SPECIAL EDITION: RESEARCH IN CHILD WELFARE
Ontario Association of Children’s Aid SocietiesJOURNALAPRIL 2005VOLUME 49 NUMBER 1SPECIAL EDITION: RESEARCH IN CHILD WELFAREFEATURESz Message from the Executive DirectorBy Jeanette Lewisz Introduction to the Special Series on Child Welfare Research Collaborations: Teamwork,Research, Excellence, and Credible, Relevant Results for PracticeBy Gail Vandermeulen, Christine Wekerle and Chester Ylaganz Collaborative Research in Child Welfare: Stepping up to a Higher StandardNico Trocméz Youth in Child Welfare Care and Self-Harming Behaviours: Preliminary FindingsBy Deborah Goodmanz Collaboration: A Key Step to Establishing PartnershipsBy Hendricus Van Wilgenburgz Overview and Findings to Date of Research in the Ontario Looking After Children ProjectBy Robert J. Flynn and Beverly Ann Byrnez Creating and Sustaining Research Partnerships between Academic Institutions andService AgenciesBy Bruce Lesliez Academic-Agency Partnerships in Practice: The MAP StudyBy Christine Wekerle, Eman Leung, Anne-Marie Wall, Randall Waechter, Harriet MacMillan, Michael Boyle,Nico Trocméz A Social Worker’s View of Participatory Action ResearchBy Tara Nassarz Community Collaboration in Developing a Culturally Relevant Alcohol Abuse EarlyIntervention Program for First Nation YouthBy M. Nancy Comeau, Sherry H. Stewart, Christopher Mushquash, David Wojcik, Cheryl Bartlett, MurdenaMarshall, Jerry Young, Doreen Stevensz Responding to Disclosures of Child Maltreatment in Research StudiesBy Louise GalegoPublications mail registration No. 40062665The voice of child welfare in Ontario
Decker is the nephew of Debra Rudka, Executive Assistant at OACAS.The Journal is a major Ontario source of information for children’sservices professionals. The Journal is published quarterly anddistributed to more than 7,500 recipients.Requests for subscription information, notice of change of addressand undeliverable copies should be sent to:Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies75 Front Street East, 2nd FloorToronto, Ontario M5E 1V9Public website: www.oacas.orgMembers’ website: www2.oacas.orgOPINIONS EXPRESSED ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHORSAND NOT THOSE OF OACAS.National Library of Canada ISSN 0030-283xThe voice of child welfare in Ontario
OACAS JOURNAL April 2005 Volume 49 Number 1Message from theExecutive DirectorBy Jeanette Lewis This special edition of the Journal focuses on researchin child welfare – especially research that iscollaborative and conducted in interdisciplinarypartnerships. It features contributions from researchers,students, and child welfare staff. The articles demonstratethat, contrary to the case in the not-too-distant past, childwelfare research is alive and well in Ontario.Each year the number of children in care and thecomplexity of their needs increases. Forty percent ofchildren in care have parents who were known to CASs aschildren; this cycle of damage to children and despair infamilies needs to be broken. The partnering of CASs andacademic institutions to develop and exchangeinformation that supports preventive interventions andevidenced-based practices is the best way to improveoutcomes for children and families.This special edition of the Journal highlights a variety ofimportant and interesting new findings in child welfareresearch: Preliminary findings of self-harm in youth bygender, age and frequency suggest that what wehave always assumed about self-destructivebehaviour in these young people is notnecessarily the caseA discussion of the increasing integration,through collaboration, of Aboriginal andtraditional Western science highlights theimportance of recognizing the distinctness ofeachA look at creating partnerships betweenuniversities and service agencies highlights cooperative research ventures such as ParticipatoryAction ResearchA social worker discusses the practicality ofresearch and how it can be incorporated into ourdaily workResearchers show how partnering with thecommunity has helped to develop a program forpreventing alcohol misuse in First Nations at-riskteensSome factors for researchers to consider indeciding when to report child protectionconcerns are discussed in an environment whereeach child and situation is unique.The current surge of interest in child welfare research ismirrored by the recognition of the Child WelfareSecretariat of the need for on-going research as a keycomponent of the transformation agenda. The Secretariatrecognizes the need for funding to enable the collectionof quality data to build a research agenda. A SingleInformation System is central to the collection, utilization,and dissemination of good data sharing amongstakeholders in the child welfare arena.While participation in research studies requires time andresources the knowledge gained is well worth it. Thecontinual generation of knowledge will help us learn howto heal families and build healthy environments forchildren – and that is the best kind of protection that wecan offer.The voice of child welfare in Ontario1
