Child Welfare

The Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 provided states with the option to operate guardianship assistance programs (GAP) as part of their child welfare permanency continuum under Title IV-E of the Social Security Act.  The first of these programs began operating in 2010, though some states had operated guardianship programs under title IV-E demonstration

This executive summary provides key takeaways from a longer report to a study that developed and pre-tested a Human Trafficking Screening Tool (HTST) with youth in runaway and homeless youth and child welfare settings. This document also includes both the full, 19-item HTST and a shorter, 6-question form of the tool.

This ASPE Research Brief describes the number and characteristics of children who in 2011 or 2012 lived with someone other than their parents and who had experienced the incarceration of a parent or guardian.

This ASPE Research Brief examines the courts’ role in overseeing psychotropic medication prescriptions for children who were subjects of child maltreatment investigations.

This document introduces child welfare administrators and policy makers to the benefits and challenges faced in using predictive analytics to improve child welfare practice.

Child welfare agencies are interested in leveraging new and emerging techniques to help them harness data and technology to make dramatic improvements to child welfare practice and ultimately produce better outcomes for children and families.

This report summarizes findings from a study to develop and pre-test a human trafficking screening tool with 617 youth in runaway and homeless youth (RHY) and child welfare (CW) settings. The tool was found to be accessible, easy to administer, and effective in identifying trafficked youth in these settings, though additional research is needed.

New analysis of data from HUD's Family Options Study shows that twenty months after staying in an emergency shelter with their families, young children scored worse in pre-reading skills and had higher rates of overall behavior problems and early development delays compared to national norms for children their age.

This statutorily mandated report to Congress responds for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to the many recommendations contained in the March 2016 final report of the Commission to Eliminate Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities.

New analysis of data from HUD's Family Options Study of adolescents’ experiences in shelter with their families and 20 months later shows that most adolescents continued to live with their families, and some continued to experience housing instability or live in overcrowded situations.