The current study examines the relationships between teachers' job-demands and resources, perceived stress, job burnout, and depressive symptoms through an online survey administered to early childhood education (ECE: = 143) and early childhood special education (ECSE: = 121) teachers in a western state of the United States. Results showed no difference between ECE and ECSE teachers in their levels of job-demands, resources, perceived stress, job burnout, and depressive symptoms. Both ECE and ECSE teachers' job-related stressors were positively related to their perceived stress, and their job commitment was negatively associated with job burnout. However, there were some differences in the correlates of job burnout between ECE and ECSE teachers. For ECE teachers, the number of children with disabilities and their teaching efficacy predicted their job burnout, whereas with ECSE teachers, job-related stressors and the supportiveness of school climate (or the lack thereof) were indirectly related to their job burnout through their perceived stress. The current study suggests that providing professional development for these teachers and enhancing a school's supportive climate will promote the well-being of both ECE and ECSE teachers.

Implementing maternal depression screening in child-serving programs can help ensure that more mothers receive mental health services. This study examined the implementation of universal maternal depression screening in community-based Head Start programs.

Prior research finds that some high-quality preschool programs are successful in generating significant initial academic gains and long-term benefits for students as they progress through school. This study examines one of the mechanisms through which North Carolina's statewide pre-K program (NC Pre-K) may generate such benefits: improvements in the teaching environments of the elementary schools in which NC Pre-K graduates enroll. We find that an increased presence of former NC Pre-K students in elementary schools over the period 2004-2018 was associated with better teachers' perceptions of different dimensions of their teaching environment, as well as increased teacher and principal retention. Our findings suggest that pre-K expansion policies may benefit the entire school community.

When the COVID-19 pandemic forced school closures in the U.S. in March 2020, children's learning moved home and online, making school participation a challenge for many families, particularly those with low incomes. Although there is not a clear and agreed-upon digital analog for in-person school participation for young elementary students, existing research on young children's school attendance and engagement in non-pandemic times suggests that family characteristics broadly recognized to shape child development (e.g., parental depressive symptoms, household chaos), children's own characteristics (e.g., pre-COVID-19 academic skills; demographics), and logistical barriers with particular relevance to remote learning (e.g., internet access) may be determinants of remote learning participation. The current study explores the extent to which student participation during COVID-induced remote learning was predicted by family and child characteristics and logistical barriers by drawing on an existing study of diverse low-income students in Tulsa, OK who were in 1 grade when the pandemic emerged. We capitalize on unique, comprehensive, multi-informant data collected before and during COVID-19 to examine young children's participation in remote learning while controlling for pre-existing differences that might otherwise be confounded with both COVID-related stressors and obstacles to remote learning participation. Both family characteristics (e.g., parent depression, household chaos, single mother) and logistical barriers (e.g., internet and device access) predicted children's remote learning participation. Implications for school administrators and policymakers - with a focus on preparation for future disasters that may once again force school closures - are discussed.

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are traumatic experiences that increase people's susceptibility to adverse physical health, mental health, and social consequences in adulthood. Screening for ACEs in primary care settings is complicated by a lack of consensus on appropriate methods for identifying exposure to ACEs. It is unclear whether self-report methods could increase disclosure of ACEs as compared to interview-based methods. This study compares data on the prevalence of ACEs from two publicly available surveys conducted on the same population of children's caregivers: the 2019 Ohio subsample of the web/mail-based National Survey of Children's Health and the telephone-based 2019 Ohio Medicaid Assessment Survey. We find higher disclosure of caregiver-reported child exposure to ACEs in the telephone interview survey, highlighting the importance of the role of verbal communication in developing a safe and trusting relationship in the disclosure of trauma.

The United States' overreliance on incarceration has resulted in the imprisonment of millions of individuals - the majority of whom are parents of minor children. While mass incarceration has failed to effectively reduce crime or increase safety, it has dramatically harmed children and families in the United States. In turn, a wealth of research confirms the negative social, emotional, and psychological impacts of parental incarceration on children and the disproportionate impact on Black and Hispanic families and families living in poverty. As activists work towards dismantling this discriminatory and overly punitive system, it is also necessary to support children and adolescents currently impacted by parental incarceration. Using the Family Stress-Proximal Process (FSPP) model (Arditti, 2016) as a frame, the current paper critically reviews the literature on interventions to support children with incarcerated parents (CIP). The use of the FSPP frame highlights that while most intervention research has focused on promoting parenting skills of incarcerated parents and improving visit experiences, there is a dearth of research on interventions that 1) support at-home caregivers, 2) provide developmentally-targeted and -appropriate services and 3) acknowledge and counteract systems of inequality like structural racism and poverty that cause and exacerbate incarceration-related stress. These findings support a research agenda that prioritizes interventions framed around the intersectional identities of CIP and the intersecting systems that impact their lives.

