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• Critically reviews the literature on interventions to support children with incarcerated parents. • Twenty-four studies reporting on child outcomes in the United States were reviewed. • Most research has focused on promoting parenting skills and improving visits. • Little research on programs supporting at-home caregivers. • Services are typically not developmentally specified and do not acknowledge systems of inequality. The United States' overreliance on incarceration has resulted in the imprisonment of millions of individuals – the majority of whom are parents of minor children. While mass incarceration has failed to effectively reduce crime or increase safety, it has dramatically harmed children and families in the United States. In turn, a wealth of research confirms the negative social, emotional, and psychological impacts of parental incarceration on children and the disproportionate impact on Black and Hispanic families and families living in poverty. As activists work towards dismantling this discriminatory and overly punitive system, it is also necessary to support children and adolescents currently impacted by parental incarceration. Using the Family Stress-Proximal Process (FSPP) model (Arditti, 2016) as a frame, the current paper critically reviews the literature on interventions to support children with incarcerated parents (CIP). The use of the FSPP frame highlights that while most intervention research has focused on promoting parenting skills of incarcerated parents and improving visit experiences, there is a dearth of research on interventions that (1) support at-home caregivers, (2) provide developmentally-targeted and −appropriate services and (3) acknowledge and counteract systems of inequality like structural racism and poverty that cause and exacerbate incarceration-related stress. These findings support a research agenda that prioritizes interventions framed around the intersectional identities of CIP and the intersecting systems that impact their lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Black men are significantly underrepresented in family-based research. • Children experience positive outcomes when they experience male caregiver-child relationships. • Strategies to engage Black male caregivers in family-based programming are presented. • Cultural sensitivity, highlighting the value and empowerment of Black men were effective. • Implementing strategies may reduce disparities and promote a positive representation of Black men. Black men are less likely to participate in research studies due to historical abuses and mistrust, which has consequences for various health issues, including research to improve the sexual health and well-being of young girls and women. This paper aims to present strategies from research staff on how to engage Black male caregivers in family-based research. After our five Black research team members (i.e., researchers, recruiters, facilitators, and community liaisons) recruited 30 Black male caregivers into one-on-one interviews, ten into focus groups, six into theatre testing of an intervention, and 20 more into the pilot intervention, interviews explored their experiences engaging the targeted population in research. Interview questions included asking what strategies were successful, what challenges occurred, and future recommendations to engage Black male caregivers in research. Audio recordings and written response data were analyzed using thematic analysis. Themes included: 1) empowering Black communities through fatherhood initiatives, 2) utlizing culturally sensitive and respectful recruiters, 3) highlighting the value of Black men, and 4) implementing study materials enhancing positive representations of Black men. Implementing strategies to include Black men in family-based health research has the potential to reduce health disparities in the United States and increase their representation across the literature. These strategies will equip researchers to engage in research with minority and structurally-systemically disadvantaged groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Close oversight by a Community Coordinator, relationships built with community partners, and the use of telehealth were creative solutions used by the Infant Toddler Court Teams during COVID-19 to support timely access to services. • This study builds on a companion paper that examined receipt and access to child health services at multiple Infant-Toddler Court Teams prior to and during the first year of the pandemic and details the challenges faced and the solutions identified by ITCT partners to support access to child services in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic within the US. • Understanding the challenges and solutions faced by the Infant-Toddler Court Team Community Coordinators during COVID-19 will be important for future pandemics or crises that impact care for child welfare involved children. This qualitative study examines Infant-Toddler Court Teams' (ITCT) responses to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the accessibility and timeliness of services for children involved with an Infant Toddler Court Team (ITCT) within the United States. ITCTs utilize collaborative practice to improve, align, and integrate systems and build community capacity to improve outcomes for very young children and their families. This study reports findings from 350 transcripts of community partner interviews and an analysis of written case notes from ITCT Community Coordinators related to more than 700 instances of child service needs. We describe challenges faced and solutions and innovations developed by ITCTs to support and maintain child health services during the first year of the pandemic, as well as findings related to challenges associated with other types of services that reduced accessibility and timeliness. Understanding the