Family Policy

The pregnancy reveal is conventionally a celebratory occasion, but for a pregnant adolescent, sharing news of a pregnancy, particularly with parents, can be a daunting prospect. Nonetheless, given the importance of social support to pregnant and parenting adolescents' success, the pregnancy reveal is an important step toward making healthy pregnancy decisions. Drawing on data from 27 in-depth interviews with young parents in Texas who were peer educators in an adolescent pregnancy prevention program, we find that adolescents often delay telling parents about a pregnancy. The complex decision-making process they undergo as they consider how and from whom to seek help can be drawn out, sometimes well into the second trimester, potentially delaying prenatal care and other steps necessary for a healthy pregnancy. This finding suggests that the delay and its consequences warrant further research and may have implications for parents' and practitioners' conversations with adolescents about sexual and reproductive health.

Prior research examining the effectiveness of Court-Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) as an intervention for improving the outcomes of children in state custody has been hindered by selection bias, because children may be selected to receive CASA representation based on non-random characteristics. Selection bias poses a strong threat to internal validity, and researchers have struggled to isolate the effects of CASA services on child and case outcomes. The present study examines the extent of selection bias in the CASA assignment process over a 2-year period for a full population of foster children in regions served by CASA programs in Texas (N = 32,349), thereby increasing the capacity to control for selection characteristics and supporting causal inference in ongoing studies. This analysis of CASA and state child welfare administrative data examines differences in the baseline child-, family-, and case-level characteristics of children who were appointed CASA representation compared to children who received child welfare services without CASA representation. Mixed-effect logistic regression modeling identifies independent predictors of CASA appointment while controlling for a range of factors and accounting for data clustering in the selection process. Findings indicate that CASA cases in this population have indicators of greater complexity and severity compared to their non-CASA counterparts. By empirically identifying the factors that predict assignment to CASA at the population level, this study lays the foundation for an advanced quasi-experimental outcome evaluation to examine CASA's effectiveness at improving child and case outcomes while minimizing the influence of selection bias.

Little is known about the health of the 2.2 million early care and education (ECE) workers responsible for the care, well-being, and success of the approximately 10 million children younger than age 6 enrolled in ECE, or the extent to which ECE environments and employers play a role in workers' health. The purpose of this analysis was to describe the health of an ECE worker sample by wage and by job and center characteristics and to begin to explore the relationships between these factors and workers' health. Our data indicate that ECE workers earn low wages and experience poor mental well-being and high rates of food insecurity. Lower-wage workers worked at centers with more children enrolled in subsidy programs and were more likely to work at centers that did not offer health insurance, paid sick leave, or parental or family leave. Policies and programs that raised workers' wages or mandated the provision of meals to both children and workers could better support teacher health and the quality of ECE for children. Our results suggest that the culture of health in ECE settings and equity-related outcomes could be improved by helping centers provide support and flexibility to teachers (for example, offsetting workers' benefit costs or reducing teacher-to-child ratios to reduce stress) who are managing their own health in the context of demanding work.

Caseworker turnover is a persistent problem for child welfare agencies. This study examines whether field-based pre-service training decreases turnover and examines which organizational factors mediate the effect of training on turnover. We used the population of caseworkers (N = 2365) hired into three caseworker roles during the transition from classroom-based to field-based training in a large U.S. state to compare differences in turnover between classroom-trained and field-trained caseworkers using discrete-time logistic regressions. We find that field-trained conservatorship caseworkers have 39% lower odds of leaving the agency within 18 months of hire compared to similar classroom-trained caseworkers. We examined whether organizational factors explain the effect of training on turnover rates among a sample of surveyed conservatorship caseworkers (72% response rate). We conducted decomposition models to determine the direct and indirect effects of training on turnover. We found that job satisfaction fully mediates the turnover effect and caseworker burnout partially mediates the effect of field-based training on turnover. Though we observed no effect on turnover, field-trained caseworkers in investigations and family-based safety services reported higher job satisfaction. The findings provide the first empirical support for an industry trend toward field-based training.

The strengths and abilities children develop from infancy through adolescence are crucial for their physical, emotional and cognitive growth, which in turn help them to achieve success in school and to become responsible, economically self-sufficient and healthy adults. Capable, responsible and healthy adults are clearly the foundation of a well-functioning and prosperous society, yet America's future is not as secure as it could be because millions of American children live in families with incomes below the poverty line. A wealth of evidence suggests that a lack of adequate economic resources for families with children compromises these children's ability to grow and achieve adult success, hurting them and the broader society.