<p><strong>ABSTRACT</strong></p> <p>The landscape of Child Welfare inOntariohas changed over the past several years. One area of significant change is that increasingly children are placed with relatives (kin) when it has been determined that they cannot be safety cared for by a parent or guardian. This change was brought about by new legislation and with it came a number of standards and processes to guide front line workers work with kin.</p> <p>The purpose of this research study was to gain a better understanding of how this change impacted front line workers. The research focused on what influenced the work and considered individual, institutional and systemic factors. It was undertaken in order to gain a clearer appreciation of the successes and challenges in working with kinship caregivers.</p> <p>Five child welfare workers who work directly with kinship services caregivers were interviewed. Qualitative research methods were utilized so that participants could share the direct experience of their work. This research used a Critical and Interpretive social science framework to gain a better understanding of the systemic and societal influences that guide the work.</p> <p>The findings suggest that while this work is highly regarded and valued by the participants, they struggle with their role in supporting and advocating for kin. On one hand, they support kin but on the other, they present as worried about such care. They question what is behind the Ministry Of Children and Youth Services movement to greater consideration of kin. They bring forward very important concerns about inequities in the distribution of resources to support children who are not able to live with their parents or guardians.</p> / Master of Social Work (MSW)

published_or_final_version / abstract / Humanities / Master / Master of Philosophy

The psychological concept of attachment began to take hold in the 1950s and 1960s. This time period also began a significant period of social and legislative change impacting on the field of child protection. These social science and legal developments have been mutually reinforcing and this thesis examines those developments over the course of the 60 years since Attachment Theory first emerged from the work of John Bowlby. This examination will include a review of the fundamentals of Attachment Theory with a particular focus on the implications of those developmental lessons on the circumstances of children removed from the care of their families due to risk or maltreatment. Following a review of the fundamentals of Attachment Theory, this examination will review the influence of those principles on the laws of child protection in Ontario – through changes in the legislation and through decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada and the Courts of Ontario. Finally, this thesis will examine some of the ways in which the attachment needs of Ontario’s children are being served or failed with regard to both the need for early establishment of permanency for children as well as the continuity of the care arrangements for children up to and including the point at which permanent plans are established. This examination of the legislation and the case law will demonstrate that Ontario has seen a progressive shift away from family reunification as a fixed priority and toward the examination of each child’s individual developmental needs. This includes an acceptance of the application of Attachment Theory and its principles as one significant means of describing those needs and assessing the best interests of children. / Thesis (Master, Law) -- Queen's University, 2013-04-29 01:15:06.929

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In this dissertation, the author argues that there is strong evidence that the child welfare workforce continues to be in crisis. While a great deal of research has indicated that supervision is closely linked to the crisis, extremely high rates of turnover have not been notably reduced through the efforts of administrators or academics to change supervisory practices. Therefore, the author makes the case that it is time to employ an alternative methodology—constructivist inquiry. Constructivist inquiry is based on paradigmatic assumptions that make it distinct from the functionalist approach that researchers most commonly use to understand the child welfare workforce crisis and the role of supervision. Consequently, the organization and content of this dissertation follow the conventions of a constructivist process. In order to take advantage of the unique role and opportunity created by the philosophical assumptions of subjectivity, interactivity, and reflexivity, the author incorporates an extensive discussion of her own tacit knowledge and practice wisdom along with the literature review. She then goes on to describe the phased, emergent, and participatory process used to examine the question: How do stakeholders in the local child welfare system value their experience of supervision? Finally, the author uses the data to tell the story in case report form and in a report of her own lessons learned. Through examination of the case report and lessons learned, the author intends for the reader to gain a more complex understanding of child welfare supervision and to evaluate for themselves how this understanding might be of value to their own role in the child welfare system.

Child protection refers to the systems put in place to prevent child abuse and maltreatment and to promote and enhance the well‐being of children. Child protection has been basically a constitutional issue for the state to protect children. Existing civil society organisations emerged as community collective organisations that were meant to voice out the concerns and demands of the public to their governments with regards to some problematic issues in their communities. Gradually, NGOs shifted their focus from reactive approaches to be more proactive in the manner they addressed the community issues and hence they incorporated child protection activities in their programmes. However, they are faced with criticism in focusing more on preventative and early intervention measures in child protection. The aim of the study was to investigate the role of NGOs as change agents in child protection. The study was qualitative in nature and used a multi‐case study design. The study population consisted of 4 Directors /Managers from the 4 NGOs for the study as well as 6 Social Workers from the 4 NGOs, 3 councillors and 1 chief from the district and 2 key informants from the Department of Social Development and the South African Police Services. Semi‐structured interview schedules were used to get the information from the respondents through face to face interviews. The findings from the study are: NGOs contribute to the social protection of children by preventing child abuse, promoting the wellbeing of children and protecting their rights, building of resilience in children and their families and creating partnerships with other role players to provide holistic child protection services. The findings also revealed that revealed that communities perceive NGOs as the immediate service providers in their communities and promoters of child well‐being and better social functioning of children. The findings from the study also revealed that NGOs are seen as change agents in terms of socio‐economic development of communities. However, the study showed that communities perceived that NGOs render poor service and also that their programmes had a negative impact on children and their families. The findings of the study identified the following challenges faced by NGOs in their work of child protection which are role confusion, lack of cooperation, malfunctioning child protection systems and lack of resources. The study recommends that child protection policy and processes around prevention, early intervention, statutory services and continuum of care be relooked and be improved and that programmes of child protection be child centred and yet be inclusive of parents as well. The study suggests that the child protection role players need to be capacitated and funded more to improve service delivery in child protection.

