Children and Family Research Roundup from September and August 2025
It all begins with an idea.
Translating the latest research for decision-makers in child and family policy.
From the Director’s Desk
Welcome to the second edition of our monthly Children & Family Research Roundup!
Our goal is to cut the time it takes for the latest academic research to inform practical decisions by leaders in children and family services. We shouldn’t have to wait years for research to influence decisions.
This edition of the Roundup digs through the research from August and September 2025. There were over 200 academic studies on child and family policy published in these two months. That’s a lot for anyone to sift through, even using sophisticated AI models.
We selected a handful of studies that we think you should know about, climbed over the paywall that keeps many studies out of your hands, and summarized what’s actionable and relevant for you to know.
This edition includes studies looking at uptake of professional guidance, home visiting, and participation in research studies, among other topics. We also touch on the latest Child and Family Service Reviews (CSFRs).
This Roundup is not meant to be one-directional, from us to you. If you want to go deeper on any of these studies, point to anything you disagree with, or if there are studies you think we missed, let me know: robin@childwelfarewonk.com.
Let’s get into it!
- Robin Ghertner, MPP, Founding Director of Strategic Policy Intelligence
New Research for Policymakers to Drive Decisions
Many healthcare providers have yet to incorporate professional guidelines for treating youth in foster care.
The American Academy of Pediatrics first published recommendations in 2005 for treating youth in foster care, including practice parameters for primary and behavioral health care, time frames for key visits, procedures, and other important guidelines.
A survey of over 180 pediatric nurse practitioners by VanGraafeiland and colleagues found almost half were not utilizing those recommendations.
Nurse practitioners had widespread knowledge gaps for treating foster youth, particularly on Medicaid rules, trauma screening protocols, and consent procedures.
Practitioners with more knowledge about treating foster youth were better at identifying physical and mental health risk factors.
The general public often does not recognize emotional abuse as harmful, unless it is extreme.
A systematic review by Morgan and colleagues of 39 relevant studies shows public attitudes consistently minimize emotional abuse.
Emotional abuse only registers as "real harm" when it's overt and repetitive.
The prevalence and damage of emotional abuse are under-recognized by the public and under-studied by researchers.
We don’t know enough about whether people are as willing to intervene when witnessing emotional abuse compared to other maltreatment types.
Why these findings matter: We continue to see gaps between best practices and professional guidelines, and how professionals and the general public approach child maltreatment.
But solving the problem isn’t just about more training or awareness. With so many responsibilities placed on them, health care professionals need more support to integrate best practices for serving children involved in child welfare systems.
New Insights on Promising Practices in Child and Family Services
Home visiting programs deliver promising long-term results across multiple protective factors.
A new HHS randomized control trial tracked over 4,000 families for at least 5 years after participating in maternal home visiting programs.
The latest study within the Mother and Infant Home Visiting Program Evaluation (MIHOPE) found statistically significant and meaningful benefits in several key areas, including:
Direct interactions between families and home visitors improved:
Children’s social-emotional functioning in home
Mothers’ behavioral health
Parenting behaviors (including maltreatment) and the quality of parent-child interaction
Family economic stability improved from home visiting programs’ support of educational attainment, employment and income stability, and decreasing maternal hardship
Outcomes related to school readiness did not reach statistical significance. This means the evaluation could not confirm that home visiting contributes to later academic success.
Why this matters: This study provides more evidence that early investment to support parents can lead to sustained benefits on child well-being and safety.
It also demonstrates that rigorous evaluations can identify benefits to prevention strategies, increasing the likelihood of their continued funding.
Standardized assessment tools increase identification of neglect and psychological maltreatment.
One standardized tool used by the Swiss child protective system, the Standardised Assessment Tool - Bern/Lucerne, increases identification of neglect relative to other assessment approaches. Portmann and colleagues studied case files in Switzerland and found:
Four-times greater odds of documenting neglect when professionals used the tool.
Other factors also increase documentation: having multiple professionals involved, multiple home visits, and comprehensive risk assessments.
