This K01 award will enable an organizational scholar to examine how child welfare agency management affects service processes and children's outcomes. Dr. Rebecca Wells has examined intra- and inter- organizational dynamics within the health care safety net. With K01 funding, she will work closely with Dr. E. Michael Foster, a children's mental health services researcher, and Dr. Mark Courtney, a leading scholar in human services for vulnerable children. Drs. Foster and Courtney as well as other methodological and content experts will assist Dr. Wells in 3 studies of how child welfare agency internal management and relationships with other agencies affect the ways caseworkers serve families, the comprehensiveness of services received, and children's mental health and other outcomes over time. Based on a multilevel conceptual model of child welfare services, 3 major questions motivate this proposal: (1) Do child welfare agency management emphases on measurement and accountability, human resources, change management, and ties to other agencies affect children's outcomes? (2) Does case management or service comprehensiveness mediate associations between agency management and children's outcomes? (3) Does service availability moderate associations between ties to other agencies and outcomes? Study 1 will use data from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being. Study 2 will be a comparative case study that explores questions from study 1 and develop surveys for study 3. Study 3 will entail analyzing primary survey data and previously collected outcomes data from at-risk children. Findings from these 3 studies will enable Dr. Wells to develop the multilevel modeling, qualitative, and survey design competencies as well as substantive familiarity with child welfare and mental health services necessary to develop realistic models of how management decisions affect children's outcomes. Training for this research involves a variety of courses and systematic consultation with Drs. Foster and Courtney as well as other national experts on advanced empirical methods, children's health, and child welfare and mental health services, including the responsible conduct of research involving human subjects. The proposed research will improve public health by indicating how some aspects of child welfare agency management affect children's outcomes. Subsequent research will examine how child welfare and mental health agencies collectively affect children.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
Type
Research Scientist Development Award - Research & Training (K01)
Project #
5K01MH076175-03
Application #
7623943
Study Section
Mental Health Services in Non-Specialty Settings (SRNS)
Program Officer
Hill, Lauren D
Project Start
2007-07-27
Project End
2012-05-31
Budget Start
2009-06-01
Budget End
2010-05-31
Support Year
3
Fiscal Year
2009
Total Cost
$163,498
Indirect Cost
Name
University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
Department
Administration
Type
Schools of Public Health
DUNS #
608195277
City
Chapel Hill
State
NC
Country
United States
Zip Code
27599
Jolles, Mónica Pérez; Flick, Jodon Anne Jodi; Wells, Rebecca et al. (2017) Caregiver involvement in behavioural health services in the context of child welfare service referrals: a qualitative study. Child Fam Soc Work 22:648-659
Jolles, M P; Wells, R (2017) Does caregiver participation in decision making within child welfare agencies influence children's primary and mental health care service use? Child Care Health Dev 43:192-201
Staudt, Marlys; Jolles, Mónica Pérez; Chuang, Emmeline et al. (2015) Child Welfare Caseworker Education and Caregiver Behavioral Service Use and Satisfaction with the Caseworker. J Public Child Welf 9:382-398
Wells, Rebecca; Jolles, Mónica Pérez; Chuang, Emmeline et al. (2014) Trends in local public child welfare agencies 1999-2009. Child Youth Serv Rev 38:93-100
Sloan, Frank A; Gifford, Elizabeth J; Eldred, Lindsey M et al. (2013) Do specialty courts achieve better outcomes for children in foster care than general courts? Eval Rev 37:3-34
Wells, Rebecca; Gifford, Elizabeth J (2013) Implementing a Case Management Initiative in High-Need Schools. Child Youth Serv Rev 35:787-796
Wells, Rebecca; La, Elizabeth Holdsworth; Morrissey, Joseph et al. (2013) How a stressed local public system copes with people in psychiatric crisis. Psychiatr Q 84:255-70
Wells, Rebecca; Chuang, Emmeline (2012) Does formal integration between child welfare and behavioral health agencies result in improved placement stability for adolescents engaged with both systems? Child Welfare 91:79-100
Chuang, Emmeline; Wells, Rebecca; Green, Sherri et al. (2011) Performance-based contracting and the moderating influence of caseworker role overload on service provision in child welfare. Adm Soc Work 35:453-474
Chuang, Emmeline; Wells, Rebecca (2010) The role of interagency collaboration in facilitating receipt of behavioral health services for youth involved with child welfare and juvenile justice. Child Youth Serv Rev 32:1814-1822

Showing the most recent 10 out of 12 publications