challenges experienced and solutions developed can provide the child welfare field with insight and guidance on how to approach disruptions in care in the future and the persistent lack of service providers for court involved families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The home visiting field lacks a standard definition for what "high-quality" program implementation means. • We engaged experts from the field in a co-design process to develop a framework to understand home visiting quality. • The framework captures the multiple levels of the home visiting system and theorized key aspects of quality. Early childhood home visiting is a two-generation approach to promote positive health and well-being outcomes among people who are pregnant and families with infants and young children. A popular family support strategy for the past several decades, home visiting expanded exponentially in the United States when the federal Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program (MIECHV) was authorized in 2010 through a provision within the Affordable Care Act. MIECHV currently funds evidence-based home visiting services in underserved and historically marginalized communities in all 50 states, 22 tribes, the District of Columbia, and five U.S. territories. It is widely accepted that achieving intended child and family outcomes through home visiting services requires "high-quality" program implementation, but the field lacks a standard definition or empirical evidence for what "quality" means in the context of home visiting. With the rapid expansion of home visiting that has accompanied MIECHV, there is increased interest from the field in having a shared understanding of home visiting implementation quality that is applicable across models and accounts for dimensions of quality across the entirety of the home visiting implementation system. This paper describes the process used to develop a conceptual framework to understand home visiting quality. We engaged MIECHV awardees and other experts from the fields of home visiting, early childhood, implementation science, and health equity in a co-design process that involved initial brainstorming, a series of iterative framework drafts, and finalization of the model. The resulting framework captures the multiple levels (i.e., the contexts, agencies, entities, and individuals) that are part of the home visiting system and the theorized key aspects of quality that are applicable across the levels of the systems. We discuss potential uses of the conceptual framework, as well as lessons learned from the co-design process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Child maltreatment is a complex problem requiring interdisciplinary collaboration. • A fellowships program was designed to support maltreatment prevention scholars. • The program created a densely connected interdisciplinary network of fellows. • Scientific collaborations between fellows increased over time. Child maltreatment is a complex problem requiring interdisciplinary collaborative research to generate innovative solutions. The Doris Duke Fellowships for the Promotion of Child Well-Being were designed to identify and nurture emerging scholars committed to child maltreatment prevention and create a supportive interdisciplinary learning network. This paper examines connectivity within the collaborative network created by the fellowships program using longitudinal social network data. Participants were 120 individuals selected as Doris Duke Fellows during their doctoral training at universities in the United States. Fellows completed annual, voluntary web-based surveys to assess their interactions with other fellows during the past year. Social network analysis methods were used to assess the strength and quality of the learning network over a four-year period. Across four years of data, there were increases in the number of connections, proportion of cross-cohort connections, and proportion of interdisciplinary connections. Network analyses showed a highly connected network consisting of primarily medium- and high-quality connections between fellows from different disciplines. The number of scientific journal articles authored by two or more fellows grew substantially over time. Findings indicate the collaborative network created by the fellowships program is growing and strengthening over time. The new Child Well-Being Research Network extends the fellowships network to a broader group of scholars and professionals to advance diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice in the field of child well-being research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The Finnish Baby Box provides parents of newborns with a wide range of infant clothing and other basics. • The cardboard box in which the infant can sleep was emphasized by the media and commercial companies outside Finland. • The box preventing SIDS was advanced by private companies and the media. • This was less the case in Wales and Scotland, a result of their being governed by authorities with a "left" orientation. For over 80 years the Finnish state has provided expectant mothers with a cardboard box containing an extensive collection of clothing, bathing products for the baby, nappies, bedding and a small mattress. Numerous jurisdictions have implemented it in some form. We investigated through a critical case study methodology whether its translation into the liberal welfare states of Canada, UK, and USA experienced message distortion (the box as a means of preventing SIDS), commercialization, watering down of content; and separation from the complex of Finnish welfare state policies that support families with children. We find that only Scotland and Wales recognized the decommodification and equity roles played by the baby box. This study identified numerous barriers to building progressive public policy in Canada, UK, and USA: the structures and processes of the