Child Protection and Parent Training Programs

Harmful parenting practices put children at risk of physical harm and place their long-term development and well-being at risk. Parent training services are becoming an increasingly important focus in child welfare policy because they have the potential to reduce child maltreatment and improve children’s development and well-being. Research shows that the nation’s child protection programs do not often use parent training programs and even when they do they tend to use programs that have little or no validation of their effectiveness.

On July 26, the Center on Children and Families hosted panels of researchers, administrators, and child and parent advocates to discuss parent training programs, their implementation, and their effects on children who come to the attention of the child protection system.

This event also featured the launch of Child Protection: Using Research to Improve Policy and Practice, the first book to report the results of the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW), interpret the survey’s findings, and place the findings in a broader policy context. NSCAW is the first nationally representative study of children who have been reported to authorities as suspected victims of abuse or neglect and the public programs that aim to protect them. The book is co-edited by Brookings scholar Ron Haskins, Fred Wulczyn from Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago, and Mary Bruce Webb from the Child and Family Development Division at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Each panel took questions from the audience.

Overview of NSCAW Volume and Parent Training Programs

Richard Barth
Professor, School of Social Work, University of Maryland

Ron Haskins
Senior Fellow, Economic Studies; Co-Director, Center on Children and Families, The Brookings Institution

Panel One:
Implementation of Parent Training Programs

Moderator:
Fred Wulczyn
Research Fellow, Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago

Panelists:
Marc Cherna
Director, Department of Human Services, County of Allegheny, Pennsylvania

Kathy Simms
Programs Administrator, Oklahoma Department of Human Services

Bernadette Blount
Parent, Child Welfare Organization Project, New York City

Panel Two:
Effectiveness of Parent Training Programs

Moderator:
Ron Haskins
Senior Fellow, Economic Studies; Co-Director, Center on Children and Families, The Brookings Institution

Panelists:
Hon. Nancy Johnson
Senior Public Policy Advisor, Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell and Berkowitz, PC

Hon. Anita Josey-Herring
Associate Judge, Superior Court of the District of Columbia

Jane Knitzer
Professor, Mailman School of Public Healthl; Director of the National Center for Children in Poverty, Columbia University