It's no secret that child welfare agencies have long been overwhelmed by heavy workloads and bantam budgets. Nevada is no exception. Social workers nationwide are struggling to find permanent placements for nearly 126,000 children who, in some cases, have been waiting the better part of their childhood for a place to call home.

Compounding the difficulty of the job, is the fact that approximately 50 percent of these kids are over the age of 9 or have other "special needs," which, studies show, significantly decrease their chances of being adopted. In adoption terms, special needs children include those who are older, from racial or ethnic minority groups, members of sibling groups, or who have special emotional, behavioral, developmental, or medical problems. Although recent federal legislation is providing incentives to promote the adoption of special needs kids, many child welfare workers believe that the support infrastructure required to successfully improve the situation still needs shoring up.

For the past two years, UNLV's Center for Urban Partnerships (CUP) has collaborated with state and county child welfare agencies on a comprehensive Adoption Project to do just that. CUP researchers believe that the Adoption Project, which is funded by a state grant, will help shape future adoption policy, improve placement practices, and enhance worker and student training.

Special Needs, Special Solutions

The project's initial study, titled "Adoption: Those Who Wait, Those Who Do Not, and the Reasons Why," developed an in-depth profile of the children awaiting adoption in Nevada.Working with the state Division of Child and Family Services (DCFS) and the Clark County Department of Family Services (DFS), UNLV researchers conducted an exhaustive review of the case records to determine exactly who these children are, where they reside, what obstacles they face, and what factors increase the likelihood for their adoption.

The results, which were compiled last summer, were typical of a national profile: the most difficult children for Nevada to place are older children of color who have multiple special needs and who have spent numerous years in foster care.

While the realities for this subset of kids are seemingly grim, CUP interim director Ramona Denby says the data enhances child welfare professionals' efforts to find permanent homes for children.

"Since we know who's spending the longest periods of time in the foster care system, we can specifically address their needs in future recruitment strategies," says Denby, who is also associate dean for research in the Greenspun College of Urban Affairs and associate professor of social work. "But it's not an easy thing to do. Some of these kids have experienced horrendous abuse and have been left with severe emotional problems. Unfortunately, a 9-year-old who requires psychiatric care is not always an attractive option for adoptive parents."

Building on previous studies, Denby and her colleagues will further define what motivates the people who do adopt children with special needs and what the state can do to target similar prospective parents and help them follow through with an adoption.

Often the most able caregivers for these children are the people who already have an emotional investment in their lives. Kinship care, or the arrangement in which a family member accepts primary responsibility for a child, is considered to be the best option for kids when the birthparents are no longer able to care for them.

"Relatives are usually the most viable resource these kids have," Denby explains. "Most relatives are willing to take kids in temporarily, but we're looking at ways we can increase the support services available to them so that they can more easily become permanent options for the kids. It's a much better alternative than having the kids experience multiple foster care placements with strangers."

Center for Urban Partnerships director Ramona Denby (right) and graduate student Constance Brooks are matching UNLV resources with community service agency needs to address social issues, such as improving the state’s foster care system. Photo by Aaron Mayes/UNLV Photo Services.

Although placement of special needs kids is a major challenge for child welfare officials, recent federal legislation has dramatically improved adoption rates across the country. The Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) of 1997 is credited with more than doubling the number of adoptions in Nevada by reducing unnecessary administrative barriers and providing some modest financial incentives. This past November, the federal government renewed ASFA, expanded an adoption tax credit, and included a provision that awards states an additional $4,000 for every adoption of a child over the age of 9.

Naturally, the legislation has been hailed by most child welfare workers as a long-overdue victory for children who might have otherwise spent their entire childhood in foster care or group homes. But the law's attendant success has also uncovered some deficiencies in the system, not the least of which is the aforementioned lack of support services available to both pre- and post-adoptive families.

As a result, the number of dissolved or unsuccessful adoptions has grown along with the number of placements of special needs kids.

"Unfortunately what happens sometimes is that parents will adopt children who have significant physical or psychological problems only to give them back in six months because they were unprepared or overwhelmed by the commitment that these kids require," says Denby. "One of the most important aspects of the center's research will lead to a recruitment protocol that will not only help the state target prospective adoptive parents but will also identify the kinds of support these families need to ensure that the adoptions become permanent ones."

According to a study conducted in 2000 by Thom Reilly, an adjunct professor of social work and Clark County manager, the most needed services reported by adoptive families include financial subsidies for health care, in- and out-of-home day care, tutoring, individual counseling, and support groups.

