Research Projects
View recent Poster Sessions on research at the SSW.
Lee receives pilot grant with colleagues on cancer screening
Assistant Professor Hee Yun Lee and two other University faculty (Yeazel and Tran) have received funding for a planing grant from the Medical School's Program in Health Disparities Research. The project is titled Motivating Underserved Vietnamese Americans to Obtain Colorectal Cancer Screening: A Culturally Tailored Video-Based Intervention
MinnLiNK and CASCW participate in two Hennepin County-University Partnership projects
(1) EDUCATIONAL ACHIEVEMENT: Increasing high school graduation rates is considered one of the most effective ways to improve the wellbeing of the community. Major public policy question: What role should the County play in increasing high school graduation rates? Example research questions: What’s being done in other parts of the state/country to increase graduation rates? What predicts drop-out behaviors? Is there a link between truancy and dropping out? What specific actions can the County take to make an impact on graduation rates? How do we measure various strategies to assess their effectiveness? Work to date: A group of Hennepin and University staff and researchers have been identified and are beginning work on 1) clearly articulating the issues; 2) assembling existing research and work done on issues of educational achievement; and 3) identifying and prioritizing key research questions. Next steps: Continue work to identify and prioritize research questions with the goal of developing a plan for conducting research to address major policy questions.
(2) CHILD WELL-BEING:
Programs for children whose parents cannot take care of them too frequently do not achieve the goal of providing a stable and secure place where such children can thrive. In particular, adoptions often "fail," and children placed in foster care do not develop a healthy attachment to an adult caregiver. Major public policy question: How can the County increase successful outcomes for children placed in foster care? Example research questions: What are the needs of children who must be removed from the home, or for whom no home exists and how do these needs vary depending on a child’s age? How does the length of time in foster care affect outcomes for children? Are there programs that have shown better outcomes than we experience in Hennepin County? Can these be replicated here? Work to date: A group of Hennepin and University staff and researchers have been identified and are 1) assessing research questions in light of existing University research and capacity; 2) sharing existing research. Research about to begin: It is increasingly important to have a multi-faceted and more complete understanding of how youth fare in young adulthood as they exit foster care. To date, much of the research on this population has been based on sample groups and qualitative data. Anita Larson from the U’s Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare, and former Hennepin County staff person, is launching a new study on the status of youth who age out of foster care in Minnesota. Three different studies of this population are planned: a statewide descriptive study; a Hennepin County-specific study, and a study of the outcomes of disabled youth who age out of care to support a dissertation research project. The long-range goal is to follow these youth as they
Lum and Lee hosted May 2009 conference on health and mental health literacy among immigrants and refugees
Associate Professor Terry Lum and Assistant Professor Hee Lee were two of the hosts of a recent conference. The focus for the conference was on health and mental health literacy and its impacts on disparities in immigrant and refugee communities. The primary goal of this conference was to bring together researchers, community practitioners and community members to share knowledge and information and to engage in partnerships in order to adopt culturally appropriate approaches to deal with health and mental health disparities, especially among immigrants and refugees in Minnesota.
Larson and Zuel explore prevention of educational neglect
Anita Larson who heads the SSW's Minn-Link Project and doctoral student Timothy Zuel co-presented their findings from state administrative data on child welfare and school attendance at the National Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect in Atlanta. Click here to view their PowerPoint slides. A final report is to follow soon.
VeLure Roholt's research explores youth participation
Assist. Prof. Velure Roholt
The ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) transformed youth programs and youth work practice across the globe. Increasingly, youth programs and youth work practices aim to invite and support young people’s participation and contributions to organization, program, and/or community outcomes. Assistant Professor Ross Velure Roholt research involves several projects to explore, describe, and understand participatory youth programs and participatory youth work practice. Of special interest is how young people’s involvement in programs, organizations, and communities influences and shapes their development.
Currently as part of a larger evaluation project, Assistant Professor Velure Roholt, and M.A. student Brice Dixon, and undergraduate Anna Horner are working on an evaluation of Neighborhood Learning Community (NLC) on the West Side of St. Paul. A major emphasis of NLC is to increase and create sustainable programs and practices for youth participation. The University of MN team is conducting observations and focus group interviews and contributing to a larger evaluation project that includes community members and professional evaluators.
Hollister & Walvig Begin Research on Reducing Disparities for Immigrants in the Minnesota Family Investment Program
Dave
Hollister
Tasha Walvig
The compulsory work requirements established by the federal government and the Minnesota Family Investment Program (MFIP) mandate clients to participate in work activities to prepare them for leaving welfare for the labor market. Research comparing welfare-to-work outcomes reveals disparities between native born and immigrant families attempting to transition from welfare to work in Minnesota (Shelton & Owen, 2003; Hollister, Martin, Toft, & Yeo, 2005). We have initiated a research project that involves collaborating with the Ramsey County Community Human Services Department and several social agencies to administer in-depth interviews to service providers who work with immigrants receiving MFIP. In particular, we will consider how immigrants' needs are addressed in the context of meeting the federally mandated work requirement of MFIP, with the intent of identifying needed changes in policy and service delivery that would reduce disparities between immigrant and native- born MFIP participants.
