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Family and Child Services

Westat has extensive experience with child welfare and family preservation programs, studies that deal with child abuse and neglect, foster care, and general family functioning. We perform policy and program reviews, systems examination, study design, and overall project evaluations.

• For a national evaluation of the Family Preservation Services Program, Westat used a randomized experimental design to assess how well the program met its objectives of preventing unnecessary foster care placements, ensuring the safety of children, and improving family functioning. This research for HHS required the following:
  • Interviews with parents, child welfare workers, and program staff at three points in time;
  • Review of policy and program materials; and
  • Examination of administrative data systems and case records.
• For HHS, Westat has implemented several national studies to determine the incidence of abused and neglected children. These national incidence studies (NIS) have used a prospective methodology in which "sentinels" (professionals in direct contact with children) identify children they believe are abused or neglected. Their data are integrated with official reports that are investigated at child protective services agencies. Westat staff has done extensive work refining the design of the NIS to enhance the quality and interpretation of the findings and is currently conducting the fourth National Incidence Study (NIS-4).
• For the National Head Start Impact Study, Westat is studying the effects of Head Start on participating children and whether impact varies as a function of child, family, or program characteristics. This longitudinal study involves approximately 5,000 preschool-aged children who were eligible and applied for Head Start in fall 2002 to 383 centers across 84 nationally representative grantee/delegate agencies. The multifaceted data collection plan includes the following:
  • Combination of twice-yearly in-person and telephone interviews with parents;
  • In-person child assessments conducted twice during the first year of the study and annually afterward;
  • Annual surveys with care providers and teachers;
  • Direct observations of program quality; and
  • Teacher ratings of individual study children.
• For the Head Start National Reporting System Training & Data Management project, Westat worked to implement the web-based system, which gathered child assessment and descriptive data for 436,000 4- and 5-year-olds twice a year. Our team trained 3,000 Head Start trainers, who trained local staff to use the system. We were also responsible for analyzing assessment results for accountability and program improvement purposes. Under an earlier contract, Westat staff took part in a project to design and field test the national reporting system.
• Westat has conducted several studies for HHS on the organization and operation of child welfare programs.
  • Assessing the Context of Permanency and Reunification in the Foster Care System. Westat produced a compendium of six papers that described and assessed the status of reunification in policy and practice in 25 states.
  • National Study of Child Protective Services Systems and Reform Efforts. This project included a review of all states' child protective services (CPS) policies, a survey of a nationally representative sample of local CPS agencies concerning their organization and practices, and site visits to local agencies that had recently implemented substantive reforms.
  • State Innovations in Child Welfare Financing. Westat described how states implement fiscal reforms to contain costs or improve system performance in child welfare. The study examined the following issues:
    • States' risk-sharing strategies;
    • Balancing risk and reward in states' fiscal innovations; and
    • Challenges states face in controlling costs while achieving the goal of improved well-being of children and families.
• Westat performs studies of child welfare programs for individual states.
  • The Illinois Subsidized Guardianship Waiver Demonstration was a 5-year longitudinal evaluation that included random assignment of approximately 8,000 children to demonstration and cost-neutral groups. The study for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services tested the benefits and risks of providing monetary incentives to relative caregivers and foster parents to become private guardians.
  • Another Westat study evaluated the child outcomes for ProtectOhio, which is Ohio's Title IV-E Waiver Child Welfare Demonstration. This 5-year evaluation assessed the impact of flexible funding and managed care strategies in 14 demonstration counties through a survey of 1,400 county caseworkers and extensive modeling of child event data using proportional hazard analysis and imputation.
  • Westat assists in the Evaluation of the Arizona Community Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment Program, which addresses the needs for substance abuse services for families involved in the child welfare system and participating in the TANF program.
• Westat formed the Race Matters Study Group to initiate inquiries into the factors responsible for the disproportionate representation of African American children in the child protective services (CPS) system. The group identified various stages in the CPS process where research was needed to determine whether African American children were disproportionately screened into or retained in the system. We identified scholars who would address the various aspects of overrepresentation and then co-hosted a forum to allow child welfare administrators, officials, and other scholars to more fully address the impact of disproportionate representation among African Americans and other racial minorities, particularly Hispanics and Native Americans.
• For the National Survey of America's Families, we conducted telephone and in-person surveys of families and children to investigate the effects of the transfer of responsibility for many social programs from the Federal Government to the states, with a particular focus on low-income households. These surveys are part of the Urban Institute's New Federalism Project.
• Research by Westat on independent living programs for youth in foster care has provided critical information for child welfare policy and programs.
  • The National Evaluation of Title IV-E Independent Living Programs for Youth assessed the impact independent living programs on youth who were discharged from foster care placement, transitioning from supervised placements to independent living.
  • Westat developed outcomes and measures to assess the performance of states' independent living programs in helping young people in foster care make a successful transition to self-sufficiency, for the Developing a System of Program Accountability Under the John H. Chafee Foster Care Independence Program.

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