Social work education programs accredited by the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) are expected to cultivate the knowledge and skills students require to competently challenge social injustices and advance social and economic justice in their professional practice (CSWE, 2008a). Because social work educators play a key role in this effort (Gil, 1998; Van Soest & Garcia, 2003), this study explored educators' beliefs have about their ability to fulfill this role. This exploration integrated teacher efficacy theory (Tschannen-Moran, Woolfolk Hoy, & Hoy, 1998) and ecological systems theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1979, 1994) to determine to what extent the educational context as well as the personal and professional characteristics of educators affected these beliefs. Over 500 full-time social work educators responded to a request to complete a 56-item online survey instrument regarding their efficacy beliefs about their ability to integrate social justice content into their teaching in addition to information regarding the educational context in which they taught as well their personal and professional characteristics.

These educators reported a high level of efficacy beliefs about their abilities to (a) facilitate student engagement and (b) encourage student learning when integrating social justice content into their teaching. In addition, the educational context was demonstrated to be influential on educators' efficacy beliefs. In particular, an educators' resolve to integrate this content and the availability of programmatic support proved significant. Further, educators' ethnic identity as well as the mastery experience of integrating human rights content proved most relevant to one or both sets of efficacy beliefs. In addition, from respondents' written comments, the effects of program mission and integration, faculty preparation and engagement, students' positionality, and the challenge of connecting an abstract concept to concrete practices were each revealed as relevant to efforts to integrate social justice content into teaching. Finally, implications for future research including the need to establish whether educators' efficacy beliefs reflect their actual teaching performances as well as the practical application of these findings for social work education programs are provided.

This dissertation study contributes to the research on restorative conferencing with youth offenders by exploring the ways digital storytelling provided unique opportunities for participants in the Young New Yorkers program to engage in restorative justice values and critically reflect on their crime. Using narrative identity theory as a theoretical lens, and multimodality as an analytic framework, findings suggest that the YNY program's curriculum scaffolds restorative justice values through a narrative identity work to assist participants in the deconstruction of their crimes. Analysis of participant digital stories demonstrated participants took personal responsibility for their crimes and were able to identify the individual and environmental factors which promoted their criminal behavior. Further, participants were able to critically reflect on their offense and enhance their capacity to contribute to and work in collaboration with others in their community. Findings from this study highlight the affordances of digital storytelling as a practice for engaging youth in re-storying their offender identities promoting the development of a prosocial identity.

Over the past several decades, research has demonstrated that minoritized groups, such as Black and Indigenous communities, disproportionately experience adverse child welfare outcomes. However, there is a significant gap in understanding the experiences of Asian American families involved with the child welfare system, which hinders a comprehensive assessment of maltreatment issues and the effectiveness of prevention and intervention practices in this diverse community. This dissertation employs data from the California Child Welfare Services/Case Management System (CWS/CMS) between 2014 and 2020 and used logistic regression and survival analysis to examine racial disproportionality and disparities in disposition and recidivism outcomes, along with the predictors thereof, among various Asian ethnic groups. The findings reveal that Asian American children generally experience fewer prior referrals and recidivism incidents related to maltreatment. Their dispositions are also more likely to be determined with the 30-day timeframe compared to specific racial/ethnic groups. Nonetheless, disparities persist among different Asian subgroups, particularly among Southeast Asian groups such as Laotians, Hmong, and Cambodians. The density of the Asian American population serves as a protective factor that reduces the risk of substantiation and re-report for Asian American families, although it does not impact case recurrence. This study challenges the model minority myth by revealing ethnic disparities among Asian subgroups and their unique positions in relation to other racial groups. The insights gained aim to inform policymakers and practitioners in developing culturally sensitive interventions and policies tailored to the specific needs of each racial and ethnic group within the child welfare system.

