Kristen S. Slack

This report summarizes the background literature, the RCT design, and the main findings from an experimental study of the impact of providing economic support to families reported to and investigated by child protective services (CPS), but whose investigation did not result in a child welfare case opening. This group of screened-out or "CWS-deflected" families is the largest group of families to have contact with child welfare systems, and past research has shown that they are...

My contributions to this book chapter represent nearly 30 years of thinking about the role of the social welfare safety net as a prevention lever for child maltreatment and child welfare system involvement. As my last publication before retiring from the UW-Madison and moving into a senior scientist position at RTI International, it has a very special meaning to me.In the chapter, my colleagues and I summarize over 30 years of research related to the relationship between social...

In Fall, 2022, I taught a course for 1st year students called "So, You Want to Change the World?". I relied on a web app called Cliovis for the major assignment, for which sections were staggered throughout the semester. Cliovis is a visual timeline developed by a history professor. The objective was to help students understand the roots and complexity of an issue that they chose to focus on. I sorted them into groups and while the group had to coordinate their contributions to the...

I came across this thread with numerous recommendations for learning to use the statistical software program, R. 

In this study, we sought to employ a strengths perspective to the literature on ACEs by accounting for positive childhood experiences or PCEs, in addition to ACEs. Recognizing that ACEs and PCEs can co-exist, we assessed whether different combinations of low vs. high ACEs and PCEs were differentially associated with a range of health indicators in adulthood, specifically high health risk behaviors, general health status, depression, and (any) chronic conditions.  See the...

Note: this article is available to download at the link provided through September 7, 2022. After that date, please contact me directly for a copy. ABSTRACT:In the mid-2000s, the Wisconsin Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board developed an intervention called the Community Response Program (CRP), intended to fill an important gap in the continuum of services to address child maltreatment. Specifically, families reported to child protective services (CPS) for...

The Wisconsin Subsidized Guardianship Assessment and Evaluation (also called the Wisconsin Subsidized Guardianship Title IV-E Waiver Demonstration) tested the impact on children’s safety, placement stability, and permanency outcomes on encouraging relative caregivers to become the permanent guardians of the foster children under their care. One of the benefits of subsidized guardianship is that it offers families another option...

This piece was one of the first to empirically demonstrate the overlap in the U.S. between the public welfare assistance program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), and the child welfare system. Data used are from the state of Illinois, focusing on the years leading up to the passage of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA). 

This survey was developed for the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families to better understand job satisfaction and its correlates in the public child welfare workforce. Several measures were adapted from tools created by the National Child Welfare Workforce Institute (NCWWI) (https://ncwwi.org).  Papers developed with these survey data will be added to this resource page as they are published.

 Background:  Previous research suggests a dose-response relationship between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and adult depression. Both constructs are also known correlates of child maltreatment risk.Objectives:...

Description of the Wisconsin Public Radio interview that aired on 12/12/2021:What role do poverty and economic hardship play in child maltreatment and neglect? And how can child welfare systems prevent them? UW Professor of Social Work Kristen Slack will share her research on programs designed to prevent child maltreatment. She'll discuss her work with coordinating services and benefits and detail improved strategies for preventing child neglect.

In the process of writing a piece for Inside Higher Ed on community-engaged scholarship, I found some great publicly available resources and organizations/higher ed institutions that offer support for this type of scholarship. The resources on this list made the final drafts of the IHE article. I found many more that I will work to include as I revisit them.   

The special issue editors sought empirically rigorous analyses that move beyond descriptive and correlational findings. Whereas not all the articles in this special issue inform a causal understanding of the associations between economic indicators and child...

AbstractThis volume of The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science aims to increase awareness among scholars, policy-makers, and practitioners of the size, scope, and functions of child welfare services in the United States. We aim to promote a wider understanding of the broad impacts of child welfare policies and point to ways in which child welfare services can be better incorporated into cross-cutting social policy debates. The...

AbstractThis study aimed to consider childhood poverty in relation to a count measure of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) as a predictor of adult health outcomes and to determine whether associations are sensitive to how childhood poverty is operationalized. A sample of 10,784 adult residents was derived using data 2014–2015 Wisconsin annual Behavioral Risk Factor Survey data, derived from the Centers for Disease...

In the early 1990s, a consent decree was issued, stemming from a lawsuit in Illinois, to prevent children from being placed in foster care for reasons of poverty. The so-called "Norman Fund" was established to provide material assistance to families (e.g., rent payments, utility payments) to prevent child removal and to facilitate family reunification post-removal of a child from their home.  A quasi-experimental evaluation was conducted in the mid-1990s, and this...

The Sandra Rosenbaum School of Social Work has been hosting an annual Racial Injustice Conference since 2015.  This year (2021), given the pandemic, the conference was completely virtual.  As a result, we were able to record the sessions and make them available to the general public.  At this link, you will find the home page for the 2021 conference, which occurred over the span of 2 days in February. Sub-links bring you to the recorded sessions, which include a host of...

In an effort to encourage mentoring of doctoral students, beyond the specific students assigned to each faculty member as an advisee, our school's doctoral program established a collective mentoring initiative. Each student is asked to write a brief synopsis of their research and teaching interest areas, career plans, and mentoring needs.  These synopses are shared with faculty involved in the doctoral program so that they can all be on the lookout...

When you serve in an administrative leadership role in a School of Social Work, there are many issues that come to your attention, often from students who want you to take action. Not until I served in an administrative capacity did I have a better sense of where pressure is needed for certain kinds of issues and asks (e.g,. some things are simply not in the control of a school or department, and are instead situated in a university sphere, an accrediting body sphere, or even a law/policy...