Psychological maltreatment, which goes beyond just emotional abuse, remains hard to diagnose. Wallimann & Lätsch studied over 1,000 children in Swiss schools and found:
Psychological maltreatment is more likely to be prolonged and co-occur with other risk factors, such as sexual abuse and behavioral health issues in the family.
Accurate diagnosis of psychological maltreatment matters for proper treatment.
Why this matters: Though these studies took place outside the U.S., they hold important implications here. Evidence-based assessment tools can help improve identification of specific types of maltreatment, which can lead to better targeted interventions and clinical treatment.
In particular, a 2021 study by Baker and colleagues in the U.S. found that professionals don’t know how to accurately identify psychological maltreatment and recommended better approaches.
Finding sustainable and practical ways to implement assessment tools into practice may improve child and family outcomes.
Researchers have trouble recruiting and keeping participants with experience in child-serving systems, and it affects the quality of the research.
As we saw with the home visiting study above, long-term studies provide critical insights. But when participants with high risk of child welfare system involvement drop out, research findings reflect a narrower population.
Kiel and colleagues looked at data from a long-term study of the development trajectory of victims of child maltreatment in Germany, including over 800 participants.
They specifically looked at patterns in who dropped out of the study - their responses were not included in the final study findings. Three groups stood out to be more likely to drop out:
Families with maltreatment histories
Families with lower-income
Children with externalizing behaviors such as aggression, conduct problems, and hyperactivity.
Why this matters: Though it’s another international study, the same risks apply to U.S. research. Children and families most affected by child welfare systems are least likely to stay in studies that inform child welfare policy.
The research you rely upon may not be based on the right populations, which can skew their results.
That’s one of the reasons we started the Roundup, to help you figure out which findings are based on the best possible data.
Researchers need to look to strategies to improve participation, such as compensation, transportation, childcare, and flexibility in data collection.
Data Corner: New Data Sources to Know
In 2025, new Child and Family Service Review (CFSR) reports were issued for 5 states that highlight some of the predominant and persistent challenges in child welfare practices, as well as some promising improvements.
CFSRs in Brief: CFSRs are periodic, state-by-state assessments of child welfare services and outcomes and provide a helpful window into the landscape of child welfare services across the country.
Purpose of CFSRs: The Children’s Bureau conducts them to assess state child welfare systems against federal requirements, document child welfare services used by families, and assist states in achieving positive outcomes for children and families.
Though not every state has a review every year, the reports released in 2025 may give us some indication of where the field stands, and what lies ahead.
Strengths:
Out-of-home placements with relatives and sibling groups remain strong.
Indicators of maltreatment while in care improved in several states.
Timely needs assessments for foster youth, especially educational needs, showed improvement.
Quality assurance and community responsiveness were identified as strengths in multiple states.
Challenges:
Service gaps for root causes of maltreatment such as substance use, domestic violence, and mental health issues.
Workforce challenges such as high turnover and inadequate training affect investigation and permanency timelines.
Child and family court delays exacerbate child welfare system challenges.
Why this matters: These findings aren’t necessarily new. But when CFSRs produce the same findings year after year, it signals that different approaches are needed to address shortcomings.
Service gaps are different from knowledge gaps. If we know what does and does not work, it is about making sure there is adequate funding, workforce, and cross-system coordination to ensure success.
What’s Your Take?
We want to know what stands out to you from this month’s research roundup, and why.
Who do you wish had access to this information? Are there types of organizations, policymakers, or advocates that would benefit from any of these insights?
Based on any of the insights shared, what shifts in child and family policy would you recommend to state or federal policy makers?
What studies did we miss?
Send your thoughts to robin@childwelfarewonk.com.
