Browsing by Subject "Child Protection"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    A secondary data analysis of young truants and the interaction of child protection intervention
    (2011-06) Zuel, Timothy Brett
    Young children who experience chronic truancy are associated with a greater risk of school dropout, adolescent delinquency, and very high adult social and financial costs (Bell, Rosen, & Dynlacht, 1994; Caldas, 1993; Hawkins, Herrenkohl, Farrington, Brewer, Catalano, & Harachi, 1998; Huizinga & Jakob-Chien, 1998; Lamdin, 1996; Loeber & Farrington, 2000; Robins & Ratcliff, 1980). Current law requires schools to report to the child protection system any students who have seven or more unexcused absences. Using administrative data and a quasi-experimental design that used propensity score matching to create a comparison group, this study examines the outcomes of students who have missed at least 10% of the school year (at least 18 days) and their associated interactions with the child protection system. Furthermore, this study examines the effect of the child protection process on these students’ attendance. The analysis found no significance for treatment effect of a child protection intervention on the attendance of the sample of chronically truant students. The study revealed that only 5% of the truant cohort had been involved with child protection over the two years of the study. Further, none of the child protection involvement was as a result of missing school. The study suggests a disconnect between the policy of child protection involvement in truant young children and the practice as revealed by the administrative data. Future research into child protection intervention with young truants would need to be carried out at a more local level due to the multiple factors making statewide data sources untrustworthy.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Walking Together for American Indian Families and Children: Opinions of Tribal Relationships from the Viewpoint of Counties with Specialized American Indian Child Welfare Units
    (Spring 2024) Glesener, David
    Considering the disproportional overrepresentation of American Indian children in out of home placement and involvement with public child protection agencies, this research examines the opinions of American Indian child welfare staff of two county child protection agencies with specialized American Indian units regarding their working relationship with tribes. This qualitative exploratory study extended the lens of the Holding Space Framework from American Indian public health to child protection. It conducted 20 semi-structured interviews of social workers, supervisors, and program managers. Participants described their individual relationships, their unit’s relationships, and their agency’s relationships with tribes. They commented on the importance of the relationship, the relationships’ outcomes for American Indian families, and suggestions on building and maintenance of relationships with tribes. This study found the importance to those relationships and to social work practice of county staff’s commitment to American Indian families, as well as the benefit of staff with American Indian heritage or previous work experience at tribes especially in positions of authority. The study suggested positive relationships provided positive outcomes for American Indian families and that the HSF pillars of governance, trust, and culture fitted well for describing and probing tribal-public child welfare relationships. The Limitations to the study were that formal input from tribes was not available except through opinions of tribal members employed by county agencies, only two public agencies were included as only, and the participant sample consisted of volunteers and not randomly selected.