Beth L Green

Portland State University | PSU · School of Social Work

While there is growing evidence that early childhood prevention programs can have positive outcomes for children and families, research has tended to focus on short-term outcomes, with fewer studies of long-term benefits. In addition, evaluations of such programs rarely go beyond the question, “does the program work?” despite numerous calls over th...

The high societal and personal costs of child maltreatment make identification of effective early prevention programs a high research priority. Early Head Start (EHS), a dual generational program serving low-income families with children prenatally through age three years, is one of the largest federally funded programs for infants and toddlers in...

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services launched the Fatherhood Initiative to facilitate increased fatherhood engagement. To understand how fatherhood identification in child welfare care planning influences outcomes, a secondary data analysis study was conducted to answer the following questions: Are cases that identify fathers associated...

This article describes the development, implementation, and outcomes of a pilot intervention designed to enhance preschool programs’ ability to support children’s social-emotional development. Working with two Head Start programs, the intervention included (1) restructuring existing early childhood mental health consultation services; (2) engaging...

Understanding the association between attachment style and social support is important for informing programs that seek to improve outcomes for families by intervening with either or both of these systems. The present study examines whether increasing levels of social support among 181 low-income, primarily African American mothers leads to changes...

This study examined maternal depression, attachment avoidance, and attachment anxiety as moderators of Early Head Start's effects on four parenting outcomes assessed at age three. Participants (N = 947) were drawn from six sites of the Early Head Start National Research and Evaluation Project, a multi-site randomized trial. Findings suggest more po...

Racial differences in school readiness are a form of health disparity. By examining, from the perspective of low-income minority families participating in an Early Head Start study, community and policy environments as they shape and inform lived experiences, we identified several types of social and economic dislocation that undermine the efforts...

Family Drug Treatment Courts (FDTCs) are an increasingly prevalent program designed to serve the multiple and complex needs of families involved in the child welfare system who have substance abuse problems. It is estimated that over 301 FDTCs are currently operational in the United States. Few rigorous studies of FDTCs have examined the effectiven...

This paper presents results from the first large-scale outcome study of American Family Treatment Drug Courts (FTDCs)—specialised courts designed to work with substance-abusing parents involved with the child welfare system. The paper examines whether court, child welfare and treatment outcomes differed for 301 families served through three FTDCs a...

This review provides an overview of an important aspect of early childhood home visiting research: understanding how parents are involved in program services and activities. Involvement is defined as the process of the parent connecting with and using the services of a program to the best of the client’s and the program’s ability. The term includes...

The complex issues associated with barriers to treatment entry for parents who are involved with child welfare has not been well explored. Accessing timely treatment is now critical for these parents since the introduction of the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997, limiting the time until a permanency decision is made. Using a longitudinal, qua...

Meeting the needs of families involved with the child welfare system because of a substance abuse issue remains a challenge for child welfare practitioners. In order to improve services to these families, there has been an increasing focus on improving collaboration between child welfare, treatment providers, and the court systems. This paper prese...

The importance of supportive relationships for new parents has been the focus of both research and parenting interventions. Attachment style, typically viewed as a relatively stable trait reflecting one's comfort in social relationships, as well as social support, or one's perception of the social context, have both been found to be important for f...

As researchers have focused on better understanding those circumstances under which home visiting can lead to positive effects on parent and child outcomes, there has been growing interest in examining variation in the experiences of families within these programs, including the quality of the helping relationships between home visitors and parents...

The Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) was designed to promote more timely permanent placements for children in the child welfare system. To date, however, available data have said little about whether ASFA is meeting its intended goals. This study looks at the impact of ASFA on parents struggling with substance abuse issues. The authors compare...

Family treatment drug courts (FTDCs) are a rapidly expanding program model designed to improve treatment and child welfare outcomes for families involved in child welfare who have substance abuse problems. The present study compares outcomes for 250 FTDC participants to those of similar parents who did not receive FTDC services in four sites. Resul...

Although substance abuse is one of the primary reasons that parents become involved with the child welfare system, there is surprisingly little empirical research that examines the relationship of substance abuse treatment to child welfare outcomes. In this statewide longitudinal study of 1911 women who had children placed in substitute care, we ex...