Studies discussed in this roundup
Baker, A. J. L., Brassard, M. R., & Rosenzweig, J. (2021). Psychological maltreatment: Definition and reporting barriers among American professionals in the field of child abuse. Child Abuse & Neglect, 114, 104941. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2021.104941
Keil, J., Breuer, J., Küchler, R., Bracher, A. J., Schulz, C. C., Açıl, D., Bergmann, S., Alexander, N., Stalder, T., Miller, R., Licata-Dandel, M., Mall, V., Augustin, M., Wenzel, A. S., Von Polier, G., Radeloff, D., Von Klitzing, K., & White, L. O. (2025). Lost Narratives: Identifying Predictors of Attrition and Differences in Recruitment Effort in a Longitudinal Study on Child Maltreatment. Child Maltreatment, 10775595251352425. https://doi.org/10.1177/10775595251352425
Morgan, A. J., Tsiamis, E., Tan, C., & Chen, Q. (2025). Public Knowledge and Attitudes About the Nature and Impact of Child Emotional Abuse: A Systematic Review. Child Maltreatment, 10775595251362111. https://doi.org/10.1177/10775595251362111
Portilla, J. A., Faucetta, K., Saunders, K., & Taub, A. (2025). Beyond the Early Years: The Long-Term Effects of Home Visiting on Mothers, Families, and Children. Results from the Mother and Infant Home Visiting Program Evaluation (No. OPRE Report 2025-052). Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. https://acf.gov/opre/report/beyond-early-years-long-term-effects-home-visiting-mothers-families-and-children
Portmann, R., Kaiser, S., Quehenberger, J., Lätsch, D., & Jud, A. (2025). Documentation of child neglect: Do assessment tools make a difference? Child Abuse & Neglect, 167, 107592. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2025.107592
VanGraafeiland, B., Quick, C., Martinez, V. C., Cwynar, C. M., Helman, J., Mudd, S., Wilson, S., & Halasz, T. (2025). Assessing Knowledge of Nurse Practitioners on Youth in Foster Care: Results of Nationwide Survey. Journal of Pediatric Health Care. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pedhc.2025.08.001
Wallimann, M. S., & Lätsch, D. C. (2025). Psychological maltreatment: Discovering its different subtypes and related developmental risk factors. Child Abuse & Neglect, 167, 107544.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2025.107544
Research Roundup from July to August 2025
It all begins with an idea.
Translating the latest research for decision-makers in child and family policy.
From the Director’s Desk
Welcome to the first edition of our monthly Children & Family Research Roundup!
A common (and perhaps mythical) refrain among researchers is that it takes 17 years for research to influence decisions. At the Wonk we are always looking for ways to bring research insights faster to decision-making. Ergo, the Research Roundup.
In the Research Roundup, my team digs through the latest research from various fields related to child and family policy so you don’t have to. We filter through the technical jargon and pull out the key intel you need to do your jobs better.
This edition highlights some of the most meaningful studies published in July and August of 2025. This isn’t an annotated bibliography. It’s a translator to help you wrap your head around what research can - and sometimes what it cannot - tell us.
We hope that the Research Roundup helps you engage with us to make research more meaningful to you. In the Roundup we’ll invite you to answer some questions about the info we share. We’ll use the answers to help us improve the product, and we’ll occasionally summarize the results so you can see what other colleagues are thinking about.
We’ll also be hosting virtual research roundtables based on these Roundups, where you can engage with the smartest thinkers on child welfare policy. Premium subscribers get to help shape those discussions.
The Research Roundup is part of our suite of products for premium subscribers. This first, free edition gives you a taste of what it means to be a subscriber and how we can help you engage with research in actionable ways.
Let’s get into it!
- Robin Ghertner, MPP, Founding Director of Strategic Policy Intelligence
New Research for Policymakers to Drive Decisions
Substance use continues to be a major driver of child welfare system involvement.
A new study this month found that parental substance use disorder (SUD) continues to predict child welfare system involvement. Taylor and colleagues found that:
Children who have mothers with SUD are more likely to be involved in child welfare systems.
All types of SUD were linked with increased risk of child welfare system involvement, according to data from multiple provider systems in Allegheny County, PA.