liberal welfare state, commercial interests that skew public policymaking and media logic that limits news reporting to the concrete and simple, eschewing complex analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A review of social work's relationships with youth serving carceral systems in the United States. • The racialized origins of child welfare, juvenile justice, and school policing. • An examination of social work's professional values alongside these carceral practices. • Critical questions and guidance for the future of the profession. This paper traces social work's historical and current relationships with three major child and youth serving carceral systems in the United States—the child welfare system, the juvenile justice system, and school policing. In each section, we examine the racialized origins of these systems and the current practices that perpetuate racial harm, particularly for Black children, youth and families. Given this knowledge, we consider if social work's stated professional values to oppose racism, injustice, and oppression can exist alongside the carceral practices that these systems perpetuate. The article concludes with critical questions and guidance for the future of the profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Stably nonemployment is most strongly associated with low income and poverty but not material hardship. • Unstably employed households, particularly those that experience only job losses are more likely to have material hardship than consistently employed households. • The safety net as a whole appears to be more effective for nonworking households than for unstably working households. • In-kind transfers appear more important for unstably employed households, particularly those that are single-adult headed households facing job losses. • Cash transfers effectively buffer against the negative impact of stably nonemployment. Labor market structures and job characteristics have changed in the United States over the last few decades – often making work more unpredictable. Employment instability, or job churning, may have distinct consequences for households' economic well-being. Meanwhile, American social policies have shifted from cash-based benefits toward in-kind and work-conditioned programs. Yet, we know little about how social programs buffer the financial hardships imposed by economic shocks due to job churning. This paper harnesses novel data collected at 3-month intervals to study the associations between household members' employment trajectories and (1) household income packages, (2) poverty status, and (3) material hardships, paying particular attention to whether government benefit receipt buffers against the adverse financial consequences of unstable employment. We find that consistent unemployment is most strongly associated with low income and poverty but not material hardship. Unstably employed households, particularly those that are single-adult headed households and experienced only job losses are significantly more likely to experience material hardship than consistently employed households. Our results also suggest that cash transfers effectively buffer against the negative impact of persistent unemployment, while in-kind transfers appear more important for unstably employed households, particularly those that are single-adult headed households. Together, these results highlight the roles and extent of impacts of cash, in-kind benefits, and the tax system, which can inform future policy recommendations in an age of high levels of economic insecurity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• InPlace® Learning is a feasible and acceptable approach to suicide prevention education for youth services workers in a large and varied workforce. • InPlace® Learning participants demonstrated knowledge and increased self-efficacy in suicide prevention skills. • Perception of training relevance and potential for transfer to practice was strong across human services roles and settings. • Leveraging implementation science frameworks and strategies strengthened the workforce education suicide prevention initiative. Suicide is the second leading cause of death for youth in the U.S. and equipping clinical and non-clinical staff in youth services to address suicide concerns is a challenge. This paper evaluates InPlace Learning, an innovative and sustainable blended learning approach to suicide prevention workforce education in youth services. InPlace Learning combines group video-guided workshops, follow-up Q&A via web-based 'office hours', and continual learning through job aids and brief refreshers. Hillside identified 25 programs to adopt InPlace Learning for suicide prevention training, and 1,162 staff to participate in the training. The purpose of the first phase of this program evaluation was to evaluate the feasibility of this approach, including examining adoption and reach of InPlace Learning, as well as education outcomes for staff, including knowledge, self-efficacy, and transfer of learning. The program evaluation sample consisted of 556 staff who completed post-training evaluations. Ten staff shared their experience and feedback through post-training interviews. Results show that 100 % (N = 25) of programs adopted InPlace Learning and 64 % of staff participated in the training, showing evidence of reach. Post-training evaluations indicated participants learned skills in suicide prevention. Self-efficacy in connecting around and assessing and responding to suicide concerns rose significantly for both clinical and non-clinical staff. Non-clinical staff who had lower ratings for self-efficacy before training showed the greatest gains post-training. The perception of transfer of learning to practice was high. Staff interview data aligned with quantitative findings. Taken together, these findings indicate that InPlace Learning is a feasible and acceptable approach to suicide prevention workforce education in youth services with a positive impact on educational outcomes for staff. