Family Time Research
“At the mercy of our system”: Structural and programmatic changes for supporting parents with children in out-of-home care.
System reforms are needed to better support families and prevent child welfare system (CWS) involvement. For parents with children in out-of-home care, it is critical that CWS required programs meet their unique needs and minimize the harm of separation. Yet, few programs have been developed for this population of parents. This study sought to understand important factors to consider when developing responsive programming within the unique parenting context of supervised visitation. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and focus groups with 107 individuals. Two focus groups included parents with lived expertise whose children were returned to their care after being removed. Interviewees included service providers from state CWS, legal, nursing, and Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) programs, child welfare researchers, and racial equity experts. Qualitative thematic analysis involved coding, code grouping, and theme development using ATLAS.ti. Findings indicate the need for broad systems attention to marginalization, separation trauma, and preparing workers for the context of supervised visitation Programs and requirements for parents should attend to self-identified needs, be trauma-informed, and needs-matched. Implications for child welfare programming are addressed, emphasizing community-based programming and family supports aimed at preventing removal, alongside systems-based efforts to minimize harm and meet families’ unique needs when separation cannot be avoided.
Rousson, A. N., Merelas, S., Tajima, E. A., Orlando, L., Lund, J. J., & Barkan, S. (2025). “At the mercy of our system”: Structural and programmatic changes for supporting parents with children in out-of-home care. Children and Youth Services Review, 175, 108370.
Strive to enhance supervised family time visits for children in foster care: Outcomes from a pilot study with randomization
Child welfare system reforms are needed to help support families and prevent removal of children who may safely remain in the home. For those children who have been removed from their parents’ care, parent–child visits are a way to help maintain bonds and attachment and may help mitigate the trauma of removal. The primary goals of this randomized, controlled study were to assess the effects of the Strive Supervised Family Time Program on parental engagement, attendance, parenting skills in visits and the quality of the visits among parents involved with the child welfare system. Parents within Washington State having supervised visits with their children (from newborns to age eight) were randomly assigned to either the Strive program (n = 58) or a ‘supervised visitation as usual’ comparison group (n = 50) and then recruited to participate in the study. Survey data were collected from parents at the beginning and at the end of program. Strive Navigators documented program fidelity, and child welfare agency visit report forms provided data on visit attendance. Overall, the Strive program was well received by parents and showed promise in increasing the quality of parent–child visits through parent engagement, support, and skill development in areas associated with safety and attachment, stress management and communication. Strive provides a promising program of engagement and support uniquely tailored to the needs of parents involved in the child welfare system at a critical time. The contribution of the Strive program may, in addition to benefiting individual families, represent an important family time practice improvement for child welfare systems.
Barkin, et al., (2024). Strive to enhance supervised family time visits for children in foster care: Outcomes from a pilot study with randomization. Children and Youth Services Review; 160: (107531).
Designing an Evidence-Based Intervention for Parents Involved with Child Welfare
With over 400,000 children in foster care in the United States and parenting services being the most frequently ordered service to try to remediate parental deficiencies and to support reunification efforts, it is imperative that this service not only has a high relevance to the parents it is trying to reach, but has evidence to support effectiveness (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2018). However, most of the evidence-based parenting programs being offered to parents have neither high relevance to this population nor have they been rigorously studied. Additionally, they are costly to implement and attrition rates are of great concern. In this paper, we describe a process used to inform the development of a parenting intervention that would have high relevance to child welfare involved parents and could then work towards proving its effectiveness.
Orlando, et al., (2021) Responding to COVID-19’s Impact on Supervised Family Time: The Supportive Virtual Family Time Model. Developmental Child Welfare; 3 (1), 1–17.
Responding to Covid-19’s Impact on Supervised Family Time: The Supportive Virtual Family Time Model
COVID-19 has put child wellbeing at risk, perhaps especially, for children and youth involved in the foster care system. For these children and youth, any stability they may have experienced since entering care has been disrupted and their contact with parents limited. A sudden shift to virtual only contact meant both parents and caregivers were in need of support to navigate these changes. This study reports on the rapid development and implementation of an eLearning and structured practice guide for visitation supervisors to help them facilitate virtual visits that promote parent-caregiver collaboration in support of the child.
Orlando, et al., (2021) Responding to COVID-19’s Impact on Supervised Family Time: The Supportive Virtual Family Time Model. Developmental Child Welfare; 3 (1), 1–17.
