| Every year hundreds of thousands, if not millions of children in the United States are abused or neglected. Many of those children are removed from their homes in order to put them in a safer setting. In Connecticut, over 2,700 children entered the foster care system in the 2002 fiscal year. Many of these children are placed in foster care settings, while the foster families, and sometimes the social workers, know precious little information about the history of the children. Oftentimes children come with emotional, behavioral, and health issues that significantly impact their ability to cope with daily stressors. Sibling groups are often separated and sent to different foster homes. Many placements are disrupted due to these issues, causing further trauma to these children.; This study examined the effectiveness of the 16 Safe Homes operated in Connecticut for the Department of Children and Families. The Safe Home program was developed in an effort to decrease children's disruption of foster care placements after being removed from their parents' care. The program was designed to identify significant problem areas that may lead to children having disrupted placements and to stabilize those children before moving them to foster homes.; It was hypothesized that the behavioral problems, medical problems requiring specialized care, whether or not a child was experiencing his or her first removal from the home, the amount of services utilized, and the number of follow-up sessions provided by the Safe Home staff would impact the number of disrupted placements. No significant correlations were found between the Safe Homes in the hypothesized areas, and this may have been due to the small sample size of only 16 Safe Homes. Post hoc correlations were found in some of the outcome data, most notably between children for whom this was a first time out-of-home placement and preserving their initial placement following discharge from the Safe Home. |