OACAS JOURNAL April 2005 Volume 49 Number 1Introduction to theSpecial Edition on ChildWelfare-ResearchCollaborations:Teamwork, ResearchExcellence, and Credible,Relevant Results forPracticeBy: Gail VandermeulenChristine WekerleChester YlaganWe are now mid-way through the first decade of the21st century. Does our child welfare practice reflectour vision for the new millennium? Does our day to daywork match the philosophy and expectations that we heldwhen we entered the child welfare field?In this era of evidenced-based practice, it has becomeincreasingly evident that the base on which child welfarepractice stands is somewhat shaky and to a large extenthas been dependent on wisdom gained throughexperience. In the last several years child welfarepractitioners have increasingly seen the need for goodresearch to support practice and have seen the need tocollaborate with researchers to answer questions. It isabundantly apparent that understanding how families andchildren function is not the purview of any one discipline;and that to develop programs and services that addresstheir complex needs requires the involvement of childwelfare workers, researchers and families themselves.Child maltreatment researchers are also interested inmoving towards greater collaboration, bringing to thetable their clinical and research methodology skills.Integrating the researcher’s expertise in the areas ofepidemiology, program evaluation and needs assessmentwith the extensive client and case management knowledgewithin child welfare can create a new and more effectivelevel of skill in working with families. We are confidentthat together we can do this.In 2004, a cross-Canada team of researchers,governmental, and non-governmental groups partnered toprepare a submission for federal funding for a nationalresearch centre of excellence which would answerquestions of practice and policy importance. In preparingthe submission this partnership conducted an electronicsurvey to learn what the child welfare field saw as themost pressing areas for research. The partnership receivedover 200 responses. The areas that were rated asimportant included: the need to adopt evidence-based practice prevention permanency planning the overlap of mental health with child welfare, andThe voice of child welfare in Ontario2
OACAS JOURNAL April 2005 Volume 49 Number 1 the issue of poverty and social disadvantage in clientfamilies.The top concern identified in the survey was to addressthe question “how are current services working forclients, both in the short-term and across the lifespan?”This is an essential question that can be addressed atmany levels: the single client, a client group, an agency,and provincial system. Standard outcome evaluationassessments can provide answers that apply to all theselevels; for instance, in terms of quality of life dimensionsof clients both while in and after exiting child welfareinvolvement such as education, quality of relationships,career development, financial and parenthood planning.About the AuthorsGail Vandermeulen is Director of Communications and QualityAssurance at the Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies.Christine Wekerle is a psychology professor at the University ofWestern Ontario.Chester Ylagan is a research associate at the University of WesternOntarioThe partnership did not receive funding for theirproposal. But the questions remain and the desire tocollaboratively find solutions continues.This special issue of the Journal presents articlesdemonstrating collaboration, and participatory actionresearch from a number of perspectives: researchers,students, and child welfare professionals. We hope tostimulate the child welfare and research communities toenvision what child welfare could look like 5 years fromnow. How do we transform research into practice? If youcould only do one study in your agency – what would thatbe?One of the contributions to facilitate the migration ofresearch results into credible and effective practice thatOACAS will make is the creation of a Research Website.This website is in an embryonic stage and we are countingon the child welfare field and the research community tohelp us a build a tool that will truly create a knowledgemobilization capacity. Our vision is a website that willallow us to disseminate the results of current research,consult widely on specific issues, provide an internationalnetwork for the sharing of practice innovations, providelinks to journals and that will continue to grow to meetthe changing needs of the child welfare sector.The voice of child welfare in Ontario3
