Child Abuse Prevention Research

Taken together, Figure 1 and Table 1 support the idea that a primary focus on outcomes of achieving legal permanence for children in the U.S. child welfare system accords with the policy goals. However, as children and youth move from foster care to legal permanency there is a limited understanding of their well-being and excludes a large proportion of children and families who are directly impacted by the child welfare system. Although extant research has shown that the vast majority of children who have exited foster care through adoption or guardianship remain with their newly formed state sanctioned families (Festinger, 2002; Festinger, 2006; Rolock & White, in press; Rolock & White, 2016), little is known about the post-permanency well-being …show more content…
One reason for this paradigm shift in child welfare and many related fields is an increasingly sophisticated understanding of trauma and its impact on brain development (e.g., Perry CITATION, other trauma studies, NTCSN). Advances in brain development research has increased our understanding of how trauma influences the developing brain, from birth through adulthood (CITATIONS), as well as how adolescent brain development continues into early adulthood and can be substantially derailed by traumatic events (Lerner & Steinberg, 2009; Osofsky, 1995; Perry, 1997). However, in their review of 70 articles, Campie et al. (2015) reported that child welfare studies have primarily examined well-being regarding exposure to abuse and neglect (i.e., risk) and actual harm from that exposure (e.g., posttraumatic stress disorder). Thus, Campie and colleagues noted that research studies have been much more likely to examine child well-being from the perspective of preventing an adverse outcome, rather than promoting positive child development. Moverover, the authors found that few studies have evaluated efforts to specifically increase well-being for children who have already experienced trauma,