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The Indian Child Welfare Act is a federal law that applies to American Indian children and families involved in the child welfare system. • Evidence on ICWA effectiveness was overall generally positive, with some mixed results across outcomes, including foster care placement, adoption, and reunification. • Implementation issues included child welfare employee characteristics and actions, logistical challenges, assessment issues, and stakeholder interaction. This paper is a systematic review of studies that examined the implementation and/or effectiveness of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). ICWA was enacted in 1978 in response to the disproportionate number of American Indian children in non-American Indian out-of-home placements and to enhance the stability of American Indian families and tribes. Searches of 7 bibliographic databases and 3 advocacy organization websites yielded 408 studies completed since November 1978. Following duplicate removal and double-independent screening based on a priori inclusion criteria, 16 studies were included for review. Studies on the effectiveness of ICWA were mixed, though numerous positive results were found. Several studies found that children were placed with relatives or tribal affiliates in accordance with ICWA. One study also found active efforts to prevent the break-up of the family. Studies on the implementation of ICWA found limited capacity for many ICWA programs, improvements from cultural training, underfunding for many programs, lack of tracking systems, use of qualified experts, communication with tribes, and identification practices for American Indian children. Noteworthy facilitators of ICWA implementation included use of Child and Family Service plans and case worker training on ICWA. Barriers to ICWA included cultural differences between tribes and the child welfare system, lack of a specific unit dedicated to American Indian child welfare, and a lack of American Indian foster homes and tribal resources to respond to notices. Implications for practice, policy, and future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Mothers have experienced a significant amount of stress during the COVID-19 pandemic stay-at-home orders in the US, which can have major implications for children's health and development; attention should be paid to developmental timing and unfolding of developmental trajectories following this pandemic. • Mothers have used a variety of strategies to cope; as more parents navigate social disruptions, they may benefit from additional resources and supports, such as innovations in childcare modalities, paid leave policies, and strengthening whole family processes using adaptive coping mechanisms. • Mothers with low income and/or children with special needs may experience more vulnerability to the sequalae of the pandemic; it is important to provide financial security, mental health, and educational and social support to relieve stress during the pandemic. This paper presents the results of a qualitative study of mothers' lived experiences during the COVID-19 lockdown in the United States. An analysis of open-ended interviews with 44 mothers who had children ages zero-to-five identified two main themes: (1) increased stress among mothers; and (2) resilience through the use of coping mechanisms. The findings indicate that the COVID-19 pandemic has led to higher stress among mothers due to issues of work-family life balance, family and children's needs, decision-making about getting sick, concerns for children's development, and lack of clarity from government officials. Mothers described using a variety of problem-focused and emotion-focused methods to cope with this stress. The lived experiences of mothers during the pandemic highlights the need for innovations in childcare modalities, paid leave policies to relieve stress, and strengthening whole family processes and resilience through the use of coping mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Private Child Welfare Agencies (PCWAs) perform while navigating dynamic contexts. • Little empirical evidence identifying complexity factors impacting PCWA performance. • We found PCWAs strategies managed their inter-dependent and self-organizing nature. This paper studies the performance outlook of private child welfare agencies (PCWAs) from a complexity theory lens. We argue that even though these agencies play a key role in delivering safety net services for families, while navigating dynamic environments, there is little empirical evidence identifying concrete complexity factors (i.e., inter-dependence, unpredictability and self-organization) and examining their impact on agency performance. To address this gap, we first conceptualize PCWAs as complex systems as they exhibit the three factors of interest. Then, we operationalize inter-dependence as the number and diversity of services provided, fiscal unpredictability based on managerial report, and self-organization as agency use of inter-organizational ties requiring heavy investment of agency resources. This study presents results from a survey data analysis of 229 PCWA managers in six states in the United States. Results show PCWAs efforts to adapt to organizational complexity can also pose a burden in meeting the needs of consumers and frontline staff. Nonetheless, external accountability through accreditation and a transformational leadership style that is characterized by compassion and attention to front-line workers' individual needs and goals may be promising strategies to manage the inter-dependent and self-organizing nature of private child welfare systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Immigration-related family separation is a crisis in the US. • There are many forms of immigration-related family