Jill Duerr Berrick

• M.S.W., Ph.D.
• Professor at University of California, Berkeley

This exploratory study examines youth (ages 15–17) attitudes about child protection. The study includes data from youth in four countries (Finland, Ireland, Norway, and the U.S.) (n = 2,010) to offer an international comparative perspective. The study also compares youth attitudes to adult attitudes in Norway and the U.S. Findings suggest that yout...

Child welfare‐involved (CWI) youth have high rates of unaddressed mental health needs, and system‐level barriers (e.g., inadequate coordination between child welfare agencies and other systems designed to serve CWI youth) are one major reason why disparities in mental health services' access continue to persist for CWI youth. This Research Note aim...

This study examines a representative sample of adults in California (USA) and Norway, and their attitudes toward adoption versus foster care in a child protection case. The results show that a majority of people favour adoption for a child who has been removed due to maltreatment and cannot be reunified with birth parents. The study examines if peo...

Scholars and advocates are at odds about how to achieve higher levels of child safety and permanency. Calls for change include the recent upEND focus on eradication of child welfare services to a radical refocusing of the present system towards prevention/early intervention. To clarify the implications of reform over abolition, we seek to portray a...

Background Youth in the child welfare system (child welfare–involved [CWI] youth) have high documented rates of mental health symptoms and experience significant disparities in mental health care services access and engagement. Adolescence is a developmental stage that confers increased likelihood of experiencing mental health symptoms and the emer...

Although there is an expansive literature on public attitudes towards the welfare state, we know comparatively little about public attitudes toward child protection. Gauging public opinion about the state's role in protecting children is complicated by the contested ideas that underlie the field. Child protection lies at the nexus between competing...

We used National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System and Census data to examine Black–White and Hispanic–White disparities in reporting, substantiation, and out-of-home placement both descriptively from 2005–2019 and in multivariate models from 2007–2017. We also tracked contemporaneous social risk (e.g., child poverty) and child harm (e.g., infant...

The Oxford Handbook of Family Policy Over the Life Course examines how countries devised measures for child protection outlined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). The UNCRC highlights the importance of protecting children from a range of human rights violations. In response, countries respond differently to human r...

The Oxford Handbook of Family Policy Over the Life Course examines how countries devised measures for child protection outlined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). The UNCRC highlights the importance of protecting children from a range of human rights violations. In response, countries respond differently to human r...

The Oxford Handbook of Family Policy Over the Life Course examines how countries devised measures for child protection outlined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). The UNCRC highlights the importance of protecting children from a range of human rights violations. In response, countries respond differently to human r...

This chapter notes child protection in Egypt. The population in urban areas continued to grow steadily over the years. Egypt also recorded a spike in in ation due to domestic in ation, fuel subsidy cuts, and value-added tax. The legal framework of Egypt's child protection system sparked policy and institutional changes which included policies, stra...

Keywords: Mexico, child violence, children at risk, poverty, malnourishment, antisocial behaviors, early childhood Subject: Social Work Series: Oxford Handbooks Children represent approximately one-third of the population of Mexico, home to around 39.2 million individuals under the age of 18 (Instituto Nacional Estadística Geografía e Informática [...

The Oxford Handbook of Family Policy Over the Life Course examines how countries devised measures for child protection outlined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). The UNCRC highlights the importance of protecting children from a range of human rights violations. In response, countries respond differently to human r...

Barth et al. (2021) published an article in this journal identifying ten topics in the field of child welfare that are frequently discussed among professionals, advocates, and researchers in an effort to shape discussions of practice and policy reform. Concerned that these discussions are often poorly informed by the research evidence, Barth et al....

Foster care placements for infants can be consequential. Research suggests that infants’ path through and beyond the care system is different than the experience for children of other age groups. Studying infants is important because of their unique needs for developmentally-sensitive care; because of the underpinnings of attachment theory; and bec...

Child protection is considered an appropriate government responsibility, but interventions into the family are also some of the most consequential for states. This study examines the normative basis for limiting parents’ freedom by exploring public attitudes about a child’s safety in the context of increasing risk. Using a randomized survey, we tes...

