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Concrete services are goods and services, such as rent, utilities, healthcare, or other tangible services, that are purchased directly by child welfare agencies to help support the short-term needs of a family. Practice wisdom in social work details the importance of meeting basic needs in order for clients to be able to concentrate on completing t...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... an effort to determine the average distribution per concrete services type, costs paid through concrete services for all four categories of concrete services were examined (see Figure 1). Descriptive analysis revealed distribu- tions varied by age and concrete services type. General products accounted for 46.6% of all expenditures (see Table 2), although material assistance accounted for the fewest service expenditures (13.6%). The mean allocation for material assistance far exceeded allocations delivered through other mechanisms (see Figure 2). The percent of service allocation is shown in Figure 3 and the mean expenditure by age in Table 3. ...
Context 2
... ANOVA was conducted to examine differences in mean concrete services allotments based on age group and concrete services type. After assessing for outliers and case completion, 9,255 cases were removed result- ing in an analytic sample of n = 51,132 (82%). A significant interaction F (3) = 105.8, p < .001 was found (see Table 4). Main effects revealed that service types significantly differed by mean expenditure. Differences in expenditure totals by age emerged with greater expenditure amounts being spent on those who were older. Significant interactions were found among all concrete services types. Across all age groups, there were significant interactions with personal allowance and general products categories. Mean expenditures for personal allowance trended downward through age 14 years while expenditures from age 15 through age 18 years were significantly higher. Mean general products allocations generally increased through age 11; after age 11, general products expenditures were lower for adolescents (age 12-17 years), but increased for those age 18 and older. Mean expenditures for those age 18 and older closely matched allocations for youth age 6 to 11 years. Significant differences were found in material assistance allotments for all but the youngest age group, and material assistance expenditures increased from age 6 through age 17. Differences among the youngest and oldest age groups for material assistance expenditures were not found. Analysis of general services expenditures did not reveal significant allocation differences among age groups. Table 4 provides a detailed overview of interaction effects and Figure 3 shows the estimated marginal means for each group. Partial Eta squared was calculated using Ferguson's (2009) approach for the interaction term; ? p 2 = .01. While the current study is exploratory in nature, a small effect is noted and serves to demonstrate a potentially causal relationship among the variables ...
Citations
... For example, in Oregon, child welfare offices lacking flexible funds had three times higher placement rates than those with access to flexible funds (US Department of Health and Human Services, 2005). Similarly, in Indiana, concrete resources were used for housing, utilities to avert placement, and aid with reunification (Pierce et al., 2018). One main finding involving such flexible fund use through IV-E waivers was that participating states reduced the rate of out-of-home placements (US Department of Health and Human Services, 2005). ...
Introduction: Poverty is a correlate if not a cause of child neglect in the US and worldwide (Slack, 2017; WHO & UNICEF,2021,UN 2021). Definitions of child neglect vary widely and include parental omissions and commissions. The purpose of this manuscript is to examine the extent to which poverty exemptions in state statutes (N=15) actually are correlated with “screened out” neglect cases. We then undertake a case study of Vermont, the state in the U.S. with the lowest rate of screened in neglect cases, to explore the extent that the state of Vermont can be seen as a “positive outlier.” Methods: Using a multi-phase analysis, this article examines US state statutes (2019). Focusing on the 14 states that use poverty and service access qualifiers in their neglect statutes, we compare their neglect rates with states that do not include such qualifiers. We hypothesized that states with poverty exemptions in their statutes would have proportionately fewer neglect cases. The second phase of analysis built off of key informant interviews to help explain findings from phase 1. Findings: The findings expose the wide variation in neglect percentages across the nation, ranging from 92.2% to 1.5%. Using Vermont as a case study, with the lowest reported neglect rate and only 18 cases screened in for investigation in 2019, we examine explanations for the wide discrepancies nationally. These include the use of an economic firewall with poverty related cases in Vermont being referred to economic support services instead of a CPS investigation, Family Resource Centers, and Differential Response Systems. Implications and Conclusions: Differentiating child neglect from poverty, creating a national if not a globally standardized definition of neglect could help to better contextualize neglect rates, create poverty related diversion programs, and address race equity agendas. Finally, we offer recommendations to create more innovative practices to address and divert neglect cases to other systems and services that can more appropriately aid children, parents, and whole families.
... Ryan, Garnier, Zyphur, and Zhai (2006) demonstrated that concrete monetary assistance to birth, foster, or adoptive parents decreased subsequent maltreatment of children from 3 states. Pierce, Jaggers, and Hall (2017) revealed increased usage of concrete services during a Title IV-E Wavier Demonstration. They analyzed justifications for concrete service use across placement types by case managers to improve safety, permanency, and wellbeing for the children in their caseloads. ...
Background
Experiencing poverty and financial difficulties are significant barriers to outcomes of permanency and placement stability. This is particularly true for children who are in out of home placements. The provision of concrete services is intended to meet concrete needs of families to address this barrier. However, little is known about how concrete services meet the needs of families in need of these services or if the use of concrete services is a viable treatment for children who are in out of home placements.
Methods
The present study examined differences between those who received and those who did not receive concrete services on factors of stability, child and caregiver traumatic stress, number of placements, and current out of home placement. Regression analysis examined the association between amount of concrete service spending and permanency. Then to test concrete services as an intervention for children in a current out of home placement, we used propensity score matching to match participants on characteristics that predicted whether they would receive concrete services. We then ran a hierarchical regression to test the treatment condition of concrete services with children who are in a current out of home placement.
Results
Participants who received concrete services were at a much higher level of need with significantly higher levels of traumatic stress and number of placements and lower levels of placement stability. The amount of money spent on concrete services was associated with increases in placement stability. And, children in a current out of home placement had an increase in placement stability when they received concrete services.
Conclusions
The present study is the first to evidence concrete service as a treatment for placement stability for children in current out of home placements. Spending on concrete services in addition to child welfare services improves a child’s current placement stability. This is an important finding with implications for improving child welfare services’ approach to those in their care with financial burdens.
Despite growing recognition of the links between poverty and child maltreatment, little is known about the specific practices and strategies utilized to directly respond to families' poverty. One such practice is the provision of material assistance, which is widespread in child protection settings but has received negligible scholarly attention. The article aims to describe and conceptualize this underresearched practice and to explore the challenges workers face when implementing it. The study described here included 20 in-depth interviews conducted with social workers working in an innovative Israeli child protection program called Families on the Path to Growth. The program is based on the Poverty-Aware paradigm and provides social workers and families with a substantial flexible budget designated for families' needs. Findings revealed that utilizing material assistance is an extremely complex and multidimensional task. Specifically, workers' engagement with this practice revolved around three continuums that range between (a) collaboration and countercollaboration; (b) splitting and integrating the emotional and the material; and (c) a hermeneutic of trust and a hermeneutic of suspicion. In the discussion, we explore the findings in relation to Nancy Fraser's conceptualization of social justice, redistribution, and recognition. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
A Midwestern state’s child welfare agency contracted with a university to evaluate a 5-year Title IV-E Waiver Demonstration Project. As part of the process study, evaluators employed case study analysis to investigate Waiver knowledge and effects as reported by Regional and Executive Managers across 4 years of the demonstration period. Data from 78 interviews reveal enhanced levels of manager–evaluator rapport and integrated Waiver knowledge across years of data collection. This study highlights the value of middle managers as rich data sources, studying process through qualitative methods in child welfare evaluation, and how consistent relationships can support partnerships over time.