American Samoan adolescents experience a high prevalence of mental health problems, including depression, anxiety, substance use, and suicidal thoughts and behaviors. To complement existing health system efforts, family-based interventions may be a feasible, cost-effective, and relevant opportunity to promote mental health. This community-partnered, qualitative study aimed to: (1) identify potential family-related psychosocial protective factors for adolescent mental health and (2) develop a framework for a parenting program to promote adolescent mental health in American Samoa. Applying the framework developed for research in Samoan communities, which emphasizes the importance of weaving a range of community member perspectives to reach consensus, semi-structured in-depth interviews with adult key informants (n=28) were conducted between October 2020 and February 2021. Results were validated through five focus groups with Samoan adolescents (n=35) between May and June 2022. Adult participants were sampled for diversity in profession, age, gender, education, and region of residence; adolescent participants were sampled for diversity in gender. Participants were recruited using personal networks and snowball sampling; adolescent participants also responded to Facebook advertising. The semi-structured interviews focused on broad topics including common mental health problems, contributors to mental illness, and potential interventions, among others. Transcripts were coded in duplicate and analyzed using deductive thematic analysis. Themes were collaboratively mapped onto an adapted model, an existing framework for Pacific Island health research. Six themes described key practices: (1) provide emotional safety and security; (2) provide physical safety and security; (3) encourage sense of self; (4) strengthen intergenerational communication skills; (5) prioritize quality time; and (6) cultivate healthy coping strategies. Participants also expressed the importance of a supportive environment grounded in culture, family and community, and caregiver mental health. These results provide an initial step to identify family-focused factors that promote adolescent mental health in American Samoa and categorize them into a framework to inform intervention development. Drawing on a collaborative and community-partnered process, these findings provide the first evidence-based framework to develop a parenting program to promote adolescent mental wellbeing and resilience in Samoan communities.

Close attention should be given to the increased reliance on kinship care to provide out-of-home care for vulnerable children and youth because although these families have various strengths, they also frequently face financial instability and experience material hardship. Living in poverty and experiencing material hardship are linked to an array of negative outcomes, including physical and mental health problems, elevated parental stress, and children's academic difficulties and social and behavioral problems. This study examined African American families who are providing informal kinship care with the aim of developing a nuanced understanding of the financial characteristics, challenges, and coping strategies of these families. Data for this study were obtained from two sources: (1) an exploratory sequential mixed-method pilot study and (2) the National Financial Capability Study. It was found that most caregivers in the pilot reported their family resources were only seldom or sometimes adequate to cover their household's basic needs. Some caregivers reported being unaware of public benefits and community resources available for kinship care families, and they had difficulties navigating the system. Additionally, family members' love and support for each other helped them to cope with financial instability. Using a nationally representative dataset, predicted probabilities for three types of financial instability were higher among households with demographic characteristics of kinship care families including difficulty covering expenses, having income that exceeds expenses, and having emergency savings. Implications for practice, policy, and future research are discussed.

This study aimed to identify trajectories of substance use from adolescence to young adulthood among 166 females with dual child welfare and juvenile justice system involvement, and to explore the influence of adolescent child custody status and substance use treatment on substance use trajectories. Results identified four substance use trajectory groups (stable moderate substance use, decreasing substance use, increasing substance use, stable high substance use). Custody loss during adolescence predicted membership in the stable high substance use trajectory group (log odds estimate = 2.99, = < 0.01). No significant associations were found with adolescent substance use treatment. The findings can inform policymakers, foster care professionals, and law enforcement officers to promote the delivery of timely and appropriate substance use services that respond to the unique needs of females across the child welfare and juvenile justice system populations.

Parental mental ill-health is often described as a risk factor for child maltreatment. Yet the literature commonly foregrounds maternal mental ill-health. To obtain a more complete picture, it is crucial to also understand the associations between fathers' mental health and child maltreatment.

Healthy social functioning has been a growing focus for understanding children's positive development and well-being. Despite the flexibility and cost-effectiveness of behavior rating scales, there has been a rising issue of concern in both practice and research applications regarding rating scales and its low cross-informant agreement. The present study aimed to analyze the extent to which caregivers and teachers agree about children's prosocial behaviors, identify whether there were differences in the degree of agreement across child welfare settings, and ultimately offer recommendations for assessing behavior for children involved with child welfare services. To do so, the reports of 1,224 children, caregivers, and teachers from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW) I who have been investigated by Child Protective Services (CPS) for abuse and/or neglect have been examined. Intra-class correlation coefficients (ICCs) of caregiver and teacher assessment of children's prosocial functioning were calculated to understand the degree of agreement in their perceptions of children's prosocial behaviors. ICC values presented show that agreement was low but significant across all samples and subscales ( range, .11-.22). It is suggested that future researchers pursue examination of the underlying mechanisms or factors that contribute to informant discrepancies.