I admit, I never really thought much about the business models of academic publishing when I was a graduate student, or even during the whole first half of my career as a faculty member.  However I have been thinking about it A LOT in recent years.  One thing is for certain, academics and academia are not in the driver's seat with respect to envisioning a research publishing model that ensures equitable access by both authors and readers.The first link is to a piece...

This is a brief synopsis of recent events and advocacy efforts involving Social Work organizations and groups in response to George Floyd’s murder (a culminating event preceded by a long list of Black lives taken by police, which continues to mount), and...

The FAST attempts to overcome many of the challenges with existing child maltreatment risk assessment tools (e.g., those that use only risk or deficit-oriented language, those that focus only on aspects of parenting, those that are not free or require extensive training to use). It is intended for use with families who may...

This is an anonymous climate and feedback survey for doctoral students in a School of Social Work, but it could be used or adapted for other disciplines, as well.  Students from my school's doctoral program helped develop the questions. This tool does not ask about any  information that could identify a student, such as demographic info or matriculation year, in part because our program is so small that this would end up identifying certain students.  In the intro...

Starting a research or project assistantship can be confusing for students, since such positions are often quite varied from faculty supervisor to faculty supervisor.  This list of discussion topics can serve as a guide for students and faculty alike to ensure that various aspects of a research/project assistantship position are clarified from the onset.

Searching for fellowships can be a hit and miss process, and often students (and faculty) become aware of fellowship opportunities through word of mouth or through a general search of the internet, where you may or may not find relevant hits and undoubtedly miss things.  I've always thought--there needs to be a centralized place where people can search for fellowship opportunities.  I came across the site ProFellow.com.  It has many of the fellowships that I am...

The University of Wisconsin-Madison Survey Center (UWSC) was hired by the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families (DCF) to conduct a series of brief surveys of the child welfare workforce. The purpose of these surveys is to identify strengths and challenges faced by the child welfare workforce in Wisconsin. Input from these surveys will help DCF,  counties, and tribes partner in their efforts to continually improve upon policy, process and practice standards, as well as...

In June 2016, DCF administered a flash survey to the state’s child welfare work-force to explore the issue of worker turnover. The survey was administered electronically by the University of Wisconsin Survey Center (UWSC), and sent to all workers (excluding supervisors) who have child welfare cases in eWiSACWIS.This survey was a point-in-time snapshot of Wisconsin public child welfare workers’ views on their intent to leave (ITL) their jobs. Questions to gauge ITL included...

Do you mentor doctoral students or chair a doctoral prograrm? I developed these tools in preparation for taking on the role of chair of our social work school's PhD program. I will use the infographic to have an initial discussion with doctoral students about the job options out there for them.  Many "don't know what they don't know"--I certainly didn't at that stage. The career planning template can help students refine their...

This chapter is part of a larger edited book on early child development and social policy (see citation).  The focus of this chapter is on U.S. child welfare policy—specifically, federal governmental policies and programs that guide formalized responses to child maltreatment. We cover the emergence of child welfare systems in the U.S., present central developmental theories that...

This exploratory study examines combinations of income-tested welfare benefits and earnings, as they relate to the likelihood of child maltreatment investigations among low-income families with young children participating in a nutritional assistance program in one U.S. state (Wisconsin). Using a sample of 1065 parents who received the Special Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) benefits in late 2010 and early 2011, we find that relying on either...

This model provides an overview of the various explanations for a causal path from poverty or economic stress to child maltreatment and child protection system (CPS) involvement. There is a large research literature suggesting that poverty is a correlate of child maltreatment.  It is important to understand why such a relationship exists, in order to consider how to effectively address it.  I find that much of the existing literature either conflates...

This course syllabus is intended for advanced standing (2nd year master's) students in Social Work.  It focuses on child welfare policies and services, but also related policies and services that affect children, youth, and families.  Also included is an infographic illustrating for students what they will learn in the course.  I used "Canva" to create the infographic.Note:  The syllabus contains elements of our professional Social Work ...

This presentation was developed for a collaborative of voluntary social welfare interventions that were struggling to achieve reasonable participation and engagement rates.  It was intended to generate discussion about the activities that each program had in place to encourage different levels of access.  The "Access Pyramid" is the focal point of the presentation, but several definitions and models of participation and engagement are presented, as well.This...

It can be very intimidating to students to read and understand research and try to discern whether it has value.  I created this assignment to provide some basic guidance on how to approach this process, given that research papers are common assignments encountered by students during college.  There is a worksheet for taking notes on a research piece, with prompts about what to focus on, the assignment itself, and a brief power point that I use during class, applied to...

I used this assignment in a master's level social work class (which included a fair number of bachelor's students, as well) to help teach the skills for conducting literature reviews and critically consuming research.  Administrators from the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families (DCF) wanted to know what prevention strategies were typically used to address child maltreatment, and what the state of the evidence base was on each.  Students were divided into...

In the United States, we are once again debating policy proposals to restrict access to social safety net programs.  This article explores the effectiveness of sanctions as a policy lever during the welfare reforms of the mid-1990s, specifically, whether sanctions work as intended to increase compliance with welfare program rules.  The article also explores whether sanctions increase the risk of material hardships for economically disadvantaged families.  Use in...

This research focuses on the role of "sanctions" as a policy lever in welfare programs during the 1990s, specifically Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).  Sanction threats, imposed sanctions that result in benefit reductions, and benefit reductions for other reasons are all explored as potential risk factors for child protective services (CPS) involvement in a sample of 1,260 TANF recipient families. We were also able to control for certain types of...