Fred Wulczyn - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Fred Wulczyn

Child Abuse & Neglect, 2020

, the Convention on the Rights of the Child has shaped the objectives for child protection system... more , the Convention on the Rights of the Child has shaped the objectives for child protection systems around the world. Generally, those objectives fall along three dimensions: permanency, safety, and well-being. However, despite well-being receiving increasing attention in light of evidence that points to the importance of early childhood experiences on life course outcomes, child protection systems have so far struggled to find clear definition of well-being as a developmental construct. In this article, we propose a definition of child well-being that draws on the economic literature pertaining to skill formation and human capital. We argue that human capital, as a multidimensional concept that incorporates cognitive skills, non-cognitive skills, and health, should be added to the list of considerations policy makers contemplate when their attention turns to well-being provided there is research evidence for doing so. To that end, we discuss the several advantages the human capital framework offers within a child protection context. We then describe a theoretical framework and analytical approach to the study of skill formation. We are particularly interested in dynamic models wherein the skills one has influence the rate at which new skills are acquired, with specific emphasis on risk and protective factors across the life course of childhood. Overall, our discussion highlights how a dynamic model of human capital formation aligns with Convention on the Rights of the Child and notions that children in child protection systems have a right to develop the abilities they will need to be responsible adults.

The Child and Family Service Reviews (CFSR) conducted by the Department of Health and Human Servi... more The Child and Family Service Reviews (CFSR) conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services are a critical step towards improving the nation's child welfare services. However, although the federal emphasis on outcomes has helped to accelerate state interest in performance measurement, both the federal effort to measure performance and states' efforts to understand performance have been hampered by the limitations of the measurement methods used. The purpose of this paper is to show how policymakers in the New York State Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) responded to the basic requirements of the CFSR, but implemented a more productive, alternative approach to performance measurement for three of the six outcome domains: time to reunification, time to adoption, and likelihood of reentry. This paper gives an overview of the deficiencies in the federal measures for these three outcomes, describes the alternative measures Chapin Hall formulated in partnershi...

The Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) addresses issues pertaining to prevention of placement ... more The Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) addresses issues pertaining to prevention of placement in the child welfare system, as well as family reunification, the specific provisions of ASFA that relate to the termination of parental rights and adoption are perhaps most central to the law's overarching purpose. This paper analyzes adoptions from foster care using data from Chapin Hall's Multistate Foster Care Data Archive to understand what effect, if any, the federal law has had on the proportion of children admitted to foster care that were later adopted and on the time needed to complete those adoption. Using a cohort sequential design, we studied 13 successive entry cohorts of children admitted to foster care in seven states from 1990 to 2002. The results indicate that there was an increase in the period-specific probability of adoption that coincides with the passage of ASFA in 1998. However, we also found that the pace of adoption had remained stable in the early 1990s...

An International Reader, 2013

Children and Youth Services Review, 2013

In this paper, we examine whether county-level measures of poverty and social disadvantage are co... more In this paper, we examine whether county-level measures of poverty and social disadvantage are correlated with county-level variation in the black/white foster care placement gap. The black/white placement gap refers to the fact that when the rate of placement into foster care for black children is compared to the rate for white children living in the same area, the black placement rate is almost always higher than the rate for whites. Although differential exposure to poverty is often used to explain why the placement gap is so large, the problem has rarely been studied. Using Poisson event count models, we find that poverty, measured at the county ecological level, is associated with a narrower gap rather than a wider gap. The counterintuitive finding is due to the fact that the relationship between poverty and placement rates depends on race.

ABSTRACT According to the most recent data for 2005, African American children accounted for 31 p... more ABSTRACT According to the most recent data for 2005, African American children accounted for 31 percent of foster children and only 21 percent of children in the general population of Tennessee. Compared with other states, Tennessee has a disproportionality rate that is among the lowest in the country. Nevertheless, Tennessee is a diverse state with regional and county-level differences in the use of foster care. As a result, disproportionality in some parts of the state is greater than it is in other parts. This report describes that variation in order to better understand disparities in the use of foster care and to point to strategies that may bring greater equity to the delivery of child welfare services. The study is based on Tennessee children placed in foster care between 2000 and 2005, inclusive. Children adjudicated abused, neglected, or unruly up to the age of 18 and placed in foster family care, relative homes, or group and residential care are included. The analysis is divided into two parts. The first part focuses on entry rates and differences in the likelihood that children will enter foster care. The second part examines exit patterns in order to assess how length of stay and exit type (e.g., reunification or adoption) influence disproportionality overall.

