The Bedside Box of Play is a kit of play activities designed specifically for children experiencing hospitalization. 30 kits were delivered to the Child Life unit at a local hospital with materials provided in English and Spanish. It is a free resource informed by research to maximize the potential for healthy coping during a time that may be stressful or overwhelming. Activities were created intentionally to allow for creativity, direction of the activity by the child, and family engagement. My hope for the Bedside Box of play is that it provides children and families with an easy way to incorporate play into the hospital environment, while also promoting healthy child development and building coping skills to be used post-discharge. This creative project also outlines a potential framework for helping professionals to make play effective and accessible in a variety of settings.

Peer-parenting in child welfare is a developing field with a growing repository of research that demonstrates a positive effect on child welfare case outcomes such as rates of reunification and parent engagement. Peer-parenting also benefits the peer-parents, who apply their lived child welfare experience to their service to clients, by providing fulfilling and satisfying work opportunities. However, there is a lack of research focusing on workforce characteristics or workforce development for peer-parents. Qualitative interviews were conducted with professional peer-parents in the child welfare field to understand their perceptions and experiences being employed as a peer-parent. The findings demonstrate a deep commitment to their work as peer-parents, the important role that leadership and supervision plays, and valuable insight into what improvements can be made to the workforce.

This research aims to investigate the social environment in a brand-new type of café, pet café, and to maximum the benefit of this type of cafe. While pet cafés, especially cat cafés, are becoming increasingly common in the United States (U.S.), Asian countries have been in this kind of business since 1998. The most common and popular is the cat café. Even though the owners of cat cafés in the U.S. have learned and imitated the cat café in Asia, the cultural differences and the restrictions resulted in differences in format and design.

Interior and furniture design was investigated to afford motivation to people who are pet lovers and can be potential customers. Most of the research about pets illustrates a positive influence on psychological health and social support. On the other hand, a café with pets can be attractive and interactive more than a general café, to offer a recreational activity and a comfortable social environment and therapy from pets.

Juxtaposing the cat café in the U.S. against the pet café in China, is explored to investigate the difference between these countries and how they can learn from each other and make improvements to design. Research on what is the difference between the cat café in the U.S. and China are reflected on two parts of outcomes—design and business.

Child abuse and neglect is a devastating yet preventable social problem. Currently, early childhood home visitation services are the primary approach to preventing maltreatment and improving child well-being in the United States. However, existing literature suggests that improvement is needed regarding how home visitation professionals identify and respond to risk factors for child abuse and neglect. Although there is substantial multidisciplinary literature that investigates the utility of standardized measures to determine future risk for maltreatment, there has been minimal inquiry into the validity of early childhood home visitation assessment instruments to accurately identify and classify children and their families by their risk for future maltreatment. In response to the dearth in the literature, the purpose of this dissertation was to examine the utility of the Healthy Families Parenting Inventory (HFPI) to predict a family’s risk for future maltreatment. Families enrolled in Healthy Families Arizona, a child abuse and neglect prevention program, were followed for 12 months after the completion of the baseline HFPI to measure if the family had received an investigation of maltreatment from the public child welfare system. Bivariate results indicated that the generated risk classifications of the HFPI and the overall total composite score were related to the occurrence of a future maltreatment investigation. Specifically, the results from the binary logistic regression models provided evidence that as a family’s score increased on the inventory, the likelihood of receiving an investigation of maltreatment decreased. Further, significant relationships were found between a family’s score on several individual items of the HFPI and the occurrence of a maltreatment investigation. This dissertation concludes with a discussion of potential avenues of research on the topic of risk assessment in prevention programs serving at-risk families.

The investigation of sex trafficking and prostitution related offenses are primarily handled by local police. Despite this, state and city level responses vary widely. This paper will examine the local law enforcement response in 11 geographically diverse police departments, focusing on their operational policies, investigative priorities, community connectedness, and the impact of the local economy on investigations. Implications for further research and policy recommendations will be given.

The Arizona state child welfare system has recently experienced an increase in the number of children and youth living in out-of-home care. A lack of licensed foster homes has resulted in many of these children residing in congregate care. This study sought to determine what role, if any, personal and policy bias against five demographic groups (i.e., ethnicity, sexual orientation, marital status for individuals and couples, and educational level) plays in this insufficiency of foster homes. In this pilot study a group of foster and adoption licensing agency executives and directors (n=5) were surveyed and qualitatively interviewed with the aim of discerning if bias is present at the personal and agency policy levels and to seek input for a future study with direct-service staff. Results indicate a discrepancy between personal and policy bias within agencies. Additionally, evidence suggests a policy bias which results in unmarried couples and single parents being perceived as inferior placement options. Implications for future research are discussed.

