Evidence Based Behavioral Practice website created November 20, 2007
Posted by rickbarth in Uncategorized.trackback
The EBBP.org project is hosted by Northwestern and funded by NIH, OBSSR. The intention of the project is to create training resources to help bridge the gap between behavioral health research and practice. They hope to help professionals from the major health disciplines to collaboarate to learn, teach, and implement evidence-based behavioral practice (EBBP). They even have a blog set up, for those of you who just aren’t, sigh, getting everything you hoped or from this blog.
Differential Response: Can It Keep More Children Safe?
The following information comes from my research on Differential Response and its utility in Child Protective Service work, as a promising best practice in keeping children safe.
Differential Response (DR) has been recognized as an innovative and family centered intervention in Child Protective Service (CPS) work (Connolly, 2005). The hope is that Differential Response will assist in decreasing all forms of child maltreatment. The implementation of Differential Response represents a shift in practice and policy; away from traditional investigations toward a more family centered and needs based approach (Schene, 2001).
A Differential Response model of CPS practice “allows CPS to respond differently to accepted reports of child abuse and neglect” (Merkel, Kaplan, Kwak, 2006 p. 10). The Alternative Response is one that allows certain less severe screened-in cases to be handled devoid of a formal investigation. In the past CPS would investigate reports and make a finding; which often did little to help families or ensure safety (Schene, 2001). With AR, services are offered to families who under the traditional model would not have received services; making AR a more preventative practice (Connolly, 2005).
The Minnesota Alternative Response Evaluation Final Report 2004 is a great resource for research on Differential Response. The Institute of Applied Research (2004) authored this final report of data compiled in 20 localities in Minnesota from 2000-2004, that provides evidence of Differential/Alternative Response being a promising practice, which may ultimately lead to better outcomes for children. The study was conducted in 14 of 20 counties in Minnesota that agreed to permit AR screened-in families to be randomly assigned experimental or control conditions. The control group received traditional CPS investigations and the experimental group got an AR response. The experiences of these families and their outcomes were analyzed. Highlights from the findings of this evaluation include: child safety not being compromised by Alternative Response, that AR families were less likely to have new maltreatment reports, that AR families received more services than control families, that families responded better to the AR approach, and that workers liked AR and saw it as more effective. The analysis of AR in Minnesota indicates that AR does little to harm families and may actually allow more families to be assisted after a report of child abuse or neglect than achieved in the traditional CPS system. Only time will provide more opportunity to evaluate Alternative Response as an evidenced based practice to ensure child safety. The following paragraph is dedicated to an area where I think improvement or enhancement could be achieved in evaluating AR as a best practice.
It’s important to consider both risk and protective factors that lead to child maltreatment when assessing any intervention’s ability to keep children safe; in doing my research it became apparent that CPS cases which are put on an assessment track represent families in need of protective factors. I found the 5 protective factors outlined by The Center for the Study of Social Policy to be relevant to child protection and a possibly preventative action to reduce maltreatment. I think that a future area of study on Differential Response and its effectiveness would be to assess how effective the services provided were at building protective factors in caregivers. All sources are listed below along with helpful websites.
American Humane Association, Child Welfare League of America. (2006). National
Study on Differential Response in Child Welfare. Retrieved from: http://www.americanhumane.org/site/DocServer/National_Study.pdf?docID=4761
Center for the Study of Social Policy. (2003). Protective factors literature review: Early
care and education programs and the prevention of child abuse and neglect.
Washington, DC: Retrieved from: http://www.cssp.org/uploadFiles/horton.pdf.
Chipley, M., Sheets, J., Baumann, D., Robinson, D. & Graham, J.C. (1999). Flexible
response evaluation. Texas Department of Protective and Regulatory Services.
Connolly, M. (2005). Differential Responses in Child Care and Protection: Innovative
Approaches in Family-Centered Practice. In Protecting Children (Vol. 20, 2 nd
ed., pp. 8-20). Englewood, CO: American Humane Association
Institute of Applied Research. (2004). Minnesota Alternative Response evaluation: Final
Report. Retrieved from: http://www.iarstl.org/papers/ARFinalEvaluationReport.pdf
Loman, A., & Siegel, G. (2005). Alternative Response in Minnesota: Findings of the Program Evaluation. In Protecting Children (Vol. 20, 2 & 3rd ed., pp. 78-92). Englewood, CO: American Humane Association.
Office on Child Abuse and Neglect. (2005). A Coordinated response to child abuse and
neglect: The foundation for practice (Vol. 3). Fairfax, VA: Caliber Associates. Retrieved from: http://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/usermanuals/foundation/foundationo.cfm
Schene, P. (2001). Meeting Each Families Needs Using Differential Response in Reports of Child Abuse and Neglect. In Best Practice Next Practice. Washington, D.C: Learning Systems Group.
Shusterman, G.R., Hollinshead, D., Fluke, J.D., & Yuan, Y.T. Alternative responses to
child maltreatment: Findings from NCANDS (Washington, DC: U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, 2005).
Siegel, G. & Loman, A. (2000). The Missouri Family Assessment and Response impact
assessment: Digest of findings and conclusions. St. Louis, MO: Institute of
Applied Research.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (1999). Blending perspectives and
building common ground: A report to Congress on substance abuse and child
protection. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and
Families/Children’s Bureau and Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and
Evaluation. (2003). National Study of Child Protective Service Systems and
Reform Efforts: Findings on Local CPS Practices. (Washington, DC: U.S.
Government Printing Office).