Children and Youth Services Review, 2014

Cost calculator approach Children in out of home care Time use activity data Unit costs Estimatin... more Cost calculator approach Children in out of home care Time use activity data Unit costs Estimating costs in child welfare services is critical as new service models are incorporated into routine practice. This paper describes a unit costing estimation system developed in England (cost calculator) together with a pilot test of its utility in the United States where unit costs are routinely available for health services but not for child welfare services. The cost calculator approach uses a unified conceptual model that focuses on eight core child welfare processes. Comparison of these core processes in England and in four counties in the United States suggests that the underlying child welfare processes generated from England were perceived as very similar by child welfare staff in California county systems with some exceptions in the review and legal processes. Overall, the adaptation of the cost calculator for use in the United States child welfare systems appears promising. The paper also compares the cost calculator approach to the workload approach widely used in the United States and concludes that there are distinct differences between the two approaches with some possible advantages to the use of the cost calculator approach, especially in the use of this method for estimating child welfare costs in relation to the incorporation of evidence-based interventions into routine practice.

Journal of Community Psychology

We are very grateful for their support. We are also grateful to Lijun Chen who helped with the da... more We are very grateful for their support. We are also grateful to Lijun Chen who helped with the data analysis presented throughout the paper. We also want to recognize the many colleagues who have attended Advanced Analytics, also done in collaboration with Casey Family Programs. Advanced Analytics is a week-long seminar where the ideas presented here have been tested and applied. The feedback offered during those sessions has been particularly valuable. Finally, we want to thank Annie E. Casey Foundation and the state members of the Center for State Foster Care and Adoption Data. Without their ongoing support and commitment, the work of the Center would not be possible.

In this chapter, we describe the scale-up and impact of a linked multilevel intervention in a pub... more In this chapter, we describe the scale-up and impact of a linked multilevel intervention in a public child welfare system. Linked multilevel interventions are interventions with multiple components that target one or more levels within the systems. In health care, multilevel interventions are gaining traction, but there are few references to multilevel interventions in the child welfare despite obvious parallels. Families with children in the child welfare system face challenges across multiple life domains, and the systems designed to serve those families are administratively and financially interdependent. Single prong interventions that address one level of the service system while ignoring the interdependencies may be less effective. In this chapter, we describe one attempt to align the interdependencies in ways that improve the chances an intervention will have its intended effect.

The Social Service Review, 2006

... Page 5. 760 Social Service Review policy levels (Edward J. Mullen, Aron Shlonsky, Sarah E. Bl... more ... Page 5. 760 Social Service Review policy levels (Edward J. Mullen, Aron Shlonsky, Sarah E. Bledsoe, and Jennifer L. Bellamy, "From Concept to Implementation: Challenges Facing Evidence-Based Social Work," Evidence and Policy 1, no. 1 [2005]: 61-94). ...

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science

To understand what placement outside of one’s home means to the young people involved, we must un... more To understand what placement outside of one’s home means to the young people involved, we must understand foster care from a life course perspective. I analyze young people’s experiences in foster care from this perspective, accounting for when foster care happens, how long it lasts, and what happens when foster care placements end. I show that the population of children coming into foster care is younger and less urban than it was 20 years ago. I also show reliable measures of exposure to foster care over the life course. Children who enter care early in life are the children who spend the largest proportion of their childhood in foster care—a fact that rarely weighs on the policymaking process. We know very little about state and local variation in foster care placement rates, not to mention the influence of social services, the courts, foster parents, and caseworkers over foster children, so I close by arguing investment in research should be a clear policy priority.

Children and Youth Services Review

Journal on Policy and Complex Systems

In the paper, we examine the relationship between county context and the use of congregate care b... more In the paper, we examine the relationship between county context and the use of congregate care by White, Black, and Hispanic youth, aged between 10 and 17. We measure the use of congregate care as the probability a young person will be placed in congregate care during an out-of-home care spell. We define county context in three ways: urbanicity, social disadvantage, and the supply effect on demand. We also include whether states mandate the use of an assessment to regulate entry into congregate care. Our primary interest is organized around differences in county context, the rate of congregate care utilization, and the connection between context and disparity. We find that, regardless of race, congregate care placement rates tend to be higher in counties where supply affects demand. However, in those counties, the Black/White disparity tends to be lower and the Hispanic/White disparity tends to be higher. The association between a mandatory assessment policy and congregate care pla...

Child abuse & neglect, 2018

Although kinship guardianship is an increasingly important foster care exit pathway for children ... more Although kinship guardianship is an increasingly important foster care exit pathway for children in the United States, research on the factors leading to kinship guardianship breakdown is lacking. This study examines the factors associated with guardianship breakdown for children who exited foster care to kinship guardianship in California between 2003 and 2010 (N = 18,831). Specifying time-dependent Cox relative risk models, children's age trajectories are directly accounted for in the analysis. This allows differentiation between duration dependence (i.e., time spent in guardianship) and children's development (expressed as age). Overall, 17.3% of children reentered care by 2017. Early adolescents, age 13-15 years (HR = 1.63, p < .001), and late adolescents, age 16-17 years (HR = 1.93, p < .001), had an increased hazard of reentry compared with children under the age of six. Children with a history of mental health concerns had more than twice the hazard of reenterin...