Young women ages 18-29 are the highest users of Information Communication Technology (ICT) in the United States. As a group, they curate and create more online content than any other adult user group (Duggan, 2014). Throughout the research literature, scholars claim that the high rate of technology use among young people is related to their developmental stage (boyd, 2014; Kuper & Mustaki, 2014; Subrahmanyam & Greenfield, 2008; Turkle, 2010). The primary developmental tasks of young adults include forming an adult identity, and sustaining intimate relationships. Developmental psychologists and sociologist hypothesize that ICT’s influence developmental trajectories and outcomes (Jensen & Arnett, 2012). Given the breadth of discussion in the literature about development, and ICT use, there is relatively little research focusing on how young women interpret and internalize these experiences. The primary purpose of this study was to understand the interaction between young adults frequent online use and developmental tasks — identity formation and intimate relationships.

Interviews were conducted with young women (18-29) who qualified as high users (N=22). Participants’ were interviewed twice; the initial interview used a structured schedule, providing uniformity across participants. The second interview was an informal conversation personalized to the participant’s’ interests, experiences, and opinions about the topic. Participants were recruited from across the country, and the diversity in the sample mirrors the heterogeneous nature of the emerging adult population. Two forms of qualitative analysis were used, open thematic coding and narrative analysis.

Findings demonstrated the shift of the networked culture creates a highly individualized life trajectory for young people. Identity and intimacy are still the salient developmental tasks for young adults, but continue evolve throughout the life course. . Narrative analyses were used to show strengths of the critical realism theory, especially the reflexive modes, by using case examples. Lastly, the role of ICT are discussed using four primary themes— augmented relationships, disruptive networks, defining moments, and driven agency. Ultimately, this research study helps provide evidence that online spaces are relational and the interactions a part of sociality. For social workers ability to understand development experiences and other facets of social life, further research is needed.

The natural environment is becoming an increasing concern within the global society and within the realm of social work practice. Social work practitioners and scholars are advocating for incorporating environmental justice into social work education, but have yet to adequately develop the research and strategies to execute this task. To further develop the research behind this concept, 112 social work students’ attitudes toward the environment were analyzed using the New Environmental Paradigm Scale and questions regarding the intersection of social work and the natural environment. Analysis of the data found social work students were less pro-environment than populations within previous studies. Although, social work students reported the desire to learn more about environmental issues and felt as though it would help them become better social workers. Results also suggested social work students did not know where to find information on environmental issues and misconstrued information on environmental issues, whether or not they felt informed. It will be imperative to further develop the research on incorporating environmental justice into social work education through future pilot programs with student attitudes and cultures into consideration.

Traumatic events have deleterious effects biologically, emotionally, socially, and cognitively. Events may include violence, neglect, and abuse and are best understood through a lifecourse perspective. Preventable and treatable, traumatic exposure promotes the development of trauma symptoms including avoidance, hyperarousal, increased fear, intrusive experiences, and aggression/violence. Trauma symptomology is thought to be an underlying cause of child maltreatment and intergenerational cycles of abuse
eglect. Traumatic symptoms may interfere with the ability to work, function, and care for young children and may accompany a Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) diagnosis.

Although these experiences are known to be harmful, little research has focused on experiences of mothers involved in the child welfare system with young children (< 5 years). Subsequently, this study explored maternal experiences of trauma whilst calculating one of the first PTSD estimates. Types of trauma exposure, age of exposure, and event details were explored alongside history of substance use, domestic violence, and mental illness. Trauma symptom type, severity, and frequency were assessed. Utilizing adult attachment as a partial mediator, relationships between trauma exposure, trauma symptoms, and parenting were examined.

Supported by a university-community collaboration within the Safe Babies Court Teams Program in Maricopa County, Arizona, this study is exploratory and cross-sectional. A convenience sample of child welfare involved mothers (N = 141) with young children were recruited who were new clinical intakes with open court dependencies. Data on child/adult traumatic events, trauma symptoms, adult attachment, and parenting were collected. Results indicated high rates of complex/chronic trauma, specifically domestic violence and physical/sexual abuse. Mothers experienced higher than average childhood adversity/emotional abuse with significant overlap between trauma exposure and reduced mental health. PTSD rates ranged from 35-39%. Adult attachment did not to mediate trauma on parenting behaviors however strong and significant direct effects were found. Insecure-disorganized and insecure-resistant were the most dominant attachment styles.



Overall, these findings indicate the complex lifecourse nature of trauma exposure and the need to pay special attention to mental health and domestic violence histories in child welfare involved mothers of young children. Implications for social work practice, policy, and research are presented and provide impetus for continued future work.