OACAS JOURNAL April 2005 Volume 49 Number 1Collaborative Research in Child Welfare: Stepping upto a Higher StandardCommentary by Nico TrocméResearch collaborations between academics andservice providers are emerging as a new standard forfunding and conducting research in Canada. The 2005OACAS Journal Special Edition on Research in ChildWelfare is a prime example of the synergy created by suchcollaborations.Such collaborations, often referred to as participatoryresearch, are beneficial to both service providers andresearchers. Service providers get a chance to step backand apply systematic research techniques to their work,and academics get a chance to conduct research in “realworld” settings.In the past, the failure to collaborate has often meant thatthe problems of the most vulnerable populations do notget addressed, and the most complex questions do not getasked because of perceived barriers in accessing thesepopulations and limitations in available measurement andanalysis techniques. Now, this is changing. Comeau’sresearch on early intervention to prevent alcohol abusefor First Nations youth (pp. 39-46) demonstrates that it ispossible to conduct good quality collaborative researchwith high risk groups. The MAP study (Wekerle et al.: pp.26-34) demonstrates that it is feasible to enroll and retainchild welfare youth in longitudinal studies using an arrayof standardized questionnaires. With assessments beingsuccessfully completed for over 600 children and youth,results from the Ontario Looking After Children projectare shaping practice and policy across the province (Flynnand Byrne, pp. 12-21)Despite these successes, participatory research is still toooften viewed with suspicion. Service providers hesitate tocommit scarce resources to research processes that arecomplex, slow, and provide guarded answers to pressingquestions. Academics and scientific funding bodies areconcerned that research standards may be compromisedand the results overstated.These misapprehensions stem in part fromunderestimating the true cost of doing high qualityparticipatory research. The process for implementingparticipatory research described by Wekerle andcolleagues (p.26) requires that both researchers andservice providers have the resources and the time to worktogether in a meaningful manner. Leslie (pp. 22-25)argues that without such supports service providers riskexperiencing research as “parasitic shark attacks” ( )“creating quantitative meanings through statisticalanalysis” (p.24). Although participatory research shouldnever compromise the standards of good statisticalanalysis, an effective partnership is one where even thestatistical analyses are conducted in a collaborativemanner that ensures that the service context is taken intoconsideration and that all partners maintain a sense ofownership.Collaborative research is complex and resource intensivebecause the important questions that address the lives ofpeople are themselves complex and require attention,time, and commitment. But vulnerable children and theirfamilies deserve the effort and resources required toensure that the help that is being offered has beenevaluated on the basis of the highest standards ofevidence.About the AuthorNico Trocmé is the Fisher Chair in Social Work at McGillUniversity and the Director of the Center of Excellence for ChildWelfare (www.cecw-cepb.ca)The voice of child welfare in Ontario4
OACAS JOURNAL April 2005 Volume 49 Number 1Youth in Child WelfareCare and Self-HarmingBehaviours: PreliminaryDescriptive FindingsBy Deborah GoodmanStudy funded by CIHR Net Grant, led by ChristineWekerle (2004/05)IntroductionSince 2000, the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto(CAST) has been closely tracking the growingnumbers and changing nature of the self-harmingbehaviours of children/youth in care. The Ministry ofChild and Youth Services (MCYS) requires all Societies toformally report all serious occurrence events through theSerious Occurrence Report (SOR). In order to advanceknowledge about CASTs child welfare youth who selfharm, this study systematically inputted into SPSS 12.0 allSOR data for 2004 plus additional child variable data (e.g.treatment plan) where there was a threat of self harm, aself harming incident, or an incident where a restraint wasused related to self-harming behaviour.This paper identifies the broader knowledge challengesregarding youth who self harm and presents someselected preliminary findings from the descriptive analysisof the 2004 self-harming SOR incidents by gender, age,frequency and type. It is hoped that this paper willstimulate a broader field discussion about how best toadvance evidence-based practice and empirical knowledgeregarding our child welfare youth who self-harm.What do we know about youth suicide, mentalillness & self harm?Canada has the unfortunate distinction of having theworst adolescent suicide rate in the industrialized world at18 per 100,000 children in the general population. ForNative youth that number is 108 per 100,000. Suicide nowranks as the second or third cause of death in 10 to 24year olds in several countries, including Canada, Britainand the United States (Rodham, Hawton & Evans, 2004).Recent reports, such as “The Current Status of Mental HealthServices for School-Aged Children and Youth in Ontario” (2001)have documented that Ontario has an estimated 530,000youth with treatable mental health concerns but only150,000 are getting care and that children wait one-thirdlonger than adults in Ontario for psychiatric care. Whileself-harm occurs in the context of mental health issues,such as depression and behavioural disorders, it also isassociated with relationship problems with family orfriends, disciplinary crises, child maltreatment, andThe voice of child welfare in Ontario5