Additional findings included that use of stimulants and opioids are related to more intensive system involvement, and that infants were at greatest risk.
Takeaways: Decision-makers need to recognize that the effects of the substance use are not uniform across types of substances and child and family demographics. One-size-fits-all substance use disorder policies may simultaneously over and under correct for unique challenges affecting communities.
Housing and economic support may prevent child maltreatment and improve child welfare outcomes.
New releases in July and August emphasized that concrete supports and community-wide approaches can be effective prevention tools. Housing assistance for families involved with child welfare can promote family reunification for children in foster care, and may have a role in preventing foster care placement.
Supportive housing increased family reunification out of foster care, according to a review of the most rigorous studies on housing interventions in child welfare from Bai and colleagues.
However, housing supports had a minimal impact at preventing out of home placement.
This doesn’t mean every housing intervention doesn’t work - just that it’s likely dependent on the specific target population as well as details of the intervention.
Case in point: Housing supports had positive effects on both family reunification and preventing entry into foster care in an evaluation of a San Francisco based intervention. The new study from Chapin Hall found that:
The Bringing Families Home program offers permanent supportive housing and rapid re-housing, along with voluntary supportive services.
Adequate resources to sustain the program were among the greatest implementation challenges, according to the evaluation team at Chapin Hall.
Economic stimulus may have a role in mitigating the conditions that lead to overdose deaths, which predicts higher rates of child welfare involvement.
The Wonk’s very own Ghertner and Ali analyzed national data and found that the overdose problem was less severe in counties that received more economic stimulus during the COVID pandemic.
While this study was not tied directly to child welfare, as we noted above, substance use is a major driver of child welfare involvement, so there’s a good chance that fewer overdoses means fewer kids entering foster care.
Takeaways: Concrete supports - in this case, housing and cash - hold promise as prevention mechanisms. They are not a panacea and policymakers need to consider budgetary constraints among other factors (note: none of the studies from this month estimated budgetary costs of the interventions). Appraisals of housing and social service programs are key starting points for understanding upstream child welfare prevention.
New Insights on Promising Practices in Child and Family Services
Foster youth do better when decisions about services, and delivery of those services, are not done in isolation.
Two studies this month assessed the impact of including key parties in care decisions, and described how increasing collaboration among providers improves continuity of care over time and contexts. This leads to services being more responsive to family needs.
Integrated care models improve access, care coordination, and continuity, relative to the sole provision of primary care, according to a systematic review of studies on integrated care models (i.e. combined primary care and behavioral health). Quick and colleagues also found that integrated care models:
Can overcome some of the challenges traditional practice faces, such as fragmented service providers.
Are most successful when services are provided in the same location (called “co-location”) and systematically share data on patients.
Can be hard to implement, mainly due to financial and workforce constraints.
Including foster parents in case planning and service delivery improves collaboration toward case goals. Thompson and colleagues added to the research base on this topic and found, among other things:
Foster parents aren’t as involved in case planning as they could be, and data from Florida shows that keeping them engaged with children’s service providers and the courts may improve case outcomes.
Takeaways: Child welfare leaders may want to consider who is involved in case planning and service decisions, and how foster parents and other providers could be more involved. Additionally, leaders can consider their level of service integration, and what resources and practices would be needed for more integration. Systems will face tradeoffs in shifting resources to encourage more integration.
Child maltreatment leads to difficulties with emotional regulation later in life.
Adults who experienced childhood maltreatment had difficulties with emotional regulation, according to a recent rigorous experiment by Armbruster-Genç and colleagues.
In particular, they had trouble switching from suppressing emotions, to responding more proactively to emotional events.
Though the study didn’t suggest interventions, the findings point to the need to address behavioral health issues early for children who have experienced maltreatment.
Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care (MTFC) is one such intervention, designed as a behavioral health treatment alternative to residential placement for foster youth. It targets youth with chronic behavioral health challenges - like emotional disturbance - and has been found to be effective at reducing behavioral incidents in previous studies.
