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10 Administrative Data on the Well-Being of Children On and Off Welfare
Pages 316-352

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From page 316...
... Increased parental stress related to economic, employment, or child care difficulties also may lead to poor parent/child interactions or exacerbate existing mental health conditions such as depression or substance abuse, thereby increasing the risk of negative outcomes (Knitzer and Bernard, 1997; Zaslow et al., 1998~. Child health and safety also might be compromised if TANF alters access to non-TANF services such as health and childcare.
From page 317...
... Although this uniformity will allow for the assessment of different state models, their utility is limited by their small sample sizes. In particular, small sample sizes make subgroup comparisons difficult and prohibit evaluation of rare events such as foster care placement or child mortality.
From page 318...
... Also needed is an examination of the interaction between welfare reform that is, the change from AFDC to TANFand other social welfare programs such as Medicaid, Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) , the Food Stamps Program, Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC)
From page 320...
... The remaining sections of this paper are developed to assist researchers in defining indicators for domains of child well-being and to clarify substantive issues that must be considered in applying these indicators toward addressing key evaluation questions about the impact of welfare reform. The paper is divided into sections roughly corresponding to the constructs and domains of child wellbeing offered by Child Trends (1999~: (1)
From page 321...
... Finally, we conclude by discussing some of the scientific sensibilities that should be respected in the use of such data during research on welfare reform, including a discussion of linkages between population surveys and administrative data. CHILD HEALTH Access to health care services is a central consideration in the assessment of welfare reform, as these reforms change existing relationships among income, employment, and insurance of health care services for poor families and children (Child Trends, 2000a; Darnell and Rosenbaum, 1997; Moffitt and Slade, 1997; Schorr, 1997~.
From page 322...
... identified 18 of the Healthy People 2000 objectives that specifically relate to women and children. Of these, 15 are child health status indicators that can be used to measure impact of welfare reform (Maternal and Child Health Bureau, 1996~.
From page 323...
... The following two sections discuss these two sources of data, how they can be used in studies of welfare reform outcomes on children, and some methodological issues in their use.
From page 324...
... · Medicaid data can be used to extend the analysis of the impact of welfare reform beyond the TANF population because the Medicaid eligibility pool is larger than the TANF eligibility pool. For example, California uses data files on Medicaid recipients as the core of its data sharing/data integration initiatives (National Conference of State Legislators, 1999~.
From page 325...
... There are inherent challenges to linking welfare data to Medicaid data because welfare data are
From page 326...
... In some states, such as North Carolina, a common health identifying number is used across a range of data sets, from vital statistics to disease registries (North Carolina State Center for Health Statistics, 1997~. Where the health identifying number and social services number can be linked together, one can evaluate a child' s experiences and outcomes with both health and social service programs.
From page 327...
... · Several public welfare agencies have matched child deaths against their welfare caseloads to better understand the vulnerability of their populations. Children who participate in AFDC, Medicaid, or Food Stamp Programs may experience an overall death rate greater than or different than that for other children (Maine Department of Human Services, 1983~.
From page 328...
... , which requires performance measurement for contracting and evaluation. State welfare reform evaluators should collaborate with Title V program staff to explore data linkage, inclusion of common data elements of welfare status and health across data sets, and other ways to share data and evaluate child health in the era of reform.
From page 329...
... An emphasis on information systems development is also part of these pilot programs and should be explored for linkage with welfare reform evaluation. In another example, the Institute for Child Health Policy at the University of Florida, Gainesville is currently evaluating enrollment in its Healthy Kids programs of outreach to uninsured children, as well as the quality of services in the program for children with special health care needs (Reiss, 1999; Shenkman, 1999~.
From page 330...
... The study used administrative data from 1995 to 1996 from AFDC, Medicaid, and child welfare programs, obtained through close collaboration with state agencies responsible for these program areas. A baseline population was identified and entry cohorts for each program were used to track experiences of children over the period just prior to PRWORA.
From page 331...
... The strong association between welfare and child maltreatment may be due to a number of factors, including the stresses associated with poverty, the existence of concurrent risk factors such as mental illness and illicit drugs, and welfare recipients' more frequent contact with public authorities (Coulton et al., 1995; Gelles, 1992; Gil, 1971; Giovannoni and Billingsley, 1970; Wolock and Magura, 1996; Zuravin and DiBlasio, 1996~. Given the documented association between welfare and child maltreatment, a number of authors have reflected on the possible impacts of welfare reform on child welfare (Aber et al., 1995; Haskins, 1995; Meezan and Giovannoni, 1995; Wilson et al., 1995; Zaslow et al., 1995~.
From page 332...
... Welfare reform also may affect the experiences of the children served by the child welfare system. With the passage of PRWORA, a family's economic circumstances become a critical component of the child welfare decision-making process.
From page 333...
... In most states, however, child abuse and neglect reporting and investigation data are gathered separately from data about foster care and adoption. The following section provides an overview of different configurations of these data sources that can be utilized to assess the impact of welfare reform on child maltreatment rates and children's experiences in and exits from the child welfare system.