OACAS JOURNAL April 2005 Volume 49 Number 1What do we know about Ontario youth in carewho self harm?impulsive behaviour (Rodham et al., 2004). Self harmingbehaviours do not always lead to suicide.Analysis from five Ontario CASs SOR data for 2003/04,representing 7,815 children in care, found the percentageof in-care youth who had a SOR (self-harming, threat ofself harm or death) ranged from 6% to 10% with anaverage 7.4%. Across these five agencies, there was notone suicide of a youth in care. In fact, suicide of a youthin care appears to be a very low frequency event. Thismay be due to the increased supervision and secure careCASs provide to their most at-risk, suicidal youth. Reviewof the ratio of “self-harming threats” to “self harmincidents” found a 40:60 ratio, with a certain number ofyouth experiencing repeat SORs.What do we know about self harm?Research into deliberate self harm has found that it issteadily increasing in prevalence, with ranges from 6.9%for a sample of 6,020 pupils aged 15 to 16 (Rodham et al.,2004) to 14% of a sample of 500 college students(Favazza, 1992) to 35% for a sample of 150undergraduate psychology students aged 18 to 64 (Gratz,2001). In short, the existing literature identifies thatnonfatal, deliberate self-harm is not an uncommon eventin the general population; thus, it will be evident in a childwelfare population. However, much remains that is notknown about self harming youth. For example, cleardefinitions regarding “self-harm” are lacking. Terms suchas self-harm, threat of self-harm, self-mutilation, selfinjury, suicidal intent are applied interchangeably and usedto describe very different behaviours (e.g. cutting,burning, ingesting items/poisons, hanging). Themotivation of children and youth who self harm, orthreaten to self harm, are not well understood. As well, nostandardized and validated tool to measure self-harmexists to date (Goldston, 2000).Table 1: Singlevs. Repeat SORYOUTH with SINGLE SOR1 SOR# Youth with SORs# SOR Incidents7676Table 2: Single vs.Repeat SOR byGender & AgeMaleFemaleTOTALSignificant agedifference p .05Table 3: Single vs.Repeat SORincidents by TypeSelf Harm InjurySelf Harm ThreatPhysical RestraintSub Total#(75%)(32%)YOUTH with SINGLE SORSORMean Age43 youth 43 SORs33 youth 33 SORs76 youth 76 SORs13.84 yrs14.48 yrsNo:p .302Preliminary Findings from CASTs 2004Analysis of SOR dataThis selected analysis of CASTs 2004 SOR data focuseson gender, age, SOR frequency and type of self-harmdifferences. See Tables below.2-3SOR1433YOUTH with REPEAT SOR4-67 SubTotalSORSOR5625 (25%)23103159 (68%)YOUTH with REPEAT SORSORMeanAge14 youth 61 SORs10.43 yrs11 youth 98 SORs15.18 yrs25 youth 159 SORsYes:p .001#YOUTH with SINGLE SORMale SORFemale SORYOUTH with REPEAT SORMale SORFemale SOR261524318934611615233The voice of child welfare in Ontario4844698ALL YOUTHTOTAL101235(100%)(100%)ALL YOUTHTOTAL57 Males44 Females101 TotalALL YOUTHTOTAL%10846%8335%4419%235100%6
OACAS JOURNAL April 2005 Volume 49 Number 1This one year analysis suggests that there may be threetypes of youth who commit serious occurrences: onetime, occasional repeaters (2 to 6 times) and chronicrepeaters (7 to 20 times). For purposes of this articlethese youth will be referred to as “one time SOR youth”,“occasional SOR youth” and “chronic SOR youth”. The“occasional” and “chronic” repeaters are reported on as agroup in some instances and are referred to as “repeatSORs.”Although one-time SOR youth made up 75% of theyouth with an SOR, they only account for one third(32%) of all SOR incidents. There does not appear to bea significant age difference between male and female onetime SOR youth. One fifth (19%) of the self-harmingyouth are occasional repeaters of SORs, representing 24%of all incidents. A very small percentage of youth (n 6 or6%) fall into the chronic category and accounted for 103(44%) of the 235 SORs.The occasional SOR youth are weighted toward males –12 of 19 youth. The gender of chronic SOR youth (7 SORs in one year) finds an age weighting toward females.In the sample there were two males (total of 25 SORs foran average of 12.5 each) and 4 females (total of 78 SORsfor an average of 19.5 each). Additionally, there is asignificant age difference between the genders: the twoyoung boys in the chronic sample are six and seven yearsold; the four female youth range from 15 to 17 years ofage.Overall, age difference between genders for the repeatSORs was found to be significant (p .001). The 14 repeatmales (2 or more SORs) tend to be under 10 years of ageand almost all of the 11 repeat
OACAS Journal Special Edition on Research in Child Welfare is a prime example of the synergy created by such collaborations. Such collaborations, often referred to as participatory research, are beneficial to both service providers and researchers. Service providers get a chance to step back and apply systematic research techniques to their work,
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