New Directions in Child Abuse and Neglect Research

The second big success story is the application of well-established parent management training programs to child welfare populations. Many of these programs have been found not only to improve behavior problems caused by child abuse and neglect but also to impact child welfare outcomes such as reabuse and rereferral. The most pressing remaining questions relate to how these interventions can be taken to scale in the mental health and service settings where abused and neglected children receive their care. These questions about implementation and sustainability are not specific to interventions in child abuse and neglect. Questions specific to child welfare relate more to service planning and to how many of what types of interventions should be readily available or ordered for families in the child welfare system. The current approach is to order a single, limited intervention for each problem, which often results in a long list of services that families must complete as part of their child welfare case plan (Society for Prevention Research, 2004). As demonstrated by Chaffin and colleagues (2004), a single evidence-based intervention may actually be more effective for both child and system outcomes than multiple services designed to address the many different problems families may have.