From page 334...
... Although free from the biases of point-in-time data, longitudinal data analyses often are preceded by considerable programming to reconfigure data into an even-level, longitudinal format, and to link welfare and child welfare files. The Multistate Foster Care Data Archive provides an illustration of the complexity as well as promise that longitudinal data offer researchers trying to understand child welfare careers (and how they might be influenced by TANF)
From page 335...
... Measuring Impact In anticipation of later analyses of the effects of welfare reform, researchers in several states have undertaken projects using linked longitudinal AFDC and child welfare data to better understand the overlap between these two programs. These projects serve as models of what will be possible with post-TANF data.
From page 336...
... Administrative data from child welfare records also have been combined with qualitative survey data to study the impact of welfare reform. For example, a study currently under way (a collaborative effort by The Urban Institute and The University of California at Berkeley's Center for Social Services Research and UC Data Archive and Technical Assistance, funded by the Stuart Foundation)
From page 337...
... Because child welfare data are available only for those abused and neglected children who come to the attention of public systems of care, changes to the undetected abuse rate that may result from welfare program changes cannot be assessed. Despite the hurdles associated with linking welfare and child welfare data, given the established association between poverty and maltreatment, child welfare advocates and policy makers must examine the impact of welfare reform on child welfare services.
From page 338...
... Yet a recent analysis of National Longitudinal Study of Youth data that included access to other mother and child services found a relationship between program participation and children's learning (Yoshikawa, 1999~. Although the evidence base for research on educational outcomes and welfare reform primarily comes from surveys, there is good reason to suggest the importance of using administrative records to study this relationship.
From page 339...
... To assess the effects of welfare reform on the educational outcomes of children, even a minimum data set that included measures of academic achievement, absences, and suspensions would be useful (see Box 10-3~. Access to School Records Data A major impediment to using educational data to estimate the well-being of children is the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)
From page 340...
... The "Solomon Amendment" of 1999 also limited the unintended implications of FERPA in order to deny aid to schools that either prohibit or prevent the Secretary of Defense from obtaining, for military recruiting purposes, access to directory information on students. The needs of researchers and policy makers to have good information about the educational outcomes of welfare reform (and other social programs)
From page 341...
... A straightforward way to study this overlap and the changes in this population is to merge administrative data from community colleges and TANF programs. JUVENILE JUSTICE Although social competence and adjustment is a difficult dimension to study using administrative (or survey)
From page 342...
... Still, convictions or incarcerations can be used if the theoretical relationship between welfare participation and crime suggests there would be higher rates of major crimes. Incarcerations in state training programs have been shown to be sensitive enough to pick up differences between groups that did and did not obtain ongoing child welfare services following a child abuse investigation (Jonson-Reid and Barth, 2000~.
From page 343...
... Second, they replicated their analysis using convictions instead of arrests, assuming that these show less variation across neighborhoods in false convictions than arrests because juvenile prosecutions are handled at the county level and arrests are made by local police. LINKING WELFARE AND CHILD WELL-BEING DATA Despite the benefits of using linked longitudinal administrative data, the work is complex and the level of effort and skill required is easily underestimated.
From page 344...
... However, these data are less available to study welfare reform because they typically reside within government entities separate from departments where welfare data reside. When these data sources differ, issues of compatibility of data formats and definitions, linking of data, confidentiality, and ownership of data files call for collaborative efforts to evaluate welfare reform.
From page 345...
... We already trust millions of individuals in our society to respect the confidentiality of information they encounter each day in the human services, child welfare, health care, law enforcement, juvenile justice, and education sysem, to name a few. We trust the individuals conducting research within each of these systems to maintain the confidentiality of records.
From page 346...
... For example, if more children per capita are reported for abuse and neglect under TANF than were reported under JOBS, this could mean that the smaller TANF caseloads have resulted in more opportunities for home visiting and better early identification of child abuse and neglect. As to why welfare reform affects children and families differentially, administrative data can only guide us as to the best places to look for those answers.
From page 347...
... Annals of The American Academy of Political and Social Science 559:39-53. Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago, Center for Social Services Research, University of California at Berkeley, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Social Work, and American Institutes for Research 2000 Dynamics of Children's Movement Among the AFDC, Medicaid, and Foster Care Programs Prior to Welfare Reform: 1995-1996.
From page 348...
... Geen, R., and S Waters 1997 The Impact of Welfare Reform on Child Welfare Financing.
From page 349...
... Knitzer, J., and S Bernard 1997 Children and Welfare Reform, Issue Brief I: The New Welfare Law and Vulnerable Families: Implications for Child Welfare and Child Protection Systems.
From page 350...
... Randolph 1999 Welfare reform and high school dropout patterns for children. Children and Youth Services Review 21:881-900.
From page 351...
... 1998 Assessing the consequences of welfare reform for child welfare. Poverty Research News 11(1)
From page 352...
... Zeller, D.E. 1999 Welfare Reform Impacts on Child Welfare Caseloads: A Research Agenda.


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