The National Association of Social Workers “Code of Ethics” states that social workers have a duty to ensure that families are treated with dignity, respect, and a right to self-determination. However, social workers often find themselves working in institutions that contradict these principles, one of which includes the “child welfare” system. In Los Angeles the Department of Child and Family Services (DCFS) markets themselves as the “largest child protection agency” in the United States and is responsible for ensuring the safety of over 2 million children. To “protect” children the system relies on the use of investigations, surveillance, and family separation processes. These processes have had significant generational impact on communities who are poor and Black, Latinx, or Indigenous. Due to this, several “child welfare” researchers are currently debating if the system should continue to exist in its current state, undergo drastic reformation, or cease to exist in its entirety. The current study attempts to add to this debate by seeking to better understand the context in which the system operates and its relation to the carceral state as described by system stakeholders and individuals impacted by the “child welfare” system in Los Angeles County. Using a Carceral Ecosystem framework the study begins to interrogate the discourse around “child protection” and how it has been used as justification for the involvement of families within the system, the proliferation of surveillance and surveillance technologies, and subsequent family separation. In further extending the Carceral Ecosystem framework, the study situates abolitionist praxis as perturbation event that encapsulates both imaginative possibility and realistic strategy towards a post-“Child Welfare” future.

Since the 1970s, globalization, changes in technology, and the weakening of unions have transformed employment relations in the United States. One indication of this transformation is the rise in precarious employment, or “employment that is uncertain, unpredictable, and risky from the point of view of the worker” (Kalleberg, 2009, p. 2). Existing research indicates that young people between the ages of 16 and 24 are more likely than workers from other age groups to be in precarious work. There is also a growing body of literature on the relationship between employment and short- and long-term health outcomes, including psychological distress and depression. However, much remains unknown about the pathways and mechanisms linking employment trajectories with health outcomes for young adults, which will be critical for designing effective program and policy interventions. This dissertation used data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health to create a multi-dimensional measure of precarious employment, and to assess the relationship between changes in precarious employment and changes in self-rated general health, mental health, and behavioral health. First, it used latent class analysis to identify precarious employment groups at Wave III and Wave IV, and assessed the factors associated with precarious employment at that time. From there, the precarious employment groups from Wave III and Wave IV were linked, in order to create a variable representing change in precarious employment over time, and factors associated with the change in precarious employment were assessed. In addition, this study assessed whether participation in job-training made a difference, in terms of the change in precarious employment over time. Lastly, generalized linear models were used to assess the relationship between changes in precarious employment and changes in health. Findings indicated that age, gender, race/ethnicity, and education significantly associated with precarious employment at Wave III, and with the change in precarious employment from Wave III to Wave IV. There was not a significant relationship between participation in job-training and changes in precarious employment. Lastly, changes in precarious employment were not associated with changes in health. It is argued that these findings have important implications for policy and practice; however, more research is needed, in order to better understand emerging adults’ experiences in precarious employment today.

Research shows that violence exposure, trauma, and education are inextricably linked, cyclically influencing one another and impacting adolescents’ current and future well-being. These experiences are caused and often exacerbated by racism embedded within institutions. This complex relationship between trauma and exposure to violence negatively impacts adolescents’ behavioral and academic functioning within schools. Experiences of trauma and post-traumatic stress impact adolescents throughout their lives, trickling down into schools perpetuating the inequities that uphold marginalization. While the impact of violence exposure and trauma on individual youth has been clearly delineated, research has failed to highlight their institutional causes. Understood as an individual problem, the concept of trauma creates and maintains a deficit framework that blames students and their communities for experiencing systemic causes of harm. Through this pathological approach to addressing violence-related trauma, harmful policies and practices within schools are masked. Research that is unclear on the complex ways institutions reproduce or even create harm renders the systemic causes of violence-related trauma invisible. To challenge the individual deficit approach to trauma-informed care in schools, a constructivist grounded theory multiple case study design was used to explore how teachers and school staff perceive, are impacted by, and respond to the manifestation of trauma derived from community violence exposure in three High Schools in Los Angeles County, California. Findings draw from critical race theory and healing justice to inform a conceptual framework that describes how individual responses to trauma can be situated within institutional power dynamics. The framework from this study details the nexus between teacher education programs, district policies, resources, staff biases, and collective well-being through four main themes: (1) these teachers and school staff determine what constituted trauma for a student, even with minimal information; (2) individual experiences embedded within institutional factors encourage paternalism as the main response to trauma in schools; (3) this response leads to the demoralization of those caring for students; and (4) combined, each of these factors holds a cumulative impact on current and future students. I conclude by discussing the need to identify institutional causes of trauma to understand better and meaningfully address the (re)production of violence-related trauma in schools.