Exposure to interpersonal violence is associated with elevated suicide risk. Preventing suicide among high-risk adolescents is most often discussed from a clinical treatment perspective, resulting in a gap in research examining whether school and community connectedness can buffer the relationships between forms of interpersonal violence and suicide risk in clinical samples of adolescents.

To examine associations of service use (housing, mental health, substance use, education, and employment) with depression and substance use disorder (SUD) trajectories among young adults experiencing homelessness.

Young people's perspectives on social and healthcare providers' assessments of sex trading for financial compensation are lacking. This is particularly important for LGBTQ+ youth who experience substantial barriers in navigating health and social services. Further, increased internet access (because of COVID-19 and other factors) has changed the landscape of the sex trades in ways that are not fully understood. Our study aimed to understand (1) how young people trade sex, and (2) provider strategies that increase youths' comfort in disclosing sex trading and related risks. This community-based participatory research study surveyed currently or formerly homeless youth (ages 16-29). We co-created a cross sectional survey that explored youths' perceptions of: (1) sex trading type, compensation, and meaning; and (2) practices to increase youths' comfort in disclosing sex trading. Participants (N = 103; M = 22.9 [SD = 3.5]; 34% white, 55% ciswomen/21% trans; 51% queer) reported that "sex trading" signified multiple meanings, ranging from sex work/occupation to exploitation/trafficking, and included diverse in-person and virtual forms for varied compensation types. Youth reported being more comfortable disclosing when the provider indicated they would advocate for them if they are victims of discrimination. Compared to cisgender youth, trans youth reported feeling significantly more comfortable disclosing sexual activity when a service provider used gender/sexuality inclusive practices (e.g., pronoun pins). Findings suggest important implications for gender-inclusive practice strategies to ultimately reduce potential harms of sex trading and multi-item measures to assess the complexity of sex trading.

Youth involved with child protective services (CPS) are at elevated risk for engaging in self-harm. Participation in interventions or treatments that may reduce youths' self-harm behaviors often depends on the accurate reporting of their self-injurious behaviors. However, informants often disagree on the presence or severity of self-harm engagement, making the identification of youth in need of treatment more challenging. The current study aims to characterize discrepancies between youth and caregiver reports of children's self-harm among a sample of youth with a history of CPS involvement, and to identify factors (e.g., demographics, youth and caregiver psychological impairments, aspects of the caregiving environment) associated with these discrepancies. Participants (N = 258) were drawn from a large, nationally representative sample of youth under the age of 18 (mean age = 13.8) and their caregivers who were investigated by CPS. Multinomial logistic regressions were used to examine correlates of discrepancies in caregiver and youth reports of youth self-harm. Results indicated that 10% of caregiver-child dyads agreed on children's engagement in self-harm. In 33% of cases, only the child reported self-harm and in 57% of cases, only the caregiver reported youth self-harm. Being a biological caregiver, child female sex, higher levels of internalizing symptoms; higher post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms; and greater caregiver alcohol use was associated with a lower likelihood of caregivers reporting self-harm only. Older child age; lower externalizing symptoms; higher PTSD symptoms, and greater levels of caregiver emotional security and structure were linked to lower odds of children reporting self-harm only. These results underscore important factors to consider when assessing self-harm among youth involved with CPS and have potential implications for practice guidelines in this population.

Youth in foster care tend to experience a disproportional number of adverse life experiences and demonstrate high rates of emotional and behavioral difficulties. According to the transactional model of stress and coping, how youth appraise their experiences influences the type of coping strategies they use in response to adversity, and these relations are key components to understanding later adjustment. However, few studies have examined potential effects of appraisal on coping for youth in foster care. Furthermore, it is not well understood if or how such interaction may vary across age. To address this gap, this study examined potential age moderation of contemporaneous primary, threat-based appraisal effects on coping in a large sample of 490 youth in foster care (48% female, ages 8 to 18) using a series of statistical models which were capable of detecting very general forms of effect moderation. Results indicated that primary appraisal positively predicted direct and prosocial coping, and negatively predicted asocial coping. The linear effects of appraisal on coping did not vary based on age of the youth. The findings suggest that primary appraisals of life events for youth in foster care does have a unique influence on certain coping styles, suggesting perhaps new directions for research on youth exposed to multiple adversities. To promote wider use of the non-parametric time-varying effect model in R, the analysis syntax is also included in the appendix.

