scispace - formally typeset
Search or ask a question
Author

Mark F. Testa

Bio: Mark F. Testa is an academic researcher from University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. The author has contributed to research in topics: Foster care & Kinship care. The author has an hindex of 21, co-authored 37 publications receiving 2021 citations. Previous affiliations of Mark F. Testa include University of Chicago & Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.

Papers
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors identified selected factors related to child maltreatment and delinquency and disentangled the timing of delinquency petitions relative to movements within the child welfare system, finding that substantiated victims of maltreatment average 47% higher delinquency rates relative to children not indicated for abuse or neglect.

490 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on families in the child welfare system with co-occurring problems and examine whether it is necessary to go beyond assessment and service access to insure families make progress in each cooccurring problem area to achieve reunification.

176 citations

Book
01 Jan 2005
TL;DR: Lau et al. as mentioned in this paper studied the relationship between race/ethnicity and rates of self-reported maltreatment among high-risk youth in public Sectors of Care and foster care history across four racial/ethnic groups in a public system of care.
Abstract: not available. Race/Ethnicity and Rates of Self-Reported Maltreatment Among High-Risk Youth in Public Sectors of Care. By: Lau, Anna S.; McCabe, Kristen M.; Yeh, May; Garland, Ann F.; Hough, Richard L.; Landsverk, John. Child Maltreatment, Aug2003, Vol. 8 Issue 3, p183, 12p, 5 charts; Examines rates of youth-reported maltreatment history and the association between youth-reported maltreatment and foster care history across four racial/ethnic groups in a public system of care. Factor associated with maltreatment history among African Americans; Evidence of the impact of race on the likelihood of maltreatment; Need to examine competing explanations for racial/ethnic disparities.; (AN 10591375)

126 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This study provides an initial examination of the effectiveness of one service integration model that emphasizes the provision of intensive case management to link substance abuse and child welfare services and indicates that the families assigned to the experimental group used substance abuse services at a significantly higher rate and were more likely to achieve family reunion than were families in the control group.
Abstract: Alcohol and other drug abuse is a major problem for children and families involved with public child welfare. Substance abuse compromises appropriate parenting practices and increases the risk of child maltreatment. A substantial proportion of substantiated child abuse and neglect reports involve parental substance abuse. Once in the system, children of substance-abusing families experience significantly longer stays in foster care and significantly lower rates of reunification. To address these problems, child welfare systems are developing service integration models that incorporate both substance abuse and child welfare services. This study provides an initial examination of the effectiveness of one service integration model that emphasizes the provision of intensive case management to link substance abuse and child welfare services. The authors used an experimental design and focused particular attention on two outcomes: access to substance abuse services and family reunification. The findings indicate that the families assigned to the experimental group used substance abuse services at a significantly higher rate and were more likely to achieve family reunification than were families in the control group. KEY WORDS: case management; families; reunification; substance abuse ********** The effective collaboration of multiple service systems to deal with parental alcohol and other drug abuse (AODA) continues to challenge government efforts to ensure family permanence and the safety and well-being of neglected and abused children. Research has documented the heavy toll that parental drug addiction exacts on families and children who come to the attention of state child protection authorities. According to Young and colleagues (1998), at least 50% of the nearly 1 million children indicated for child abuse and neglect in 1995 had caregivers who abused alcohol or other drugs. A 1994 report issued by the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) estimated that the percentage of foster home placements resulting in part from parental drug use rose from 52% to 78% between 1986 and 1991 in the cities of Los Angeles, New York, and Philadelphia (GAO, 1994). A 1998 GAO study of child protection systems in Los Angeles and Cook County, Illinois, documented that substance use was a problem in more than 70% of active foster care cases (GAO, 1998). If child welfare systems are to achieve desirable permanency and safety outcomes, the development of innovative service strategies and agency partnerships are necessary. Parental substance abuse often compromises appropriate parenting practices, creates problems in the parent--child relationship, and significantly increases the risk of child maltreatment (Famularo, Kincherff, & Fenton, 1992; Jaudes, Ekwo, & Van Voorhis, 1995; Kelleher, Chaffin, Hollenberg, & Fisher, 1994; Nurco, Blatchley, Hanlon, O'Grady, & McCarren, 1998). Once involved in the child welfare system, substance-abusing parents are more likely to experience subsequent allegations of maltreatment compared with non-substance-abusing parents (Smith & Testa, 2002). In addition to the increased risk of maltreatment, access to and engagement with treatment providers is often limited (Maluccio & Ainsworth, 2003). Consequently, children of substance-abusing parents remain in substitute care for significantly longer periods of time and experience significantly lower rates of family reunification relative to almost every other subgroup of families in the child welfare system (GAO, 1998). Access and Engagement Access to substance abuse treatment is limited for substance-abusing parents. Overall, in the United States approximately one-third of all individuals who need treatment receive it (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration [SAMHSA], 1997). The supply of treatment services for women with children is especially inadequate (Price, 1997). …

114 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Children whose parents were reported as regularly visiting and working toward regaining custody and grew-up in the American South and attended church regularly were more likely to be reunified and lesslikely to be replaced than children whose parents was reported as non-cooperative with visitation and service plans.