When foster youth emancipate from the child welfare system they no longer have professionals overseeing decisions about contact with their biological parents. While there is a general awareness in the field of child welfare that former foster youth often do choose to reconnect with their biological parents as adults, there has been scant research investigating former foster youths’ lived experiences of contact with them. Little is known about the potential functions of these relationships as sources of support, conflict, healing, or resilience. Without an understanding of how decisions about contact are made, and how such contact impacts their lives, it is not possible to assess how prepared, or unprepared, emancipated youth are when they leave the child welfare system to negotiate these relationships in whatever manner is most beneficial to them.

This qualitative study utilized interpretative phenomenological analysis in order to describe the experiences of a small sample (N = 8) of emancipated youth. This research also investigated the potential for theories of emerging adulthood, attachment and ambiguous loss, and resilience to contribute to a theoretical framework that could aid in understanding their experiences and decision making processes with regards to their relationships with their biological parents. Data were collected primarily via two rounds of in-depth, semi-structured interviews, and topics explored included descriptions of contact, ways in which relationships with biological parents served as supports and challenges, how emancipated youth made sense of their decisions about contact, identity development, forgiveness, and closure.

Overall, participants described their biological parents as still struggling with the issues that led to foster care placement, and their relationships with them were often both supportive and challenging in different respects. For some, having children of their own had changed their relationships with their biological parents in rather complex ways. Despite the presence of difficulties in many of their relationships, participants expressed a great deal of empathy for their biological parents. Many had gone through a process of forgiveness in order to move on from the past. Practice implications and the applicability of theories of emerging adulthood, ambiguous loss, and resilience were also explored.

Child maltreatment continues to be a growing and a serious problem in the United States. Early prevention efforts are a cornerstone of inquiry among researchers across the country. Using secondary data analysis, this dissertation evaluates the effectiveness of a community-based, child maltreatment prevention program that emphasized parental collaboration (working as partner with agency worker) and parental empowerment (focusing on parenting strengths) in achieving successful rates of engagement and retention working with families at-risk for child maltreatment. Specifically, it is hypothesized that programs that utilize strategies focusing on parent strengths, community engagement, and available community resources in service planning and decision-making will have successful (met program goals/requirements) rates of family retention and engagement in child maltreatment and neglect prevention services. Further, the ability to achieve long term engagement and retention was hypothesized to be more related to the way the agency worker empowers the family to be self- sufficient rather than whether families were targeted for being at risk or universally selected to receive services. Data were collected from 170 families, who completed focus groups and surveys regarding their experiences in the Partnership for Families Program. Results from the surveys using a varimax factor analysis revealed three key components for successful engagement and retention of families receiving services in the prevention program: (a) a focus on parental strengths, (b) a focus on community engagement and (c) a focus on resource availability and awareness. Matched paired t-tests were conducted on each of the factors, with a resulting p<.001 for each. Findings from qualitative content analysis were consistent with quantitative results and suggest that parents' participation in services shapes the ways in which they engage their families and others. Based on this study, successful engagement of at-risk families and reduction of risk for child maltreatment may depend on emphasizing parental empowerment and well-being. The findings from this sample may not be representative of the larger population as participation was based on parent attendance, availability, and logistics. Future research should examine the roles of engagement, empowerment, and parental well-being with different sub-populations yielding greater diversity among participants with a random selection process.

