Child welfare reform in the United States: findings from a local agency survey.
Efforts to improve the public welfare and child welfare system sparked an unprecedented amount of federal legislation in the 1990s, including the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (ASFA), the Multiethnic Placement Act of 1994 and Interethnic Adoption Provisions of 1996 (MEPA-IEP), and welfare reform. Such reforms allow an unprecedented degree of flexibility, but little is known about their implementation. Researchers administered the Local Agency Survey to the first national probability sample of public child welfare agencies from 1999 to 2000. Findings indicate that ASFA has had the most effect on child welfare service delivery. Welfare reform has had less effect, and MEPA-IEP seems to have had little effect at all.
Mitchell
Lorelei B
LB
School of Social Welfare, University of California, Berkeley, USA.
Barth
Richard P
RP
Green
Rebecca
R
Wall
Ariana
A
Biemer
Paul
P
Berrick
Jill Duerr
JD
Webb
Mary Bruce
MB
D000300:Adoption; D002648:Child; D002669:Child Welfare / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence* / Q000639:trends; D006801:Humans; D014481:United States