A NCSACW POLICY AND PRACTICE BRIEF: Findings from the National Technical Assistance Needs Assessment

The National Center on Substance Abuse and Child Welfare (NCSACW) is a program of the Department of Health and Human Services and jointly funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT) and the Administration on Children, Youth and Families, Children's Bureau's Office on Child Abuse and Neglect (OCAN). The NCSACW is implementing a range of activities to develop knowledge and provide technical assistance to federal, state, local agencies and tribes to improve outcomes for families with substance use disorders in the child welfare and dependency court systems.

To ensure that the intended audience and stakeholders of the NCSACW have input in determining technical assistance needs, materials to be produced, and topics for NCSACW meetings and conferences, a comprehensive needs assessment was conducted. This NCSACW brief highlights the results of that assessment. The information in this brief comes from a full report entitled Findings from the National Technical Assistance Needs Assessment on Improving Outcomes for Families with Substance Use Disorders in Child Welfare Services and Dependency Courts (May 2003). The full report can be accessed by going to the NCSACW website at ncsacw.samhsa.gov.

The methods used in the needs assessment included multiple approaches to seeking input from a broad range of intended respondents including:

• Questionnaires submitted by NCSACW subcontractors
  • Child Welfare League of America (CWLA)
  • National Association of State Alcohol and Drug Abuse Directors (NASADAD)
  • American Public Human Services Association (APHSA)
  • National Indian Child Welfare Association (NICWA)
  • National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ)
• Questionnaires submitted by five of the ten Children's Bureau National Resource Centers
• Phone and e-mail interviews with three states who were past technical assistance users
• Brief consultations conducted via e-mail and the Internet, which elicited responses from 281 persons in 47 states and D.C.

The largest groups of respondents were from state (41.3%) and county (27%) agencies, and were from child welfare systems (33.3%), substance abuse agencies (20.0%), and family/juvenile court systems (11.9%).

The major topic areas that were prioritized revealed a consensus on the challenging issues that will guide the NCSACW's work. The prioritized topic areas are:

• Children's Issues
• Practice and Clinical issues
• Increasing Collaboration, Funding and Systems Issues
• Models of Practice
• Training Issues

There were no significant differences between groups who self-identified their primary organizational focus as either substance abuse, child welfare, the dependency court, mental health services or other fields of practice. The lack of any wide variation in these items underscores the even distribution of interest across a wide variety of issues, suggesting that the NCSACW will need to work across all of the pertinent topic areas rather than concentrating its activities in two or three of them for specific audiences.

Within these broad priorities, further and more specific topics emerged as being of high interest to respondents. In rank order they are:

• Clinical issues for parents with co-occurring mental health and substance abuse issues
• Child development issues
• Engaging parents in services
• Retaining parents in care
• Model programs of effective collaboration

Some differences among groups of respondents emerged when they were categorized by the organization who requested they participate in the online consultation (e.g., CWLA, NASADAD, etc.) and when respondents were categorized by the jurisdiction they serve (e.g., federal, state, county, etc.). In these analyses some statistical differences between groups were found:

• Tribal respondents were more interested in technical assistance on memoranda of understanding and models of practice;
• CWLA-referred organizations were more interested in technical assistance on urban models of practice;
• Rural respondents were more interested in technical assistance on measuring outcomes and child protective services laws in the context of substance abuse, dependency drug court training, core content on substance abuse treatment, interventions for alcohol-related birth defects, and service models for children of substance abusers; and,
• Urban respondents were more interested in technical assistance on prevalence of alcohol and other drug disorders in the child welfare system, financing models and strategies, and evaluating cross-systems programs.

With respect to methods of delivering technical assistance, respondents consistently preferred brief fact sheets and written monographs, regardless of their referring organization, primary jurisdiction, organizational focus or state. There was far less interest in electronic methods of communication, such as webcasts or video broadcasts. There was also a strong endorsement of involvement of each of the three major systems-substance abuse services, child welfare and the dependency courts-in the technical assistance process. The responses on models of practice underscored the importance of being audience-specific in discussing practice issues.

At times, evidence not found is as important as evidence found. The lack of any major disagreements among the different stakeholders would seem to be a promising signal of both a substantive consensus in the field and preparedness to work across organizational lines to address the highest priority issues that were identified in the needs assessment. No significant differences in responses by organizational field would appear to be the most important finding of the needs assessment.

The findings from the Needs Assessment will continue to guide the work of NCSACW.

Requests for Technical Assistance can be made through the website: ncsacw.samhsa.gov or by calling 714.505.3525