2018

Concrete services are goods and services, such as rent, utilities, healthcare, or other tangible services, that are purchased directly by child welfare agencies to help support the short-term needs of a family. Practice wisdom in social work details the importance of meeting basic needs in order for clients to be able to concentrate on completing the case plan. Some literature has mentioned the importance of concrete services for child welfare practice. However, research has been limited about utilization of these services and their impact on child welfare outcomes. The current mixed methods study examines expenditures for concrete services across four categories over a four-year period in one Midwestern state. The justifications for caseworker concrete service requests and the perceptions of regional and executive managers regarding the effectiveness of the use of concrete services are also examined.

This study aimed to identify young adult Korean cancer survivors' individual- (psychological distress, stigma, sociodemographic variables, and cancer-related variables) and network-level factors (relationship type, social support type) that influence discussion of their cancer experiences. Sixty-eight survivors of childhood cancer who were recruited using snowball sampling nominated 245 individuals from their networks, including family and intimate partners (40%) and friends and acquaintances (60%), as people with whom they most frequently interacted.

The majority U.S. states maintain administrative databases to collect information on the entry, movement, and exits of youth in the foster care system, yet the power of these data to inform continuous improvement efforts remains largely untapped. This underutilization ignores the vast potential inherent in longitudinal child welfare data to better understand the trajectories of youth in care and the effectiveness of the services they receive.

A father of a child with cancer experiences psychological stress related to his child’s cancer diagnosis and treatment, which may affect his relationship with his spouse. Nevertheless, little attention has been paid to how having a child with cancer affects the marital relationship from the perspective of the father.