Intake reports from child protective service (CPS) agencies are the foundation for subsequent decisions and services within the child welfare system. They provide valuable information for understanding children's needs, yet the unstructured way that information is captured makes the information ascertained in these reports difficult to summarize. Utilizing CPS intake reports from a mid-sized urban county in the southeastern United States (N = 2,724), our study had three aims: (1) develop a coding system to abstract information from narrative CPS intake reports, (2) examine the prevalence of maltreatment subtypes, and (3) compare prevalence of maltreatment subtypes by screen-in/screen-out decisions. Improper discipline/physical abuse was the most common maltreatment subtype (34.6 %); over 40 % of reports involved a physical act toward the child not resulting in injury. Salient risk factors included caregiver drug use (20.6 %) and domestic violence (19 %). While substantial discrepancies were not found between screened-in and screened-out cases with respect to maltreatment types, maltreatment type-specific codes, or contributory factors, they were found for reporter type and child age. Our coding system to extract and assess child maltreatment intake narrative data can provide local agencies with descriptive information about why children come to their agency's attention and provide nuanced details regarding the children's and families' needs. This coding framework could be used to develop validated intake tools to better document and categorize child maltreatment which could inform the assessment/investigation process and create targeted prevention and intervention services for families that come to the attention of CPS.

Accurate and timely intervention in the justice system is particularly critical in rural communities, given documented barriers to accessible, evidence-based services for youth. As youth in the juvenile justice system have a high prevalence of behavioral health needs, accurate assessment of those needs is a critical first step in linking youth to appropriate care. The goal of the current study is to examine the reliability of a brief assessment (the Brief Problem Checklist [BPC]) among a sample of 222 justice-involved youth and their caregivers who primarily reside in rural communities in the United States. Using a series of reliability analyses and tests of agreement, we examined whether youth and caregiver BPC produces reliable scales, the strength of the convergence among each of the BPC scales, and youth and caregiver agreement on the BPC scales. Findings support the reliability of the BPC, but not inter-rater reliability. Poor agreement between youth and caregiver reports exists for both youth internalizing and externalizing problems. Additionally, the BPC was significantly related to several theoretically relevant constructs, including treatment, substance use disorder severity, and family history of substance use. These findings lend merit to discussions about the need for more research on the reliability and validity of assessment instruments before their widespread use in guiding youth- and agency case planning decisions, along with informing conclusions about program effectiveness.

Welcome Family is a universal, short-term nurse home visiting program designed to promote optimal maternal and infant physical and mental well-being and provide an entry point into the early childhood system of care to all families with newborns up to 8 weeks old living in defined communities in Massachusetts. The present study examines whether: 1) Welcome Family meets its goal of successfully connecting families to two early childhood programs-evidence-based home visiting (EBHV) and early intervention (EI)-relative to families with similar background experiences who do not participate in Welcome Family, and 2) whether these impacts are conditional on families' race and ethnicity and their primary language-two characteristics that are related to structural racism and health inequities. The study used coarsened exact matching (CEM) based on birth certificate data to match Welcome Family participants who enrolled during 2013-2017 to mothers and their infants living in the home visiting catchment areas who did not receive home visiting during the study period. Primary study outcomes included enrollment in any EBHV program supported by the Massachusetts Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MA MIECHV) program up to age 1 year, measured using MA MIECHV home visiting program data, and EI service receipt for children aged up to age 3 years, measured using EI program data. Impacts were assessed by fitting weighted regression models adjusted for preterm birth, maternal depression, and substance use. Mothers' race, ethnicity, and language were included in the model as moderators of Welcome Family impacts on enrollment in EBHV and EI. Welcome Family participants ( = 3,866) had more than double the odds of EBHV enrollments up to age 1 and had 1.39 greater odds of receiving EI individualized family service plans (IFSPs) up to age 3 relative to the comparison group ( = 46,561). Mothers' primary language moderated Welcome Family impacts on EBHV enrollments. Universal, short-term programs such as Welcome Family may be an effective method of ensuring families who could benefit from more intensive early childhood services are identified, engaged, and enrolled.

Extant literature has primarily employed linear models to estimate the average effect of spanking on children. Less is known about child and parent characteristics that may predict differential risks of children's exposure to spanking (i.e., pre-treatment heterogeneity) and the effect of spanking on child outcomes that may differ by the propensity for spanking (i.e., post-treatment heterogeneity).

Using national child welfare data, we created a longitudinal data set (N = 142,143) to examine a subset of foster children (7%) who entered care due to parental incarceration (PI). Spanning FY 2005-2017, the dataset allowed us to compare children who entered care due to PI to children entering for other reasons. We found children of incarcerated parents were younger (median age of 4 vs. 6), more often White (47% vs. 42%), and less often Black (15% vs. 20%) when compared to other foster children. Parental use of alcohol (12% v. 6%) and drugs (42% v. 26%) were both more common among children who entered due to PI compared to those who entered for other reasons. Our understanding of this population is limited by inadequate data collection procedures that fail to account for societal changes created by mass incarceration. Our data indicate that investments in substance use treatment could decrease the number of children entering care.