Sometimes, without recourse to controlling rewards, it is difficult to secure desirable behaviors. Yet, much work has demonstrated the damaging effect that such rewards can have on subsequent independent interest in the reward-induced behavior. Therefore, one who feels required to use controlling rewards to increase desirable action in another face...

In response to (a) an increasing need to support children with emotional and behavioral challenges in childcare settings and (b) the high rates of expulsion among preschool children, mental health consultation in early childhood settings is becoming an increasingly popular intervention strategy. At the same time, there is little agreement or empiri...

One strand of home visiting research investigates efficacy while another investigates under what conditions programs achieve outcomes. The current study follows the latter approach. Using a within-program design in a sample of 11 home-based sites in the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation study, this study found that three components of home v...

The passage of the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA), which calls for timely permanency planning for children placed into state foster care systems, has led to increased attention to the need for timely and appropriate treatment services to families with substance abuse issues who are involved with child welfare. Using statewide adminis...

We explored the perspectives and experiences of low-income, predominantly African American families regarding children's school-readiness. Our research, which involved qualitative interviews, ethnographic case studies, and "photovoice" methods, focused on families participating in the national evaluation of Early Head Start. While valuing academic...

Understanding the outcomes of strengths-based programs requires a better understanding of the extent to which programs actually provide services that are consistent with this model. To this end, we have developed the Strengths-Based Practices Inventory (SBPI). Data collected from two studies of parents participating in either an early childhood pre...

Research methods are tools that can be variously applied - depending on the stage of knowledge in a particular area, the type of research question being asked, and the context of the research. The field of program evaluation, critical for social policy development, often has not adequately embraced the full range of methodological tools needed to u...

Despite mandates for Head Start programs to provide mental health services to families and children, considerable variability remains in the level and type of services provided by mental health consultants. A qualitative study was conducted to explore staff perceptions about the role of mental health consult- ants and, in particular; the ways in wh...

grant H133B990025). The content of this publication does not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the funding agencies. Portland State University supports equal opportunity in admissions, education, employment, and the use of facilities by prohibiting discrimination in those areas based on race, color, creed or religion, sex, national origi...

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is an approach to research and evaluation that is receiving increased attention in the field of public health. Our report discusses the application of this approach to research and evaluation with an Early Head Start (EHS) program in Pittsburgh, Pa. Our primary purpose is to illustrate the key elements...

In the past several years, models of social service provision that are based on principles of "family support" have been implemented nationwide. Development of evaluation methods to adequately reflect the multifaceted nature of these programs, however, has lagged behind program development. It is particularly difficult (especially within the contex...

This study examined the reciprocal relationships between perceived mastery, stress, and three functional areas of social support: tangible support, informational support, and belongingness support. Data were collected during two face-to-face interviews with a sample of low-income, primarily African-American mothers, conducted approximately 1 year a...

This study examined the reciprocal relationships between perceived mastery, stress, and three functional areas of social support: tangible support, informational support, and belongingness support. Data were collected during two face‐to‐face interviews with a sample of low‐income, primarily African‐American mothers, conducted approximately 1 year a...

This paper describes the Policy and Evaluation Project (PEP) of the University of Pittsburgh Office of Child Development (OCD), an unusual university-based, public–private, interdisciplinary regional resource and management unit that emphasizes university–community partnerships. The Policy and Evaluation Project provides technical assistance to com...

The evaluations of many intervention programs for young children are hampered by the lack of untreated comparison groups. Simple pre-post comparisons or more elaborate growth profile analyses within a single treatment group cannot separate changes associated with the treatment from normal developmental changes typical of the participant population....

Although service provision models that emphasize individualization of services and family-centered decision making have been widely adopted by a variety of programs for children and families, to date there is little evidence that service provision has changed to reflect these program philosophies. In this study, data collected by staff at 3 communi...

elaborate on 2 stressors that are putatively unique to ethnic minority workers [i.e., in-group–out-group proportions and prejudice and discrimination] / discuss the moderating role of social support on stress / present findings from a survey we conducted to examine stress and health outcomes in ethnic minority and nonminority employees who held dif...

In 3 experiments, Ss' public statements of attitude change conformed to the norm of reciprocity, in that the most change on a topic was accorded to a persuader who had yielded to the S's earlier persuasive attempt on a prior topic, and the least such change was accorded to a persuader who had resisted the S's persuasive attempt. This tendency was u...