About
36
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Introduction
My research focuses on identifying effective ways to promote well-being and nurture resilience among children, youth and families who are involved with the child welfare system. I focus on using evidence to better serve children and families and developing, evaluating and implementing preventive intervention programs to meet their diverse needs. I am particularly interested in understanding the protective power of relationships (e.g., with caring/caregiving adults, siblings and peers).
Current institution
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July 2013 - August 2014
Publications
Publications (36)
This study articulates the iterative development of an intervention called Strengthening Youth Networks and Coping (SYNC), which is designed to target coping self-efficacy and help-seeking intentions and behaviors among youth in foster care. The overarching goal is to design an intervention that will be a feasible and acceptable enhancement to exis...
High school graduation is a key developmental milestone. Most youth in foster care and young people generally want to attend college but adverse experiences put many at risk of either not completing high school or earning an alternative degree, which reduces the likelihood of college enrollment. Youth in foster care have disproportionately low grad...
The current study used a resilience framework to describe youth experiences with their caseworkers, examine the association of youth–caseworker relationship quality with school engagement, and to examine the differential impact of youth–caseworker relationships on youth school engagement by level of youth risk (i.e. posttraumatic symptoms). Seconda...
Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) such as maltreatment, parent substance abuse or untreated mental illness affect early development. Other family processes, such as parenting and household chaos, are also influential and may either accentuate or attenuate risks imposed by ACEs. Thus, it is important to examine how ACEs and other family processes...
Youth in foster care with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) often have significant needs for mental health services. The degree to which youth taking medication for ADHD use mental health services in relation to sibling co-placement and their level of need over time is unclear. To examine these issues, caregivers (N=54) provided infor...
Early childhood teachers play a central role in children’s learning and development. Yet, they encounter stressors that can negatively impact their well-being, relationships with children, and, ultimately, job retention. To inform efforts to support early childhood teachers’ work-related well-being, the current study examines positive factors that...
Transformational change to address adversity and nurture resilience requires deep and sustained community collaborations. Interagency collaboration is critically important for child welfare especially during crisis situations. It is clear that when agencies focus on strengths and promote protective factors (individual, familial and community‐level)...
A highly skilled and committed child welfare workforce is necessary to support the safety, permanency, and well-being of children in foster care. Nevertheless, turnover is high. Job burnout and dissatisfaction are top reasons for quitting child welfare, and leaving is likely due to a mismatch of job demands and job resources. Despite the need for c...
There is increasing recognition of the potential for sibling relationships to promote the well-being of youth in out-of-home care. Efficacious interventions now exist to strengthen the sibling relationships for youth in out-of-home care, yet the processes through which these interventions work to enhance sibling relationships remains largely specul...
Youth in foster care can experience educational success. Yet, studies have tended to focus on their educational challenges and achievement gaps. Compared to their counterparts, youth in foster care lag behind on many academic outcomes. Research is needed to understand the academic and nonacademic indicators of educational resilience (i.e., the incr...
Risk reduction and strength enhancement are both necessary strategies to improve outcomes for youth in foster care who have experienced adversity. Decades of research have articulated the negative long-term outcomes of youth in foster care, but less is known about youth-level modifiable protective factors that can be nurtured through intervention t...
Siblings play a critical role in children’s behavioral development; yet sibling-focused assessment and intervention for youth behavior concerns are uncommon in social work practice settings. To address this research-to-practice gap a scoping review of research focused on siblings and the development of externalizing behaviors in childhood and adole...
We investigated whether ecowellness significantly differed based on participants' generation status (i.e., millennial, Generation X, and combined baby boom/silent generation) and biological sex using a 2 × 3 analysis of variance. A statistically significant interaction suggested that millennial men in the sample had lower levels of ecowellness comp...
The current study examined links between social determinants across communities and school readiness of children attending kindergarten in each community, in literacy, math, self-regulation, and social skills. Four types of social determinants were explored: socioeconomic, crime/violence, health and well-being, and access to resources. Data came fr...
Youth in foster care experience major deficits on standardized measures of academic functioning, are at high risk of academic failure, and are more likely than their non-foster peers to be disciplined at school. School discipline-related problems increase risk of problematic educational and behavioral outcomes including dropping out of school, repe...
This paper introduces a flowchart-based methodology for describing the movement of foster youth in and out of placements of differing types and durations. This longitudinal methodology is designed to be sufficiently simple to appeal to policymakers and administrators seeking to chart the movement of groups of youth over time and the sequencing of t...
This study sought to identify factors that contribute to the relational well-being of youth in substitute care. Using data from the Supporting Siblings in Foster Care (SIBS-FC) study, youth responded to a 9-item measure of positive home integration, a scale designed to assess the relational experiences of youth to their caregivers and their integra...