separation. • Immigration-related family separation leads to poorer education outcomes for children. • Length of time of separation leads to poorer outcomes for immigrant children. • Family separation affects children from all countries and regions of origin. Forced separation of immigrant children from their parents in 2018 spurred calls for immigration reform. Research shows that immigrant children experience separation from parents during the immigration process for many reasons and that they experience a wide range of negative outcomes. This paper builds on the scholarship exploring the relationship between family separation and education outcomes of US immigrant children. Using the sample of immigrant children (n = 94,731) in the 2010–2018 American Community Survey, this study analyzes the association between separation and the likelihood of a peer education gap using descriptive statistics and multivariate logistic regression analysis. This paper supports prior scholarship and finds that immigrant children who experience separation are over 35% more likely to experience a peer education gap. It adds to the literature by exploring patterns of immigrant children from all countries of origin and examining the effects of length of separation on education outcomes. While children from all places of origin experience separation, the percentage of such children is much smaller when children come from wealthier countries and regions and, more importantly, the length of separation is much longer for immigrant children from poorer countries. This study finds that the length of separation correlates with poorer education outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to a 2018 report by the United States Department of Health and Human Services, more than 400,000 students live in foster care. Among other obstacles to success, involvement in the child welfare system is associated with negative school outcomes, including school instability, disproportionate placement in restrictive special education settings, and risk of school disengagement. Educational professionals, such as teachers, administrators, school psychologists, counselors, social workers, and paraprofessionals, are positioned to help reduce risks of school failure and promote educational resilience for students in foster care by providing safe and supportive school services. When engaging in the provision of school-based services, there are several legal obligations which educators must follow in order to uphold the rights of students in foster care and promote student resilience. The purpose of this paper is to review the extant literature regarding educational professionals' legal obligations when serving students in foster care. Actionable recommendations that increase the likelihood of student success are highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Differences in income explain some racial inequities in child welfare contact. • Differences in hardship do not explain racial inequities in child welfare contact. • Material hardship predicts child welfare contact across racialized groups. Child protective services (CPS) contact is consistently linked with poverty in the US, and empirical evidence is mounting to indicate that disparate exposure to income poverty explains a substantial portion of racial inequities in CPS involvement. Evidence about the different distributions of income poverty and material hardship also suggests that income poverty may not sufficiently capture economic wellbeing among families. This paper assessed whether differences in exposure to income poverty and/or material hardship explain racial inequities in CPS contact and further examined whether income poverty and material hardship predict CPS contact differently within racialized groups. We used data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS), an urban cohort representative of births in large US cities in 1998–2000. The FFCWS data are ideal for this study in capturing each of the key constructs: racialized group membership, income, material hardship, and CPS contact. We measured income poverty and material hardship when children were age 1 and measured any CPS contact by age five. Our final sample included 3,517 families, including 1,848 Black, 614 white, and 1,055 Latinx families. We employed logistic regression to assess the associations between income poverty and material hardship, independently and jointly, and CPS contact. We conducted analyses in our full analytic sample and among subsamples of the Black, white, and Latinx families. We found that differences in income-to-poverty ratio account for differences in CPS contact between Black and white families. Differences in CPS contact between Black and Latinx families were not explained by economic wellbeing measures alone but were ameliorated when differences in income poverty, material hardship, and a full set of family characteristics were considered. Additionally, we found that material hardship was a consistent predictor of CPS contact in the full sample and within each of the Black, white, and Latinx subsamples, even accounting for differences in income and other family characteristics. The clear role of income poverty in explaining inequities in CPS contact between Black and white families and the consistent importance of material hardship in predicting CPS contact across all families underscore the critical importance of reducing income poverty and hardship and of distinguishing material need from maltreatment in the context of CPS. Our findings offer clear implications for policy intervention to reduce income poverty and material hardship. Such interventions might include extending the temporarily expanded Child Tax Credit and expanded food and housing assistance benefits, toward the ends of supporting child and family wellbeing and reducing economic and racial inequities in CPS contact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]