Research Teams Focus on Juvenile Justice and Sexual Abuse
Alankaar Sharma, Valandra and Jane Gilgun
Professor Jane Gilgun and Ph.D. students Valandra and Alankaar Sharma are developing a theory of change for the All Children Excel (ACE) program of the Ramsey County Human Services and Public Health Departments, the goal of which is to divert children from the juvenile justice system and to promote child and family well-being. A theory of change is a form of program evaluation that documents pathways children and families take as they participate in social programs. The research team is using ethnographic methods to look at factors that lead to enhanced well-being and factors that lead to involvement with juvenile justice. The project was sponsored by juvenile justice funds and is now funded through the Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station.
Professor Gilgun is working with StopItNow! Minnesota on a new project on mothers of child survivors of child sexual abuse. The purpose of the research is to identify what family life was like for them while their husbands or partners were sexually abusing children. StopItNow! is a child sexual abuse prevention program and will use the results of this research in social marketing campaign to educate family members about the signs of child sexual abuse. Professor Gilgun will use the material in journal articles, teaching and training, and in a book she is writing with PhD student Alankaar Sharma on child sexual abuse. The Ms. Foundation has funded this project.
LaLiberte and CASCW staff evaluate online foster care provider training on disabilities
The Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare (CASCW) at our School has partnered with staff at the Research and Training Center on Community Living (RTC/CL) in the Institute on Community Integration (ICI) at the University of Minnesota and staff at McStrategies in Knoxville Tennessee to evaluate disability training delivered to foster, adoptive and kinship care providers in the state of Minnesota. Project staff include Traci LaLiberte, Heidi Wagner, Jamie Schwartz and Adam Leonard. Training will be delivered through the College of Direct Support curriculum that is and interactive, multimedia, competency-based online disability training. The training pilot is scheduled to begin in May 2008 and continue through May 2009. The effectiveness of internet based training with this population of caregivers will be evaluated in addition to the changes in caregiver’s disability knowledge. Future studies are planned to evaluate outcomes for children related to caregiver’s increased knowledge base.
Lightfoot continues research on disability
Associate Professor Elizabeth Lightfoot is continuing her research on youth with disabilities in transition from child welfare in collaboration with PATH, MinnLink and the Minnesota Department of Human Services. She was on sabbatical in Namibia (see International Activities page).
A New Way to Assess Children’s Exposure to Domestic Violence
Jeff Edleson
Narae Shin
Katy Armendariz
Professor Jeffrey Edleson, Ph.D. student Narae Shin and M.S.W. student Katy Kim Johnson Armendariz recently published a new assessment tool, the Child Exposure to Domestic Violence Scale. The results of their development process will be published this year in the prestigious child welfare research journal, Children and Youth Services Reviews. The research team also launched a website this past summer that provides free copies of the CEDV Scale, a 55-page User Manual and several articles published by Edleson and his students at the Minnesota Center Against Violence & Abuse, a center within the School of Social Work. The website is located at http://www.mincava.umn.edu/cedv and in the first five months over 7,500 copies of the tool and User Manual have been downloaded online.
As a follow-up to releasing this scale, Professor Edleson, Dr. Traci Laliberte, Director of CASCW, and MSW student Jessica Bills are collaborating on a new survey of Minnesota child welfare workers to understand how they might use the CEDV Scale in their decision making about referrals involving domestic violence. This collaborative is a great example of work within the School across centers with overlapping interests. The study procedures are now being reviewed by the University’s Institutional Review Board that ensures the protection of study participants. Once approved the team will be seeking to work closely with Minnesota child welfare administrators and workers to help them figure out the best way to use the CEDV Scale in their work.
Wells, LaLiberte and Ramsey County receive $2 million federal grant to study comprehensive family assessments in child welfare
Traci LaLiberte
In 2007, Professor Susan J. Wells led a proposal team in collaboration with Ramsey County Community Human Services submit a proposal to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on the topic of Using Comprehensive Family Assessments to Improve Child Welfare Outcomes.
In September, the grant was awarded to Ramsey County with the School of Social Work as the evaluator for the 5-year project. The total value of the grant is $2 million with the University receiving half of the total grant amount over the life of the project to evaluate its impact. Drs. Wells and LaLiberte, director of the Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare, will be heading up the evaluation. Read more.
CASCW and FFTA team up to demonstrate effective treatment and specialized foster care
Information about evidence based practice relevant to treatment foster care is minimal and difficult to locate and interpret, leaving treatment and specialized foster care providers without timely resources in areas such as cost/benefit analysis of treatment foster care, successful recruitment techniques, and child well-being outcomes. The Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare (CASCW) in the University of Minnesota School of Social Work has partnered with the Foster Family-based Treatment Association (FFTA) in an evaluation and training project designed to identify ways to demonstrate the effectiveness of treatment and specialized foster care services and to share information to improve outcomes for children and youth in out of home care. Three areas of project activity include: (1) Provide information and Referrals for FFTA members; (2) Identify and evaluate best practices and evidence based practice in the field of treatment and specialized foster care; and (3) Assist FFTA’s Benchmark TFC! Project in performance management and improvement. Project staff include: Kristine Piescher, Anita Larson, and Traci LaLiberte.