Sibling programming is an important part of a prevention framework, particularly for youth in foster care. After children are removed from their families and placed into foster care in the aftermath of maltreatment, the sibling relationship is often the most viable ongoing relationship available to the child, and may be critical to a youth’s sense...
Though the presence, composition, and quality of social relationships—particularly as found in family networks—has an important influence on adolescent well-being, little is known about the social ecology of youth in foster care. This study examined the social networks of foster youth participating in a large RCT of an intervention for siblings in...
Objectives
This article introduces a youth-reported measure (Essential Youth Experiences [EYE]) developed to assess the experiences of foster youth in their home environment and their critical relationships across a number of service systems. Empirically, the article reports on the psychometric properties of a 9-item scale within the EYE that measu...
Sibling co-placement and kinship care have each been shown to protect against the occurrence of placement change for youth in substitute care. However, little is known about the effects of different combinations of sibling placement and relative caregiver status on placement change. Nor does the field fully understand how family dynamics may differ...
Objective: To investigate the utility of an adapted version of a racial respect scale originally developed for African American youth. We modified the scales for gender-specific use with adult African Americans, and added a subscale to assess racial respect related to romantic partnerships. The current study seeks to investigate the relationship be...
Differential treatment based on race impacts the adoption of prosocial or maladaptive behaviors and attitudes of African Americans, which in turn influences their perceived wellbeing. In essence, the African American experience is shaped by intrapersonal, interpersonal, and institutional social determinants. As such the nature of the African Americ...
Due to their ubiquity and possible influence on youth mental health, academic, and other outcomes, sibling-focused intervention strategies may be important for the development and implementation of evidence-based practices (EBPs) in child welfare. However, there is no rigorous evidence as to either the best methods for, or feasibility of, incorpora...
Interpersonal relationships both within and outside the family have been a central part of alcohol and substance use research. Many studies have focused on the role of parents and peers; fewer studies have focused on siblings. This paper examined siblings' roles in ATOD use patterns and trajectories in the context of familial and non-familial facto...
Background and Purpose:
Although a significant body of research suggests that social-familial processes within the home environment may influence the development of at-risk youth (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006; Biglan et al., 2012), the specific mechanisms through which foster youth are integrated within the foster home and environment remain unde...
Purpose: Approximately 70% of foster youth have one or more siblings in care and over half of state child welfare systems have policies promoting sibling co-placement (Shlonsky et al., 2005). Even though siblings may serve as essential conduits for social support and psychological development for foster youth (East & Khoo, 2005), few child welfare...
Background: Federal and state policies require child welfare agencies to promote sibling co-placement for foster youth and promote the formation and sustainment of sibling relational bonds where feasible. Yet little is known about (a) how youth in foster care and the adults involved in their lives perceive siblings’ responsiveness to each other’s n...
Challenges with social worker satisfaction and subsequent high staff turnover rates are not new to the profession. For decades researchers have studied social worker satisfaction from several perspectives, though generally with child welfare staff. This exploratory study examined responses from a statewide survey of 838 social workers across a broa...
Background and Purpose: Children in foster care disproportionally experience symptoms of posttraumatic stress as compared with children who are not involved in foster care (McCrae, 2009; Ritner et al. 2012). Research supports the idea that placing siblings together in foster homes is beneficial (Leathers, 2005). Less is known around the impact of t...
In recent years, the child welfare field has devoted significant attention to siblings in foster care. Policymakers and practitioners have supported efforts to connect siblings via shared foster placements and visitation while researchers have focused on illuminating the empirical foundations of sibling placement and sibling intervention in child w...
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...
This paper addresses the importance of parent involvement in facilitating positive transitions from early childhood settings to elementary school for children with challenging behaviors and/or those at risk for more serious emotional/behavioral disorders. Qualitative interviews with parents of children with social-emotional/behavioral challenges, t...
Background and Purpose: Historically, researchers have been challenged in obtaining reliable and valid self-report data about young children's experiences and perceptions from young children themselves. As such, most have relied primarily on reports from other agents such as parents, teachers, and practitioners even though youth are arguably the be...
This study investigated 2 questions: (1) do children show consistent styles of appraisal across a range of moderately stressful events?, and (2) what are the adjustment and parenting correlates of individual differences in children's appraisal style? Ninety-nine 3rd though 5th grade children and their mothers participated. For each of 6 vignettes i...
The primary goals of the present study were 1) to explore the types and frequencies of adaptation reported by facilitators; 2) to document their reasons for making those adaptations; and 3) to propose an efficient approach to the study of prevention program fidelity based on interview data. We interviewed 42 program facilitators involved in a large...