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) is a widely accepted human rights document and has relevance for child protection policy. This study employs an experimental design with representative samples from Norway and California (USA) to test public perceptions of children's rights in child protection. The countries have welfare states a...

As we imagine the next generation of public child welfare, efforts to identify and eliminate practices that are harmful to families must be pursued. This commentary uses available research evidence to argue against child support enforcement for child welfare-involved families. Although research on this topic is sparse, the evidence from the few ava...

An intense appetite for reforming and transforming child welfare services in the United States is yielding many new initiatives. Vulnerable children and families who become involved with child welfare clearly deserve higher quality and more effective services. New policies, programs, and practices should be built on sound evidence. Reforms based on...

Current calls to end structural racism in the US include proposals to abolish or radically transform child welfare services (CWS). While substantial research finds numerous poor outcomes following maltreatment, the efficacy and acceptability of CWS, particularly for children of color, has long sparked debate. This review summarizes the state of qua...

This comprehensive international study provides a cross-national analysis of different understandings of errors and mistakes in child protection practice and lessons to avoid and handle them, using research and knowledge from eleven countries in Europe and North America. Divided into country-specific chapters, each examines the pathways that led to...

This paper examines whether and how the views of professional decision makers in public agencies and courts in four child protection jurisdictions align with the views of the public. Democratic states are built on the foundation that state polices are accountable to, and represent, the citizens’ will. The extent to which this is the case in child p...

This paper presents the views of judicial decision-makers (n = 1794) in four child protection jurisdictions (England, Finland, Norway, and the USA (California)), about whether parents and children are provided with appropriate opportunities to participate in proceedings in their countries. Overall, the study found a high degree of agreement within...

A growing number of children are being raised by relatives under a variety of different care arrangements. Although the extant literature provides rough estimates of the number and characteristics of children living in most care arrangements, research on kinship probate guardianship is especially scarce. This article focuses on kinship probate guar...

Child friendly justice and access to justice for children are explicit concerns for the European Union, the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the Council of Europe and the Child Rights International Network. This study examines court systems as child-responsive by eliciting the views of judicial decision makers on child protection cases (n = 1,...

This article compares blank care order application templates used in four countries (England, Finland, Norway, and USA (California)), treating them as a vital part of the ‘institutional scripts’ that shape practice, and embody state principles of child protection. The templates are used when child protection agencies apply to court for a care order...

This paper compares how frontline staff in four national child welfare systems and policy contexts – Finland, Norway, England and the USA (specifically, California) – respond to questions about a scenario of possible harm to children. The countries have different child welfare systems that we anticipated would be reflected in the workers' responses...

Kinship foster parents have the same responsibilities as nonrelative foster parents and are held to the same standards of rehabilitative care. Nonetheless, their rights to financial supports and their access to other services vary across states depending on the federal eligibility of the child, and/or the licensing criteria caregivers may or may no...

This paper draws on an international comparative study of social work decision making in cases that are on the edge of care order proceedings, involving child protection workers from Finland, Norway, England and the USA (California). It focuses on workers’ responses in an online questionnaire to questions about the use of independent experts to inf...

This paper examines perceptions of time and institutional support for decision making and staff confidence in the ultimate decisions made—examining differences and similarities between and within the service-oriented Nordic countries (represented by Norway and Finland) and the risk-oriented Anglo-American countries (represented by England and Calif...

This article examines parents' involvement in care order decision-making in four countries at one particular point in the care order process, namely, when the child protection worker discusses with the parents his or her considerations regarding child removal. The countries represent different child welfare systems with Norway and Finland categoriz...

Care orders within the child protection system are some of the most invasive interventions a state can make. This article examines the discretionary space governments set out for child protection workers when they prepare care orders. We analyse the formalized framework for these decisions in England, Finland, Norway and the United States. We focus...

The federal government increasingly expects child welfare systems to be more responsive to the needs of their local populations, connect strategies to results, and use continuous quality improvement (CQI) to accomplish these goals. A method for improving decision making, CQI relies on an inflow of high-quality data, up-to-date research evidence, an...