Over 20 million American adults met the diagnostic criteria for a substance use last year, and 40% of those also have a co-occurring psychiatric condition. With the ever-rising death toll associated with alcohol and drugs, enhancing SUD treatment completion rates and promoting ongoing participation in posttreatment aftercare services to promote long term abstinence is imperative. This study attempts to identify predictive factors of residential SUD treatment completion, type of residential SUD treatment outcomes, posttreatment aftercare service participation, and AOD Counselors’ positive prognoses for patient abstention from drugs and/or alcohol through binary, multivariate, and ordinal logistic regression, respectively, for 200 adults who enrolled in an abstinence-based residential SUD treatment program between August 2017 and March 2018 in Hawthorne, California. Ratings for readiness for change, presence of mental health symptoms and treatment, number of lifetime inpatient psychiatric episodes, and past 30 day use of primary substance used at time of admission significantly influenced treatment noncompletion. Past 30 days of use of primary substance used, number of lifetime acute inpatient psychiatric episodes, and presence of mental health treatment and symptoms significantly predicted participants abandoning residential SUD treatment and receiving administrative discharges from residential SUD treatment. Longer residential treatment episodes and being homeless predicted enrollment in posttreatment outpatient SUD treatment and the Recovery Bridge Housing (RBH) program. Gender, past 30 days of use of primary substance used, type of pretreatment polysubstance use, number of acute inpatient psychiatric hospitalization episodes, and readiness for change significantly predicted AOD Counselors’ ratings of patients’ prognoses for abstention. These results highlight the importance of assessment for and stabilization of psychiatric symptoms as well as withdrawal symptoms from high levels of pretreatment methamphetamine use in order to enhance treatment completion rates. Furthermore, the results demonstrate the importance of assessing pretreatment readiness for change and motivation in order to successfully engage patients and use targeted interventions to enhance readiness to change, thereby improving treatment retention and completion rates. Finally, this study illustrates the value of long term residential SUD treatment episodes, as they enhance retention and likelihood of participation in posttreatment aftercare services, which serves to maintain initial treatment gains and promotes long term abstinence from drugs and alcohol.

Single parents disproportionately face a triple bind of inadequacies in resources, employment, and policy which combined together further complicate the lives of single parents and their families (Nieuwenhuis & Maldonado, forthcoming). Single parents’ resources, their socio-economic background - as well as having only one earner and carer in the household - make it difficult to provide for their families. The majority of single parents are mothers and work in full-time employment, yet for many their employment is inadequate. Single parents are often in jobs with low wages, without employment protections, and with little flexibility to balance work and family responsibilities. Policy such as an inadequate cash transfers, unaffordable child care, unpaid parental leave, or lacking safety net can fail to protect families from poverty. The focus of these analyses is on policy and how it can address the triple bind and reduce poverty for single-parent families. In particular, how child support and advance maintenance, taxes and transfers, family transfers, maternity leave, leave shared between parents, leave to care for a sick child, rest days, annual leave, and sick leave reduce poverty for single-parent and coupled-parent families. The study examined 373,032 households with children in 45 countries, using household-level data from the Luxembourg Income Study database and country-level policy indicators from The WORLD Policy Analysis Center. The findings show that the US has the highest rate of single-parent families in poverty of all countries. Decomposition analyses show that child support, especially in countries that pay an advance maintenance if the other parent does not pay, reduces poverty for single-parent families; however, the effectiveness varies across countries and over time. Decomposition analyses show that redistribution, particularly family transfers, have reduced poverty for all families. Most countries cut their poverty by half or more, but some countries are more effective than others. Ireland and UK reduce poverty substantially with family transfers. The Nordic countries have lower poverty to begin with but still cut their poverty by more than half. Multilevel policy analyses found the strongest policy effect to be maternity leave. Paid maternity leave significantly reduced poverty for single-parent families only, by effectively facilitating the employment of single mothers. This is an important finding as it expands earlier work (Maldonado & Nieuwenhuis, 2015) that found paid leave to reduce poverty for single-parent families in 18 countries to 45 countries. This model did not find evidence to support the findings of the previous study that maternity leave was significant for all families. Results that leave shared between parents increased the poverty risk of single parents over coupled parents were not substantiated, unless there was a bonus for fathers to share leave. Paid leave to care for a sick child for both parents increases the poverty risk of single-parent families over coupled-parent families. Working regulations, rest leave, modestly reduced poverty for families. Family benefit schemes may increase the risk of single-parent families in poverty over couple-parent families, however the decomposition analyses show that family benefit actually received decreases poverty for all, especially single-parent families.