ABSTRACT
The Wisconsin Department of Children and Families and the Midwest Child Welfare Implementation Center are collaborating with Wisconsin's tribes and county child welfare agencies to improve outcomes for Indian children by systemically implementing the Wisconsin Indian Child Welfare Act (WICWA). This groundbreaking collaboration will increase practitioners' understanding of the requirements of WICWA and the need for those requirements, enhance communication and coordination between all stakeholders responsible for the welfare of Indian children in Wisconsin; it is designed to effect the systemic integration of the philosophical underpinnings of WICWA.
Subject(s)
Child Welfare/legislation & jurisprudence , Community-Institutional Relations/legislation & jurisprudence , Indians, North American/legislation & jurisprudence , Outcome and Process Assessment, Health Care , Program Evaluation/methods , Social Work/legislation & jurisprudence , Social Work/organization & administration , Child , Child Welfare/trends , Community-Institutional Relations/trends , Cooperative Behavior , Family , Humans , Interdisciplinary Communication , Social Work/trends , WisconsinABSTRACT
This article describes the development of the Community Norms of Child Neglect Scale (CNCNS), a new measure of perceptions of child neglect, for use in community samples. The CNCNS differentiates among four subtypes of neglect (failure to provide for basic needs, lack of supervision, emotional neglect, and educational neglect). Scenarios ranging in seriousness for each subtype were presented to a large community sample (N = 3,809). Confirmatory factor analyses indicated that a four-factor model provided a better fit to the data than did a model specifying only one overall neglect factor, suggesting this sample distinguished among the four subtypes of neglect. The authors tested measurement equivalence across individuals who work with children and lay community respondents and across rural and urban respondents, with results indicating a very similar structure across these groups. These initial reliability and validity data suggest that the CNCNS may be of use in comparing perceptions of child neglect among individuals and across communities.