Denby says the current research shaping the recruitment protocol addresses many of the unmet needs identified in Reilly's study and has already led to the development of curriculum and training for child welfare workers, students, foster parents, and other stakeholders.

"It is simply impractical to stop at uncovering factors that will lead to adoption likelihood," Denby explains. "Nevada's children and the professionals who work on their behalf are better served by research discoveries that provide sound information and tangible approaches to decreasing the number of dissolved adoptions and support adoption success."

Given the mandate of legislation like ASFA and others, Denby and her colleagues on the Adoption Project's advisory council believe it is critical that child welfare practitioners and policymakers be given every opportunity to educate themselves about the most current knowledge borne out of CUP's research.

One method toward reaching this goal is the development of a new training series titled "An Integration of Best Practices and Child Welfare Competencies." The series condenses the findings of several School of Social Work and CUP research projects into a comprehensive training curriculum and will benefit child welfare stakeholders — from UNLV students to agency workers to prospective parents. The project's researchers include School of Social Work faculty members Vicky Albert, An-Pyng Sun, Adrienne Ekas, and Stacey Hardy- Desmond. The training series is led by project coordinator Sandra Owens-Kane and CUP project administrator Sophia Warith, while Laurie Smith, formerly with the School of Social Work, serves as the project evaluator.

Launched earlier this year and facilitated by the UNLV distance education program, the five-module training program is available via Web-based streaming video or on VHS cassette and covers topics such as kinship care, sibling placements, independent living issues, adoption, substance abuse, appreciative inquiry, and the Multi-ethnic Placement Act. Additional modules will be created later this year as data from other School of Social Work and CUP studies become available.

The preliminary results were also used to revise curriculum used in social work courses at UNLV, including one undergraduate course in general child welfare issues and a graduate course designed for family-centered practitioners.

More Than Research

Founded in 1996, the Center for Urban Partnerships, located in the Greenspun College of Urban Affairs, addresses issues critical to Southern Nevada. In addition to conducting applied research, the center matches community needs to the resources of expert faculty, who provide grant and contract writing, program evaluation and development, and policy planning.

"The community gets more than research from the center; it gets professionals with a human services background who truly care about the issues," says Denby of the center's interdisciplinary faculty and staff. "We not only understand the adoption issue from a researcher's perspective, but we understand it from the children's and the professionals' perspectives."

CUP assigns faculty researchers and 10 research associates to each project. Most of the associates are either advanced-level master's students or Ph.D. candidates. And because of the interdisciplinary nature of the topic, the center draws the best and the brightest students from such fields as social work, public administration, counseling, criminal justice, psychology, and law.

Constance Brooks is one such student. When she's not studying for her master's degree in social work, she serves as research division coordinator for the center, where she is charged with identifying resources from across the campus and the community that will benefit a given project. Constance has organized the efforts of an impressive interdisciplinary cadre of UNLV researchers, including Patricia Markos and Larry Ashley of counseling, Joanne Thompson and Mary Ann Overcamp- Martini of social work, Daniel Allen and Roslyn Caldwell of psychology, and Lori Glasgow of public administration.

"One of my objectives is to bring various community stakeholders to the table who may not have otherwise been working together," says Brooks, who credits CUP for enriching her educational experience at UNLV. "Working at the center provides students like me with the practical experience that comes from applying what I've learned in the classroom to reallife situations. It's a unique reciprocal relationship because it serves students' needs while also serving the community." It's this comprehensive approach that Denby says makes the center an asset to the community.

"This is part of what UNLV is — it's part of our commitment to the community. Most of the agencies that we partner with couldn't otherwise obtain the kinds of service we provide because they simply just don't have the budgets for it. And that's really the beauty of our partnership. We're able to utilize resources from across our campus — resources that would probably cost three times as much from a private firm — and address issues that, ultimately, affect us all."

Although most stakeholders understand that the real change they wish to see in the child welfare system will take a significant amount of time, the center and its partners are steadfast in their commitment to chipping away at the obstacles. Progress is being made, however, in that each year greater numbers of children are finding permanent homes with committed, loving families. Ultimately, that's the goal of the project.

"The work that we do can be extremely challenging at times," says Brooks. "But at the end of each day, it is truly gratifying to see those challenges become opportunities for me to have ideal learning experiences and for CUP to truly be of service to the citizens of Nevada.