James David Simon

California State University, Los Angeles | CSULA · School of Social Work

Abstract Background and purpose Matching needs and services following a child protective services (CPS) investigation is important for families with complex needs (i.e. mental health, substance use, and domestic violence) because several studies indicate that a service match is associated with important child welfare outcomes including decreased s...

In this paper, we argue that social work education should refocus how it conceptualizes and teaches intersectionality to produce more effective social work practitioners. We emphasize that social work should shift from educating students to evaluate diverse clients as the accumulation of individual identities operating in isolation (e.g., race/ethn...

Families involved in child welfare services (CWS) and public social services simultaneously, known as dual-system families, have been shown to be at higher risk for repeat child abuse and neglect compared to CWS-only families, yet few studies have examined these families' characteristics and whether programs like Family Preservation (FP) might help...

The objective of this paper is to frame, understand, and draw implications from existing research on families screened out by child protective services (CPS) after a referral alleging child maltreatment. We review descriptive and outcome data together with emerging intervention research amidst a developing consensus that the current reactive role o...

Objective: Matching needs and services among families investigated by child protective services agencies (CPS) may reduce incidents of recidivism, such as re-reports to CPS. Yet, many families under CPS supervision do not receive the matched services they need, or they receive unneeded services. Thus, this study examines the relationship between ne...

Background: Mandated reporting policies, a core response to the identification of child maltreatment, are widely debated. Currently, there are calls to abolish or scale back these policies to include only certain professionals. These calls warrant evaluation of whether there are any differences in child welfare outcomes based on report source. Obje...

Despite the growing importance of teaching about diversity and its connection to intersectionality, privilege, and oppression in social work education, few studies have examined whether teaching interventions could enhance students' knowledge of oppression. Thus, this study assessed the extent to which students assimilated content related to inters...

The presentation examines student reflections on the impact of short-term immersion experiences abroad in areas such as cultural awareness and humility, professional and personal growth, and the most impactful and transformative experiences. It discusses considerations in planning, teaching, and/or leading the in-country experience for two internat...

Data-driven decision making (DDDM) in public child welfare (PCW) has become increasingly important with the passage of the Family First Prevention Services Act (FFPSA), making PCW agencies across the U.S. examine their various programs to ensure that they meet the service requirements of FFPSA. Family Preservation (FP) is an important program that...

We are thankful for the opportunity to respond to Reddy, Williams-Isom, and Putnam-Hornstein's review of anti-bias trainings as a solution to racial disparities in child protection systems (CPS). As researchers debate the role of racial bias in CPS (Barth et al., 2021; Dettlaff et al., 2021), this article raises important concerns about the effecti...

These slides were presented at the ISPCAN Congress Quebec City 2022 virtual conference on March 30, 2022. The presentation summarizes an article published by SAGE in Child Maltreatment on July 26, 2021 available at https://doi.org/10.1177/10775595211033597, and it includes additional statistics on screened-out families in Quebec referred to as sign...

The overrepresentation of Black children has been observed in the child welfare system for nearly 60 years yet persists as an unresolved problem. Efforts to address this overrepresentation have been hampered by a persistent debate in the child welfare field regarding the factors that contribute to this problem. This debate concerns the extent to wh...

Families with complex needs related to domestic violence, mental health, and substance use have some of the worst child protective services (CPS) outcomes. Although many of these families are identified during a CPS investigation and subsequently referred to home-based postinvestigation services (HBPS), many are re-reported to CPS, so it is importa...

Housing instability can complicate parents' efforts to provide for their children. Child welfare service agencies have had difficulty adequately serving parents' housing needs due to limited and constrained funding streams. This article integrates the voices of four important stakeholders to illuminate how an innovative model of service system coor...

This study examined the relationship between different areas of family need and the utilization of home-based, post-investigation services (HBPS) following a child protective services (CPS) investigation. The sample consisted of 2598 families with children who remained at home after an initial CPS investigation between July 2006 and April 2011. Fam...

Objective Low perceived safety and security might have adverse health consequences, especially for chronically homeless individuals who are at high risk of victimization on the street. Permanent supportive housing (PSH) is an effective strategy to address chronic homelessness and improve residents’ health and well-being. However, it is unclear how...

Social Welfare Policy and Advocacy: Advancing Social Justice through 8 Policy Sectors provides the first framework that links micro, mezzo, and macro policy advocacy, demonstrating how each type can be used to promote social justice in health, gerontology, safety net, child welfare, education, immigrants/global, mental health, and criminal justice...

Maltreatment that begins during infancy is likely to be chronic in duration and developmentally consequential if the appropriate intervention is not delivered. Repeated reports of maltreatment may signal unmet service needs. This study prospectively followed infants who remained at home following an initial report of maltreatment to determine the r...

Objective: In 2011, child protective services (CPS) agencies across the U.S. received more than 3 million reports of alleged abuse or neglect involving an estimated 6.2 million children. Of these children, 3.3 million received home-based prevention services (HBPS) because they were at risk of abuse and neglect. HBPS are provided after a child abus...

Objective: Each year, about 6 million children are referred to a local Child Protective Services (CPS) agency because of alleged child abuse or neglect. In 2010, approximately 700,000 children were victimized, more than 200,000 children were removed from their families, and over 4 million children received a post-investigation services response w...

Background/Purpose. Nationally, the maltreatment victimization rate is highest during infancy and has increased over the last decade. Given the physical vulnerability that defines the first year of life, as well as a growing body of research linking early childhood adversities to developmental deficiencies through adulthood, there is perhaps no gre...

Objective: The present secondary data analysis was conducted to examine how different levels of engagement in community-based services (CBS) impact post-investigation outcomes related to child safety and permanency and to examine whether these outcomes vary by level of engagement and child ethnicity. Method: This study compared the outcomes of chil...