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Current Projects

We are currently working on several projects:

1. We are coding court documents of children referred to child protection services. In Minnesota, approximately 2/3rds of maltreatment reports get screened out, and approximately 2/3rds of those who get screened in are referred to a voluntary program (Family Assessment). The remaining 1/3rd (the highest-risk cases) are routed to the court system; we are now coding the publicly available court documents (CHIPS petitions, guardian ad litem reports, social worker reports, various court orders, etc.) on these cases. Our goals are to investigate the responsiveness of the child welfare system and the courts to the children's needs and to determine the extent to which children continue to get maltreated and change placements even after the courts get involved. When the study is completed, we will share our results with relevant stakeholders and advocate for improvements in the system.
2. We are conducting a survey of intervention programs for maltreated children in Minnesota to identify best practices and to determine which programs to recommend to the legislature for scaling up.
3. We have recently received a grant from the Institute of Child Development (ICD) to conduct an evaluation of a program in Anoka County (Partnerships for Family Success) that is designed to reduce the dependence of families on government-funded services. The goal of the study is to determine if the program has been effective in improving 2-year child welfare and educational outcomes of children referred through Child Protective Services vs. other sources (e.g., unemployment), in comparison with a community comparison group. This study will be conducted in collaboration with Arthur Reynolds at ICD and Minn-Link at the Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare at the U of M.
4. We are conducting a campaign to shift the state's priorities more toward early interventions with children who have recently been identified by the child welfare system. We are meeting with many stakeholders, including social workers; researchers in social work, public health and public policy; state representatives and state senators; state and county officials in child welfare and mental health; direct service providers; lawyers and other advocacy groups involved with the child welfare system. As part of this campaign, we will also prepare a report to be shared with lawmakers and other stakeholders that will include a literature review of best practices in early intervention and the results of our survey on intervention programs in Minnesota, as well as a return-on-investment analysis and options for financing the programs.