Child Welfare

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

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.

Differential response (DR) is an increasingly common model for how child protective services agencies address reports of child maltreatment. Differential response systems seek to be less adversarial than traditional child protective services by separating incoming referrals into two (or more) tracks.

This paper highlights the characteristics and experiences of the approximately 2.3 million U.S. children who live with neither biological nor adoptive parents, but instead live with relatives or non-relatives in foster care or less formal arrangements outside the foster care system.

This research brief examines program coordination between the child SSI and TANF programs, drawing upon analysis of administrative data and site visits to Kentucky, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Texas.

This research brief examines pathways to the child SSI program, drawing upon analysis of administrative data and site visits to Kentucky, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Texas. It finds that informal referrals appear to be most common, though schools, health care providers, and legal services staff also play a role.