Thesis advisor: Thomas O'Hare / Substance use and suicide among adolescents is a pervasive problem in the United States. It is estimated that over 190,000 youth go to the emergency department each year as a result of alcohol related injuries and over 5,000 youth are estimated to die each year from alcohol related incidents. Moreover, suicide is the second leading cause of death for adolescents, resulting in more than one in ten deaths among adolescents. Research has demonstrated that a history of childhood abuse is a strong risk factor for suicidal ideation and alcohol misuse and related problems. It is estimated that 29% of maltreated youth engage in substance use with 9% reporting moderate to high levels of use and 5% reporting risky suicidal behavior. Although prior studies provide a foundation for understanding substance use and suicidal thoughts among maltreated youth, some significant gaps remain in the knowledge base including the use of older data, treating all maltreated youth as a homogenous group, and looking at substance use and suicidal thoughts as independent outcomes. This dissertation fills some of these gaps in the empirical literature by focusing on three specific aims: 1) examine the co-occurrence of substance use and suicidal thoughts among maltreated youth; 2) investigate the longitudinal predictors of substance use and suicidal thoughts among maltreated youth; and 3) assess whether the predictors of substance use and suicidal thoughts are similar or different across placement types (in-home care, kinship care, or foster care). The National Survey on Child and Adolescent Wellbeing (NSCAW II) restricted dataset is used as the primary source for the analyses to address each aim. Policy and practice implications are provided for the fields of addiction, mental health, and child welfare. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Social Work. / Discipline: Social Work.

Although there is extensive literature on supervision in the human services, there is limited research specific to the stories from supervisors in child welfare, in particular in Canada. This inquiry sought to understand how child welfare supervisors navigated through ethical dilemmas in their practice and how their approach influenced decision making. In addition, specific attention was paid on whether these practitioners used critical reflection in their approach to decision making. Findings indicated that these child welfare supervisors relied primarily on their personal moral framework. They encountered frequent dilemmas in highly complex work environments. Further, they endured ethical tensions as a result of not being able to enact their ethics amid work place barriers. These ongoing tensions often resulted in leaving these supervisors depleted emotionally and physically. Critical reflection in action was used in some cases when examining the context of the family in the process of ethical decision making. As with recent studies, this inquiry found that child welfare supervisors often stepped away from reflection in action for self-preservation and relied more heavily on reflection on action. Implications for future studies and recommendations for child welfare practice are discussed. / Graduate

abstract: Child abuse and neglect is a devastating yet preventable social problem. Currently, early childhood home visitation services are the primary approach to preventing maltreatment and improving child well-being in the United States. However, existing literature suggests that improvement is needed regarding how home visitation professionals identify and respond to risk factors for child abuse and neglect. Although there is substantial multidisciplinary literature that investigates the utility of standardized measures to determine future risk for maltreatment, there has been minimal inquiry into the validity of early childhood home visitation assessment instruments to accurately identify and classify children and their families by their risk for future maltreatment. In response to the dearth in the literature, the purpose of this dissertation was to examine the utility of the Healthy Families Parenting Inventory (HFPI) to predict a family’s risk for future maltreatment. Families enrolled in Healthy Families Arizona, a child abuse and neglect prevention program, were followed for 12 months after the completion of the baseline HFPI to measure if the family had received an investigation of maltreatment from the public child welfare system. Bivariate results indicated that the generated risk classifications of the HFPI and the overall total composite score were related to the occurrence of a future maltreatment investigation. Specifically, the results from the binary logistic regression models provided evidence that as a family’s score increased on the inventory, the likelihood of receiving an investigation of maltreatment decreased. Further, significant relationships were found between a family’s score on several individual items of the HFPI and the occurrence of a maltreatment investigation. This dissertation concludes with a discussion of potential avenues of research on the topic of risk assessment in prevention programs serving at-risk families. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Social Work 2018

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