These two mixed method studies are among the first to focus on resilience among Canadian Aboriginal (i.e., First Nations, Métis, and Inuit) youth living in out-of-home care. The first study was quantitative and consisted of cross-sectional and longitudinal components. For the cross-sectional investigation, the participants consisted of 510 First Nations (237 females, 273 males aged 10-16 years), 39 Métis (15 females, 24 males aged 10-16 years), and 10 Inuit young people (2 females, 8 males aged 10-16 years) who were drawn from an ongoing study of young people in out-of-home care in Ontario collected during 2007-2008. The second Canadian adaptation of the Assessment and Action Record (AAR-C2-2006; Flynn, Ghazal, & Legault, 2006) from the ongoing Ontario Looking After Children (OnLAC) project was used to collect data. The criterion variables were the young person’s self-esteem, score on a suicidality index, educational performance, pro-social behaviour, and positive emotional and behavioural development. The predictor variables included the young person’s gender, ethnicity, age, behavioural difficulties, cognitive impairments, attainment of LAC goals, and number of developmental assets. The longitudinal investigation used the same design as study one, but examined the OnLAC data for year eight (2008-2009) in following 260 young people from the sample in study one. The second study was qualitative and involved interviewing 21 First Nations children and adolescents residing in out-of-home care in northern Ontario to obtain their views about resilience and the factors related to the presence or absence of resilient outcomes. The results provided some support for the hypothesis, in that a greater number of developmental assets were related to more positive outcomes on four of the five criterion variables. The results of the focus groups and in-depth interviews suggested that family members, members of the community (coaches), teachers, and child welfare workers, all play important roles in fostering the youths’ success.

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Caseworker turnover in child welfare agencies has been a problem for many years. The turnover negatively impacts the agency, and the staff left behind by their departing peers, and continuity of services provided to clients. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to explore parental experiences with child welfare staff turnover to determine how clients perceived that turnover impacted their child welfare case. The research questions for this study focused on (a) how clients perceived that child welfare turnover impacted their case and (b) how the turnover impacted their case plan and (c) recommendations for child welfare to enhance services. Conceptually, ecological and general systems theories provided the framework for understanding perceptions of child welfare clients’ experiences. Data were collected using semistructured questions administered to the 8 former child welfare clients in individual interviews. The participants were recruited through purposeful and snowball sampling. The selection criteria for participants were previous clients who had experienced the loss of their caseworker at least 3 times due to turnover. The collected data were transcribed verbatim from an audio recording. Codes were assigned to the data and reliability checks were conducted. The themes that emerged from analysis of the data included (a) effect of turnover on the outcome of the case, (b) loss that comes with turnover, (c) different perspectives, (d) frustration with notification of change, (e) case plan changes, and (f) advice for child welfare agencies. The knowledge gained from this study can help child welfare agencies learn how clients are affected by turnover and what families need from the child welfare agency when facing turnover. The findings of this study could potentially contribute to positive social change by providing guidance for practice and a greater opportunity to help families who experience staff turnover in child welfare agencies.

Bibliography: pages 153-156. / The study investigates Kwa Mashu Family and Child Welfare Society, a welfare organization providing child welfare services to the community of Kwa Mashu. This organization interacts with other organizations that serve the interests of the child. The study investigates the Kwa Mashu Family and Child Welfare Society as it interacts with other organizations in the provision of Child Welfare Services. The study was motivated by the earnest desire of the organization to find out from the community of Kwa Mashu how the latter views the society in the midst of changing circumstances within the Township. The study is descriptive and exploratory, it explores and describes the child welfare field. It addresses the development of this field and demonstrates how the political priorities affected child welfare provision in South Africa. The study also gives a brief profile of Kwa Mashu Township in which the society operates. In the analysis of Kwa Mashu Family and Child Welfare Society special attention is given to the structure of the organization and the channels of communication within the organization and between the organization and the community. The study investigates the views and opinions of 50 community organizations operating within Kwa Mashu. The study discovered that these organizations had a variety of views about Kwa Mashu Family and Child Welfare Society. The major discovery was that although the community organizations are aware of Kwa Mashu Family and Child Welfare Society they are unaware of the services offered.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / When the child welfare system becomes involved with a family in need of services it does so with the goal of concluding its involvement by finding a safe and permanent placement for the children, ideally with their parents. This challenging and complicated work often has many issues that need to be addressed before a successful closure can occur. To achieve this goal, multiple service providers with various backgrounds, degrees, and professions are tasked with working with each other and the family through a collaborative team called a multidisciplinary team (MDT). However, collaboration is not always guaranteed, and conflict can emerge as the team attempts to best serve the family. This conflict may emerge among professionals and between professionals and the family. Although the underlying factors of collaboration and conflict have been documented and studied, research on the process of resolving conflict when it occurs in MDTs is severely lacking in the literature. Furthermore, MDTs specific to the child welfare system also lack the focus they deserve within the child welfare literature. This grounded theory study addresses the gap by focusing on child welfare MDTs and specifically on home-based therapists (N=20) to determine not only their perceptions of facilitators and barriers to collaboration but also the process that they and their fellow service providers engage in when addressing and resolving conflict. In conducting this qualitative study, this researcher used grounded theory to construct a theory outlining the processes that home-based therapists utilize to resolve conflict within MDTs, starting with the emergence of the conflict and detailing the decision making process through the team’s reaction and the ultimate decision or final result. In the future, these findings could be used to aid and train other MDT members as they face their own conflicts with the hope that a more efficient conflict resolution process will lead to a more effective MDT that keeps its focus on the family and provides the needed treatment and services in a timely manner.

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