Child and Adolescent Welfare Outcome Management System (CA-WOS)

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Abuse and neglect significantly impact the lives of children and adolescents in child welfare, leading to a high incidence of mental health difficulties. Youth in child welfare are at an increased risk for juvenile delinquency, chemical dependency, and poor educational outcomes. The Child and Adolescent Welfare Outcome System (CA-WOS) will help address these risks, as well as screen for and monitor the factors that affect the likelihood of successful reunification with the family, contribute to treatment failures and lead to long-term child welfare involvement and eventual transitions to overextended adult treatment programs. CA-WOS is a computer-supported assessment system for child welfare agencies designed to improve long term youth and family functioning outcomes. The system enables interagency treatment team members (counselors, case managers, therapists) as well as youth and their families (birth/foster/caregivers) to provide and access information useful in monitoring mental health status and progress. Informants complete assessments using PCs or via the Internet. Through automated reports, child welfare and mental health professionals are able to easily identify problem and strength areas, to determine whether positive change is occurring as families learn the skills needed to establish safety and permanency. CA-WOS will predict the likelihood of successful reunification based on its assessment of youth and family characteristics such as symptomology, functioning, and strengths; impact of abuse and trauma; prior engagement/progress in therapeutic relationships and placements; self-neglectful attitudes/behavior and other factors. The Phase II specific aims are: Enhance (1) CA-WOS Update Report to include successful permanency indicators, and (2) software to administer update assessments; develop (3) an algorithm to detect inauthentic responses in youth and in parents, (4) sample enrollment and data collection, (5) ETR for resilience and predictive models for reunification, (6) automated aggregate data access and reports, and (7) web-accessible CA-WOS training modules and materials, including (8) implementation and system documentation.