship solidarity and customary trust with the formal agency relationships of contractual exchange and generalized beneficence (Testa, 2013), significant challenges still remain in demarcating the boundaries between informal and formal kinship care and in ensuring that kinship caregivers, birth parents, and their children receive the support and services they need from the public child welfare system. The purpose of this introduction is to offer a conceptual framework for addressing the challenges involved in developing a coherent set of policies and practices with respect to kinship care. The challenges span two key tensions in the public protection and care of vulnerable children. The first concerns the appropriate scope of public interest in the welfare of other people's children: Should child welfare policy be constrained to a narrow set of functions that ensure children are adequately fed, sheltered, clothed, and protected from physical harm, or should it be unconstrained in the pursuit of a diffuse array of improvements in children's general well-being? The second concerns the appropriate locus of agency relationships in the protection and care of children: Should actions taken by non-parental agents on behalf of the interests in children be largely the informal responsibility of the particularistic agency relationships of extended kinship, tribal affiliation, and voluntary association, or should the universalistic agency relationships of child protective services (CPS) and court authority ultimately be held accountable for ensuring adequate safety, family permanence, and equal developmental opportunities for all vulnerable children?

Evidence linking alcohol and other drug abuse with child maltreatment, particularly neglect, is strong. But does substance abuse cause maltreatment? According to Mark Testa and Brenda Smith, such co-occurring risk factors as parental depression, social isolation, homelessness, or domestic violence may be more directly responsible than substance abuse itself for maltreatment. Interventions to prevent substance abuse–related maltreatment, say the authors, must attend to the underlying direct causes of both. Research on whether prevention programs reduce drug abuse or help parents control substance use and improve their parenting has had mixed results, at best. The evidence raises questions generally about the effectiveness of substance abuse services in preventing child maltreatment. Such services, for example, raise only marginally the rates at which parents are reunified with children who have been placed in foster care. The primary reason for the mixed findings, say Testa and Smith, is that almost all the parents face not only substance abuse problems but the co-occurring issues as well. To prevent recurring maltreatment and promote reunification, programs must ensure client progress in all problem areas. At some point in the intervention process, say Testa and Smith, attention must turn to the child's permanency needs and well-being. The best evidence to date suggests that substance-abusing parents pose no greater risk to their children than do parents of other children taken into child protective custody. It may be sensible, say the authors, to set a six-month timetable for parents to engage in treatment and allow twelve to eighteen months for them to show sufficient progress in all identified problem areas. After that, permanency plans should be expedited to place the child with a relative caregiver or in an adoptive home. Investing in parental recovery from substance abuse and dependence, the authors conclude, should not substitute for a comprehensive approach that addresses the multiple social and economic risks to child well-being beyond the harms associated with parental substance abuse.

We investigated interactions between hypoxia and nutrient cycling in Chesapeake Bay using quantitative analysis of long-term monitoring data covering the periods 1965–1980 and 1985–2007. The data included vertical water column profiles of temperature, salinity, NH⁺₄, PO3−₄, and O₂, as well as rates of total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP) loading to the bay from the Susquehanna River. We investigated the hypothesis that a doubling of the volume of hypoxic (O₂ > 62.5 μmol L−1) water generated per unit TN load in the past 25 yr is related to enhanced water-column and sediment recycling of NH⁺₄ and PO3−₄ under low O₂, and that this increased nutrient recycling creates a feedback that further generates hypoxia. We found that bottom water in the upper bay region, where seasonal hypoxia first develops, was enriched in NH⁺₄ and PO3−₄ relative to other regions. Evidence of the positive feedback effect of low O₂ on nutrient recycling was found in the fact that bottom-water pools of NH⁺₄ and PO3−₄ per unit TN and TP loading, respectively, were significantly and positively related to hypoxic volume in upper bay regions during June. Similarly, NH⁺₄ pools generated per unit TN load were significantly higher during 1985–2007, when hypoxic volume had been approximately doubled, relative to 1965–1980. This positive feedback effect on nutrient recycling may help to explain the persistence of extensive hypoxia in June, even during years of reduced N loading.

This study compares the permanency outcomes of children in kinship foster care with a matched sample of children in nonkinship foster care in Illinois. It addresses the issue of selection bias by using propensity score matching (PSM) to balance mean differences in the characteristics of children in kinship and nonkinship foster homes. The data come from the March 1998 to September 2007 six-month files submitted by the state of Illinois to the federal Adoption and Foster Care Analysis Reporting Systems (AFCARS). A longitudinal sample of linked records for 21,914 kin children and 10,108 non-kin children was created, and a random subsample of 1,500 children in nonkinship care was matched to the kinship sample by using PSM. The permanency outcomes and placement stability of children in kin and non-kin foster care in the matched sample of 3,000 are compared with both cross-tabular and survival analysis.Prior to matching, differences in reunification rates, combined adoption and guardianship rates, and placement stability are all significant. After matching, the differences in permanency rates disappear. Children in nonkinship foster homes still show a higher risk for initial placement disruption after matching, but there is no difference in rates of instability within a year compared with children in kinship foster homes. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.

Revenue generation for event planners traditionally comes from sponsorships, ticket and registration sales, merchandising, and additional income streams; however, these sources can at times be limited due to a lack of data and ability to substantiate an event's positioning within an industry or marketplace. A variety of new methodologies exist for such agencies to generate funding, particularly through demonstration of economic impact. To date, many event planning organizations are not familiar with this process or the use of such data. The following provides a conceptual model for understanding and engaging in economic impact analysis to secure traditional and new sources of funding. An overview of Tourism Improvement Districts (TID) is provided and a step-by-step process for utilizing the data is proposed. Finally, the San Diego Bay Wine & Food Festival (SDBWFF) is used as a case study demonstrating the process.

Much has been written about the tremendous risks faced by children who do not live with or who are not cared for by their parents. Similarly, existing literature warns of the less than optimal child outcomes associated with kinship care, given that caregivers themselves can be vulnerable because of their advanced age, health difficulties, lack of resources, and fragile living conditions. Still, research has demonstrated the beneficial effect of kinship care on children. However, little is known about what produces these observed positive effects. In this empirical analysis of kinship caregivers (N = 747) and children (N = 1301), researchers sought to determine the protective factors that mediate against risks and produce optimal levels of child well-being for children being cared for by kinship caregivers. Although the findings are preliminary, such aspects as low income, high stress, caring for children who have special needs, and caring for multiple children, long thought to place children at risk for poor outcomes while under the care of relatives, can be mediated by protective factors (e.g., readiness/capacity, childrearing/parenting skills, motivation/sustainability, and family involvement/support) that kinship caregivers may inherently possess. This finding supports a strengths-based orientation associated with the contextual distinctions of kinship care. Based on the findings, direct practice and clinical support strategies designed to assess and enhance caregivers’ protective factors are discussed. Moreover, policy and research implications are offered that can stimulate investigation of kinship care’s restorative benefit.