However, a new systematic review found mixed results on the long-term benefits for youth, relative to usual care services (meaning some studies showed MTFC was associated with long-term outcomes, and others did not).
Krishnapillai and colleagues conclude that administrators should consider the costs of MTFC relative to usual care when deciding whether to use it.
Takeaways: Child welfare leaders may want to consider how they’re addressing the unique emotional needs of foster youth in their systems, and the budgetary, staffing, or other resource tradeoffs with taking different interventions tailored to those needs. Interventions are rarely effective for every child, with their success depending on factors like how closely providers stick to the model, the availability of resources to implement the model, and the extent to which the model has been adapted to the unique circumstances of children.
Data Corner: New Data Sources to Know and How to Use Them
The CDC updated resources that provide data useful for monitoring trends related to child welfare and well-being.
These child welfare dashboards and performance management. Centralizing national and state indicators relevant to placement stability, permanency timelines, and youth well-being is key for ongoing research and evaluation.
What it Is: is a one-stop directory linking to KIDS COUNT, the National Survey of Children’s Health, Census data, and other data sources and tools.
What it’s Good For: Federal data to track child development at the national and state levels.
The CDC updated its “FastStats: Child Health” to offer quick access to the latest indicators such as access to care, child health status, mortality, and others.
What it Is: These measures offer vital context in quality reviews and monitoring.
What it’s Good For: These population-level health statistics can be used by child welfare professionals as a baseline for comparing the needs of children in care. These indicators may also be useful for assessing whether services are meeting the needs of target populations.
Takeaways: Health data on children can provide important context for child welfare outcomes. It can also be used to help target interventions more effectively.
What’s Your Take?
We want to know what stands out to you from this month’s research roundup, and why.
Who do you wish had access to this information? Are there types of organizations, policymakers, or advocates that would benefit from any of these insights?
Based on any of the insights shared, what shifts in child and family policy would you recommend to state or federal policy makers?
What studies from July to August this year did we miss?
Send your thoughts to robin@childwelfarewonk.com.
Studies discussed in this roundup
Bai, R., Kennedy, R., Collins, C., Tumin, D., & Reis, H. L. (2025). Effectiveness of housing assistance for child welfare-involved families: A systematic review with meta-analysis. The American Journal of Orthopsychiatry. https://doi.org/10.1037/ort0000875
Ghertner, R., & Ali, M. M. (2025). Economic stimulus for households during the COVID-19 pandemic may have mitigated rise in overdose deaths. General Hospital Psychiatry, 96, 193–194. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.genhosppsych.2025.07.019
Krishnapillai, A., Oad, L., Cassidy, T., Kimber, M., & Santesso, N. (2025). The effects of multidimensional treatment foster care for maltreated children and adolescents: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Child Protection and Practice, 5, 100173. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chipro.2025.100173
Quick, C., Meimers, M. C., Buchele, E., Krawciw, M., Hughes, D., & Rohn, A. (2025). Integrated Healthcare for Youth in Foster Care: A Narrative Review. Journal of Pediatric Health Care. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pedhc.2025.06.012
Rhodes, E., Brooks, L., & Van Drunen, M. (2025). Bringing Families Home San Francisco: 2025 Annual Evaluation Report. Chapin Hall. https://www.chapinhall.org/wp-content/uploads/Chapin-Hall_Bringing-Families-Home-Report_July-2025.pdf
Taylor, J., Bandara, S., Powell, T. W., Blumberger, L., Galbraith, J., Kessler, L., Ko, P. J., & Kennedy-Hendricks, A. (2025). Risk of Child Welfare System Involvement Among Mothers With Substance Use Disorder. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2025.108034
Thompson, H. M., Colvin, M. L., Cooley, M. E., Dowdy-Hazlett, T., & Pasarariu, A. (2025). Foster parent inclusion and collaboration in case planning and implementation: Perspective of Florida foster parents and child welfare workers. Child Protection and Practice, 5, 100148. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chipro.2025.100148