This international comparative paper examines how child protection workers in four countries, England, Finland, Norway, USA (CA), involve children in decision making regarding involuntary child removal. The analysis is based on 772 workers' responses to a vignette describing preparations for care order proceedings. We examine children's involvement...

The U.S., known as a western industrialized country with a residual welfare state, has developed a system to respond to extreme family difficulties by focusing narrowly on children's safety and risk of harm from parents or other care-givers. In contrast to many European nations, eligibility for family services is highly restricted and prevention se...

Poverty is often examined using cross-sectional data, with families categorized as poor by comparing annual income to an annual poverty threshold amount. This approach to conceptualizing poverty does not capture information about the persistence of poverty across multiple years. However, both theory and empirical research suggest that long-term or...

In an effort to reform public child welfare systems across the nation, Title IV-E child welfare training programs were established over 2 decades ago. Participating students typically engage in a customized educational experience as part of their MSW program that prepares them to work in the field of child welfare upon graduation. This article desc...

This paper aims to explore the differences between Norwegian and US welfare state ideologies, and if or how they are reflected in the respective foster care systems and in the daily practices of foster parents. Our analysis combines a review of policy documents and legal regulations, with interviews in a sample of 141 exemplary foster parents (87 f...

In this article the authors examine the evidentiary status of the Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) program through a review of current research findings and a critical analysis of the study methodologies used to produce those findings. Due to the equivocal research findings and widespread methodological weaknesses (most notably selection bi...

Foster care is an international phenomenon yet relatively little is known about the caregivers who offer support to children or the features of their daily care. In particular, scarce data are available to describe the characteristics of high quality caregivers or effective care. This study includes an international sample of U.S. (n = 87) and Norw...

Family reunification is one of the central tenents of the child welfare system, yet research supporting effective practices to promote safe reunifications is limited. As a departure from previous initiatives, the Parent Partner (PP) program enlists as staff mothers and fathers who have experienced child removal, services, and reunification. This st...

The U.S. child welfare system, made up of many variations at the state and local levels, is unified in design by federal laws and regulations. This chapter reviews the definition of maltreatment as set forth by the federal government, along with rates of maltreatment reporting nationwide. A description of the general parameters of the child welfare...

This project was developed to better understand the characteristics and behaviors of high-quality foster parents in order to inform a marketing strategy designed to “brand” high-quality care and create a recruiting campaign based upon the new foster parent “brand.” Focus groups were conducted with high-quality foster parents in six counties in a la...

Traditionally, the American child welfare system intervenes in cases of evident and severe maltreatment. Families in need of help, but who have not reached a crisis, are excluded from typical services. Some suggest that if these families were served, few would be rereferred to the child welfare system. California's Differential Response (DR) has th...

Child welfare systems have struggled to create innovative, culturally sensitive programmes to address the multiple and pervasive barriers that exist in engaging child welfare parent clients in their service plans. Peer mentor programmes—those in which parents who have successfully navigated the child welfare system and reunified with their children...

Background and Purpose. In states across the country, child welfare systems are undergoing historic reform processes intended to promote safety and permanency through early intervention. In California alone, more than half a million reports of alleged child maltreatment are made to public child welfare agencies each year. But under the traditional...

Most Americans are insulated from the poor; it is hard to imagine the challenges of poverty, the daily fears of crime and victimization, the frustration of not being able to provide for a child. Instead, we are often exposed to the rhetoric and hyperbole about the excesses of the American welfare system. These messages color our perception of the w...

Background and Purpose: Interventions based on peer support are gaining prominence in child welfare. Such models may involve dyads of parents in mentor relationships, in which a parent who has successfully navigated a complex system shares the experience with a parent newly entering the system. Intervention goals include parent engagement in reunif...

There is a profound crisis in the United States' foster care system according to this book. No state has passed the federally mandated Child and Family Service Review; two-thirds of the state systems have faced class-action lawsuits demanding change; and most tellingly, almost half of all children who enter foster care never go home. The field of c...

The first few years of life are a time of unparalleled physical, intellectual, and emotional development. But they can also be a time of neglect and abuse: this is the period when children are most likely to suffer mistreatment by their parents, and most likely to be placed in foster care. Today most children entering the child welfare system are v...