106 citations


Cited by
More filters
Journal Article

5,680 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors review evidence that suggests that segregation is a primary cause of racial differences in socioeconomic status (SES) by determining access to education and employment opportunities, and conclude that effective efforts to eliminate racial disparities in health must seriously confront segregation and its pervasive consequences.
Abstract: Racial residential segregation is a fundamental cause of racial disparities in health. The physical separation of the races by enforced residence in certain areas is an institutional mechanism of racism that was designed to protect whites from social interaction with blacks. Despite the absence of supportive legal statutes, the degree of residential segregation remains extremely high for most African Americans in the United States. The authors review evidence that suggests that segregation is a primary cause of racial differences in socioeconomic status (SES) by determining access to education and employment opportunities. SES in turn remains a fundamental cause of racial differences in health. Segregation also creates conditions inimical to health in the social and physical environment. The authors conclude that effective efforts to eliminate racial disparities in health must seriously confront segregation and its pervasive consequences.

2,027 citations

Journal Article
TL;DR: Evidence that suggests that segregation is a primary cause of racial differences in socioeconomic status by determining access to education and employment opportunities and that effective efforts to eliminate racial disparities in health must seriously confront segregation is reviewed.

2,027 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The complex ways in which race and socioeconomic status (SES) combine to affect health are considered, which accounts for much of the observed racial disparities in health.
Abstract: Higher disease rates for blacks (or African Americans) compared to whites are pervasive and persistent over time, with the racial gap in mortality widening in recent years for multiple causes of death. Other racial/ethnic minority populations also have elevated disease risk for some health conditions. This paper considers the complex ways in which race and socioeconomic status (SES) combine to affect health. SES accounts for much of the observed racial disparities in health. Nonetheless, racial differences often persist even at “equivalent” levels of SES. Racism is an added burden for nondominant populations. Individual and institutional discrimination, along with the stigma of inferiority, can adversely affect health by restricting socioeconomic opportunities and mobility. Racism can also directly affect health in multiple ways. Residence in poor neighborhoods, racial bias in medical care, the stress of experiences of discrimination and the acceptance of the societal stigma of inferiority can have deleterious consequences for health.

1,411 citations

Journal Article
TL;DR: The All Our Kin: Strategies for Survival in a Black Community by C. B. Stack as discussed by the authors was one of the most influential books of the last half century about African American families, focusing on the stories and lives of persons who were struggling to manage with limited resources and who had evolved seamless methods of survival and coping strategies.
Abstract: All Our Kin: Strategies for Survival in a Black Community. C. B. Stack. New York: Harper & Row. 1974. Carol Stack wrote one of the most powerful books of the last half century about African American families. The book's power derived from its focus on the stories and the lives of persons who were struggling to manage with limited resources and who had evolved seamless methods of survival and coping strategies. Stack was not content to view the problems of impoverished African American families from an outside perspective, as had been done in the past, but chose instead to present her work from the view of the participants. She presented a sensitive view of families that has not been duplicated to this day. Stack put specific emphasis on being accepted by the families before she began interviewing them. She and her son took a long time to be accepted by the families as they gradually became participants in the day-to-day lives of the "Flats." She was sensitive to the patterns of interactions among the networks of family and friends that would have been overlooked by almost any other researcher or method of observation. The book showed how a person from another racial and economic group was able, with skill, to become an intimate part of the experience and the lives of very poor families. Her anthropological approach stands in sharp contrast to the countless attempts of others to quickly go in and pull out slices of families' lives with a preexisting conceptual framework. The African American families of the Flats were presented as they were, not from a White academic theoretical perspective that was not based on reality. Stack made many observations that allowed one to see the intricate workings of the families that "outsiders" had not been documented before. Participants were allowed to make observations about their own families' patterns of interaction and to uncover truths of family functioning based on the reality of their lives. Important data on these second-generation urban dwellers are presented in such a calm manner that one could overlook their significance to the field. The impact of the economic pressures on the men and women in the African American community show how persons can have mainstream values but are prevented from achieving them because of the lack of employment and economic security within the community. In response to the reality, Stack found that African Americans have cooperated to produce an adaptive strategy of exchanging goods and trading resources, as well as offering child care or temporary fosterage. Kinship boundaries were more elastic than they were in more affluent families because these individuals immersed themselves in a domestic network of kinfolk and fictive kin, or those who became as kin. The participants in Stack's study moved around and had loyalties to more than one household grouping at a time, making their family networks unlike the "household" structures of most American families. These networks were diffused over several kin-based households that changed frequently. The usual method of arbitrarily specifying widely accepted definitions of the family as nuclear or matrilocal may block one from seeing the world as it exists in very poor communities. Stack's observations refuted the "culture of poverty" position that had seen African Americans as having no culture or totally negative qualities of family disorganization, personal disorganization, and fatalism. Unfortunately, too many current writings on African Americans still take these same positions. The views may be the result of ignorance, naivete, or complex levels of racism that insidiously make their way into present family literature. Stack continued to reflect on the poverty of the participants' situations. By doing so, she avoided another position that is all too common-assumption that all African American families are the same, regardless of their levels of poverty or affluence. …

1,050 citations