Researching Better Family Bonds
Couples who get along better tend to have stronger family relationships with the children in their homes. That sounds like a simple concept.
But in actuality families split and blend, expand and contract.
They may live complicated lives in poverty or violence. They may lose their jobs, suffer from substance abuse or mental health problems or have no positive examples to follow in setting up their lives together. Their children could wind up in foster care, or they could end up caring for relatives or children other than their own. The strains are many.
So what can be done to strengthen those family bonds? And can social workers help people tap into the community services they need to smooth their relationships so that the adults can be better parents?
A newly funded federal program at U of L’s Kent School of Social Work aims to find out.
Becky Antle, assistant research professor, is directing a team of social work researchers in developing child welfare workers’ training for healthy marriage and family formation, with the ultimate goal of preventing the maltreatment of children. The funding comes from the Children’s Bureau of the Administration on Children and Families in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It starts with $200,000 and could total up to $1 million during the five years of the grant.
She and fellow Kent researcher Anita Barbee previously found that in 65 percent of child neglect cases, domestic violence had occurred in the home. Barbee is director of the National Resource Center for Child Welfare Training and Evaluation at U of L and will begin in June a two-year term as executive chair of the National Council on Research in Child Welfare.
The marital discord that can lead to domestic violence is an important concern for child welfare workers.
“When a parent is distracted by his or her own interpersonal problems, he or she can either begin to ignore their children’s needs or take out their frustrations on their children in the form of abuse,” Barbee says.
Even so, few child welfare workers get special training in ways to foster strong adult relationships among their clients.
No states that responded to the National Resource Center’s recent survey on training listed healthy marriage or family formation among the coursework they offer their workers.
The U of L team plans to build on its previous research and training to help child welfare workers expand the assessing and “brokering” skills they already have in connecting people with family community services. The teams wants to include connecting them with mental health and faith-based organizations that provide services that might bolster marital or couple relationships.
Researchers also plan to involve the faith-based groups and other community partners in developing the coursework, training and sharing the results and the information.
Ultimately, 50 teams of child welfare workers and supervisors from the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services, starting with pilot training in northern Kentucky, will field-test the new curriculum.
Antle intends to draw on her earlier research into developing a comprehensive model of child welfare training evaluation to serve as the base of this project’s evaluation.
Once evaluated for effectiveness and honed, the child welfare training could continue beyond the grant through Kentucky’s Credit for Learning program that offers graduate credit for child welfare training. And faith-based groups could continue to offer community services based on the new curriculum, according to grant participants.
