Father involvement in child welfare: Associations with changes in externalizing behavior.

Nonresident fathers can have a significant impact on children's behavioral outcomes. Unfortunately, the impact of nonresident father involvement on the behavioral outcomes of children with child welfare involvement has received scant attention in the literature, a limitation the current study sought to address. A sample of 333 children in state custody in Illinois between the ages of six and 13 participated and were assessed using the externalizing behavior scale of the Child and Adolescent Needs and Strengths (CANS) at regular intervals throughout their time in care. Father involvement was measured through a review of case files and interviews with child welfare workers. Growth trajectories were fit to children's externalizing behavior across time and were predicted using Time 1 characteristics. Father involvement, total non-father relative involvement, and gender (girls) was associated with lower baseline externalizing behavior and the African American children in the sample experienced higher baseline externalizing behavior. However, only Time 1 father involvement predicted slope trajectories after controlling for Time 1 externalizing behavior; more father involvement was associated with lower externalizing behavior trajectories. These results suggest that even in the unique and stressful context of child welfare, father involvement can be protective regarding children's externalizing behaviors.

Emergency shelter care utilization in child welfare: Who goes to shelter care? How long do they stay?

Emergency shelter care for children entering foster care is widely used as a temporary first placement, despite its contraindications. However, little research has examined predictors of utilization (e.g., entry into care, length of stay in care). A sample of 123 children (ages 6-13) entering foster care was studied to explore the variables associated with an initial placement in shelter care versus kinship care and variables associated with children staying less than 30 days in the shelter versus 30 days or longer. After applying a classification tree analysis (CTA via Optimal Data Analysis), results indicated that variables across the child's ecology--specifically the microsystem, mesosystem, and exosystem--were associated with increased emergency shelter utilization, including older age, entering as a dependency case, more relatives and fictive kin with barriers to involvement in the child's life, and the child welfare agency serving the child. These results suggest that although emergency shelter care utilization may be determined by a complex interaction of variables across the child's ecology, policy and programmatic attention to some of these risk factors might be effective in limiting utilization so that children can enter care with a more long-term, family-based placement.