The Spring 2013 issue of CW360°, "The Intersection of Child Welfare and Disability: Focus on Children," from the Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare (CASCW) is now available online. This CW360° explores issues impacting children with disabilities in child welfare and provides examples of policy solutions and practice strategies for working with this population.

It is essential for child welfare workers and advocates to understand and be aware of the prevalence of disability in child welfare. As Traci LaLiberte and Tracy Crudo state in their letter from the editors,

"There is not a child welfare worker, supervisor, or administrator practicing in the field today that has not or will not come into contact with children with disabilities. Indeed, it is likely that many of the children on any given child welfare worker's caseload have some form of disability."

CASCW's annual CW360° magazine provides comprehensive information on the latest research, policies, and practices in a key area affecting child well-being to communities, child welfare professionals, and other human service professionals. CASCW will also produce a special issue this summer focusing on parents with disabilities in the child welfare system.

To view the current and past issues of CW360°, visit the CW360° webpage on the CASCW website.

Lee was also invited to participate on a Special Emphasis Panel (SEP) to review grant applications submitted to the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention & Health Promotion of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). SEP Panel will evaluate the scientific and technical merit of research proposals submitted to CDC in response to Request for Application (RFA) DP09-0010501SUPP13: Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Research Centers: Special Interest Project Competitive Supplements (SIPS). The panel will specifically review applications for SIPS on the topic of "Understanding the Barriers to Colorectal Cancer Screening among Asian Subgroups (SIP13-067)" and "Feasibility Study of the New Clinical Measure of Colorectal Cancer Screening for Federally Qualified Health Centers (SIP13-069)."

The film is based on Umbreit's research and practice with homicide survivors, offenders and communities, including Native Americans and Somalis in Minneapolis, and clergy sex abuse in Milwaukee. The film features four main case stories that identify lessons learned from restorative justice dialogue with former enemies.

Later this year, Wipf and Stock Publishers in Oregon will publish Umbreit's book on the same topic. It was co-written with Jennifer Blevins, Ph.D. student and research associate with the center.

He helped create the Youth Work Institute at the U of M, which reaches more than 4,000 youth workers annually, and oversaw the Minnesota 4-H program reaching 130,000 youth annually. Dr. Blyth's dedication to the field is extensive, as he serves on numerous committees, such as the Twin Cities Strive's Goal and Measures Design Team, the Youthprise Board, Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak's Youth Violence Prevention Executive Committee, St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman's Sprockets Leadership Team, and Greater Twin Cities United Way's Education Committee.

CW360° is meant to provide communities, child welfare professionals, and other human service professionals with comprehensive information on the latest research, policies, and practices in a key area affecting child well-being today. As Traci LaLiberte and Tracy Crudo state in their letter from the editors,

"It is no longer a question of whether to incorporate trauma-informed organizational and practice strategies into child welfare practice, but how."

This year will also see two more issues of CW360° addressing children and parents with disabilities in the child welfare system. To view past issues, visit the CW360° webpage on our website.

Research has shown that supportive adult connections for youth have many positive long-term effects, including improved self-esteem, educational achievement, and social skill development. Yet too often, youth lose their prior supportive adult connections while in out-of-home care.

The Youth Connections Scale, or YCS, was developed to fill a need in child welfare: to evaluate and measure the increased efforts of agencies to improve the level of connectedness of youth with supportive adults as a component of relational permanence of youth in foster care. Relational permanence has been defined as the lifelong connections youth develop to caring adults, which include at least one adult who will provide a permanent, parent-like connection for that youth. Many experts and scholars now advocate for child welfare agencies to increase their focus on building such permanent, supportive connections for youth while in out-of-home care.

The results of a pilot validation study of the YCS indicate that the YCS is a useful tool for child welfare agencies to measure the relational permanence of youth in foster care and strengthen their practice of creating a safety net of caring and supportive adults for these youth. This study was recently accepted for publication in Children and Youth Services Review1.

For more information on the YCS, please visit the Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare's Youth Connections Scale website at http://z.umn.edu/YCS.

The PACC is a professional training program developed in response to community demand for an adoption-competent mental health and child welfare workforce able to serve the unique and complex clinical and practice needs for adopted individuals and their families throughout Minnesota. Through the PACC, mental health and child welfare workers are given the knowledge and skills needed to serve families and help prevent disruptions in the post-adoption period.

The PACC includes the nationally recognized Training on Adoption Competency curriculum developed by the Center for Adoption Support and Education (C.A.S.E.) and additional modules focusing on child welfare permanency and the Indian Child Welfare Act. The PACC emphasizes the use of 'real world' case studies, small group work, and partner interactions in order to promote critical thinking and practice application discussions among participants.

"Going through the different case studies and having discussion was most helpful and relevant, as I can use the feedback [and] ideas to help in my job in engaging families I work with." Participant Response

There are 37 additional participants in the current (fall 2012) cohorts in Rochester and the Twin Cities that will graduate in 2014.

For more information, please visit the PACC website.

Doctoral candidate Annette Semanchin Jones accepted a tenure-track assistant professor position in the School of Social Work at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo. Doctoral candidate Valandra accepted a tenure-track assistant professor position at the University of Arkansas in a joint appointment with the School of Social Work and African and American Studies.

The survey, conducted by researchers from the School of Social Work in collaboration with the State Refugee Health Coordinator and the Center for Victims of Torture (CVT), a St. Paul-based torture survivor rehabilitation center, was recently published in the Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies.

"Refugee health coordinators at the state level are in need of short, culturally appropriate mental health screening tools to identify refugees who need assessment and treatment services," said Patricia Shannon, one of the co-authors of the study and an assistant professor in the School of Social Work.

Of the 25 states that provide a mental health screening, 17 (70.8%) utilize informal conversation rather than standardized measures.

Further, despite the fact that many refugees are fleeing war torn areas, less than half of the states report directly asking refugees about their exposure to war trauma or torture.

The survey also found that states that have a program that advocates, educates, and provides treatment services for survivors of torture are more likely to be aware of and to screen for the devastating effects of war trauma and torture.

"This is a critical finding," said Shannon. "Providing training to refugee health programs is essential to increasing the mental health screening of refugees. Here in Minnesota, CVT and University researchers are working with the Minnesota Department of Health to develop mental health screening tools and to address how to implement mental health screening as part of the initial refugee health screening exam. I know from my past experience working as a psychologist at CVT that identifying refugees who need mental health care and then connecting them with the services they need is essential to helping them adjust to life in a new community."

States reported that several barriers are in place to prevent mental health screenings, including lack of culturally sensitive instruments and lack of time and resources.

Health screenings that take place at both private and local public health clinics are typically completed during the course of one to three visits and physicians may have very little time to establish the rapport that is necessary to discuss traumatic experiences or to educate refugee patients about normal reactions to trauma. However, deferring a mental health screening until refugees have established primary care may not be appropriate either as some refugees may not do so until long after they have resettled.

The fact that most refugees have medical coverage through refugee medical assistance or state Medicaid in their first eight months makes it even more imperative that screening and referral for assessment and treatment takes place early in the resettlement process.

"Since recent longitudinal research on the mental health of refugees indicates that the symptoms of trauma can be enduring and debilitating, refugee survivors who go undetected and untreated may end up costing society more through long-term dependence on social security disability income," said Shannon. "Conversely, mental health screening and referral early in the resettlement process may be essential to supporting healthy adjustment and preventing long-term dependence of refugee trauma survivors."

In 2010, the United States resettled more than 73,000 refugees from 20 countries. The federal Refugee Act of 1980 entitles newly arrived refugees to a comprehensive health assessment and referral to health services.