CHAPEL HILL - North Carolina's Intensive Family Preservation Services program, a strong effort to minimize the number of abused or neglected children removed from their homes, is significantly more effective in preventing or delaying out-of-home placements than traditional social service actions, according to a new University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill study.
Dr. Raymond S. Kirk, clinical associate professor at the Jordan Institute for Families at the UNC-CH School of Social Work, directed the research over the past year under a contract with the N.C. Division of Social Services. He presented the findings Thursday at a briefing of state officials and others at the Sheraton Imperial Hotel & Convention Center in Research Triangle Park.
"The N.C. General Assembly mandated this study because evaluations in other states have produced equivocal findings about the program's efficacy," Kirk said. "In contrast to the earlier work, our research indicates that the IFPS program is very effective in preventing out-of-home placement of children in high-risk families when compared to the rest of the child welfare service system working with the same types of families."
One of the reasons the UNC-CH investigation detected differences was that researchers relied primarily on an analytic technique known as event history analysis. The technique is especially sensitive in detecting changes in time-dependent information and is therefore better than other methods, he said. The study, which likely is relevant to other states as well, is important because the program appears to be more expensive and labor-intensive than traditional methods. If the program was found to be no better than less-costly activities, officials might have abandoned it, which has happened in some other states.
North Carolina's Intensive Family Preservation Services program was modeled after a widely copied program known as Homebuilders that originated at the Behavioral Sciences Institute in Federal
Way, Wash., two decades ago, Kirk said. Homebuilders was the first such large-scale effort to keep children in sometimes troubled homes while still protecting their safety, health and welfare. It makes social workers available to families in crisis 24 hours a day, seven days a week for up to six weeks.
"Historically, there's been a feeling that too many children are unnecessarily removed from their homes after abuse or neglect has occurred, and that's what Homebuilders was designed to change while still protecting the children," Kirk said. "Social workers who were doing this reported that it was very effective, and the families involved seemed to appreciate it. When people measured the out-of-home placement prevention rate, however, there appeared to be little difference."
The N.C. program, run by the N.C. Division of Social Services, has been in place in some counties for almost a decade, he said. Unlike other researchers, who randomly assigned families to either the enhanced or standard services, Kirk and colleagues looked back as far as 1995 at what happened to families depending on what services they received.
In earlier studies done elsewhere, social workers sometimes were reluctant to cooperate fully because they did not want the families they worked with to receive less than the best services available at any given time, Kirk said.
The new UNC-CH study, conducted anonymously, avoided that conflict by examining what already had occurred. It also controlled for time, prior family histories of maltreatment and severity of family problems. More than 112,000 families were part of the analysis, including 1,265 receiving enhanced services.
Since the Family Preservation Act was passed in 1991, enhanced services have been available in 40 counties, all of which were included in the study. Last year, the General Assembly appropriated money to double the number of counties in the program.
"We're very pleased with these results, which demonstrate the program's cost effectiveness," Kirk said. "They also show that intensive efforts to keep families together safely are paying off, and when that's possible, that's what we all want."
In 1996, the latest year for which statistics are available, 33,135 cases of child maltreatment were recorded in North Carolina.
By DAVID WILLIAMSON UNC-CH News Services
Note: Kirk can be reached at (919) 962-6510. He will return calls as quickly as he can.
Contact: David Williamson, (919) 962-8596.