Around the world, millions of families have been forced to leave their homes and move to new communities, usually due to armed conflicts or humanitarian disasters. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, some 3 million refugees have resettled in the United States since 1975. This includes those fleeing recent high-profile conflicts in […]
child welfare
Developing a Culturally Tailored Intervention for Diverse Populations
Social workers strive to use interventions and treatments that are evidence-based (EB). However, many EB interventions are not validated with people from diverse racial, ethnic, cultural, and linguistic populations. Regarding autism intervention research, of 408 studies on 27 EB practices only about 18% of the studies reported race, ethnicity, or nationality of participants. This pattern […]
Supporting LGBTQ Youth in Child Welfare through Cross-System Collaboration
The Center for the Study of Social Policy’s (CSSP) newest policy report highlights the need to support lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) youth in child welfare by building cross-system collaborations. Youth who identify as LGBTQ or gender-nonconforming are over-represented in child welfare, and they experience higher instances of homelessness and poor developmental outcomes. […]
Gender Injustice: System-Level Juvenile Justice Reforms for Girls
The National Crittenton Foundation, in partnership with the National Women’s Law Center, has released “Gender Injustice: System-Level Juvenile Justice Reforms for Girls.” The report presents research and data showing that, in the last two decades, girls’ presence in the juvenile justice system has increased at all stages of the process. Key findings include the following: […]
Mental Disorders and Disabilities Among Low-Income Children
Children living in poverty are more likely to have mental health problems, and their conditions are more likely to be severe. Of the approximately 1.3 million children who were recipients of Supplemental Security Income (SSI) disability benefits in 2013, about 50% were disabled primarily due to a mental disorder. An increase in the number of […]
Racial and Ethnic Disparity and Disproportionality in Child Welfare and Juvenile Justice
Overrepresentation of children of color in the juvenile justice and child welfare systems has been statistically proven in various studies over the years. Though this fact has been generally accepted and effort has been made to reduce disproportionality within both systems, much work remains to be done. In March 2008, a symposium titled “The Overrepresentation […]