Author Archives: Jamar Little

Trauma-Informed Housing

An Approach to Empower Residents in Affordable Housing Design, Services, and Management Public and assisted housing provides affordable, stable housing to people with low incomes—including seniors, people with disabilities, and families with children. However, policies and practices around affordable housing … Read More

Birth and Foster Parent Partnership: Directory of Strategies and Resources

The Birth and Foster Parent Partnership (BFPP) was formed in 2016 to support birth parents, foster families and kinship care providers in building connections and using their voices to transform systems, policies, and practices to improve permanency outcomes for children … Read More

Transracial Adoption Conversations (T.R.A.C.) Coaching: Engaging Transracial Adoptive Caregivers in Conversations on Race and Meeting Children’s Racial Identity Needs Over the Lifespan

Transracial adoptions continue to grow in the United States, and transracial adoptions have outpaced the growth of same race adoptions. Between 2005-2007 and 2017-2019, the number of transracial adoptions increased by 58% while the number of same race adoptions increased … Read More

Building and Sustaining Data Analytics Capacity

INTRODUCTION U.S. states, tribes, and territories regularly send the administrative data they collect from human services programs to federal agencies to meet compliance requirements. Administrative data, however, can be leveraged beyond reporting to gain a deeper understanding of program operations, … Read More

Psychotropic Polypharmacy Trends Rise Among Child, Adolescent Medicaid Beneficiaries

The results of a study examining trends in psychotropic polypharmacy among youths enrolled in Medicaid indicated that there has been a rise in the concomitant use of multiple psychotropic medications in this patient population. According to the study’s investigators, psychotropic … Read More

Moving Beyond Legal Permanency

Child welfare professionals have traditionally focused on identifying and establishing legal permanency on federally established timelines for young people determined to be unable to return to the care of their parents. However, focusing mostly on legal permanency may result in … Read More

2024 Race for Results Report

The U.S. child welfare system has historically performed poorly when it comes to supporting children and youth of color. In 2014, the Annie E. Casey Foundation released a report, Race for Results, detailing racial disparities and disproportionality using 12 well-being indicators. … Read More

Leveraging Technology to Empower Families: Supporting Foster Parents’ Essential Role in Child Welfare

Within the world of child welfare, foster parents (including those providing kinship and relative foster care) are often the unsung heroes in the lives of many children and young adults. Sometimes, with little advance notice or under challenging circumstances, these … Read More

Analysis From a State-by-State Survey of Kinship Care Policies

A recent survey conducted by Child Trends for the Annie E. Casey Foundation sheds light on the evolving landscape of kinship care policies across states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. To be released in a five-part series of … Read More

The Relationship Between Childhood Trauma and Anxiety Disorders

Introduction As the global issue of mental health conditions has grown in prominence, mental health is no longer a foreign concept. Among the many mental health conditions identified by professionals, anxiety disorders are considered to be one of the most … Read More