Child and Adolescent Welfare Outcome System (CA-WOS)

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Children and adolescents in child welfare are significantly impacted by mental health difficulties that place them at risk for increased victimization and abuse, juvenile delinquency and poor educational outcomes. The Child and Adolescent Welfare Outcome System (CA-WOS) will help systems of care to address these risks, as well as key factors that contribute to placement and treatment failures leading to long-term system involvement and restrictive placements. CA-WOS is a computer-supported assessment system for child welfare agencies designed to enable interagency treatment team members (counselors, parents, case managers, therapists) as well as youth and families (birth/foster/caregivers) to provide and access case information, and to improve long-term youth and family functioning outcomes. Informants will complete their assessments using PCs or via the Internet. Automated reports will provide child welfare and mental health professionals with information regarding mental health status of youth and their families as well as interpersonal and family functioning. CA-WOS reports will identify problem areas, and document positive change in families as they learn the required skills to establish safety and permanency for their youth. This will allow for informed decision-making regarding initial case dispositions and provide evidence of progress to family courts. Finally, CA-WOS will identify risks and strengths that may be addressed to avoid out of home placement. CA-WOS will be the first evidence-based outcome management system: as data accumulate, it will "learn" to empirically derive profiles of youth and families likely to require out-of-home placement and extensive intervention. CA-WOS is innovative as its predictive capability will provide state welfare officials and managed care carve-outs the means to determine which families should receive increased intensity of services to prevent out-of-home placement and/or poor mental health outcomes. Phase I specific aims are: (1) Construct Youth Victimization-Adjustment and PTSD scales; (2) Develop informant assessments; (3) Automate their administration; (4) Design and automate the generation of reports; (5) Establish the psychometric properties of the CA-WOS youth and family scales;, and (6) Evaluate acceptance of system by families, child welfare and mental health staff.