Family preservation services and special populations: The invisible target / Another view: Denby and colleagues raise some disturbing issues

Denby, Ramona W

ABSTRACT

Children of color are especially vulnerable for a devastating outcome as a result of their living environment and are disproportionately represented within the child welfare system. Social workers, who are trained to mitigate the effects of social injustice and societal inconsistencies, particularly among minorities and oppressed populations, perpetuate the injustices associated with the child welfare system by ignoring the special needs of children of color when administering family preservation services. The authors present results from a national study that examined the attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of family preservation workers regarding the service criterion based on whether a family is part of a special population. Results indicate a significant bias against targeting family preservation services to children of color.

The popular media are replete with statistics, anecdotal data, and policy alternatives aimed at reforming welfare programs and removing from public assistance rolls those families that are dependent on financial support outside the family to provide for their basic human needs. Less attention, however, is directed toward addressing the need to reform the mediating structures, such as education, housing, and employment, which fail many families in this country and contribute to devastating outcomes, including family dissolution (Gustavasson & Segal, 1994; Henderson, 1994; Pinderhughes, 1991). The reasons for family dissolution are numerous. Almost half of all children are removed from their homes when their birth families are no longer capable of providing a healthy and safe living environment. Physical or sexual child maltreatment accounts for the remaining cases of family disruptions and dissolution (Children's Defense Fund, 1995).

In 1993, the Family Preservation and Support Services Act (PL 103-6) authorized funding to states for the development or expansion of a program of family preservation services and community-based family-support services. family preservation services are defined as "services for children and families designed to help families (including adoptive and extended families) at risk or in crisis" (U.S. Code Congressional and Administrative News, 1993, p. 107).

The law further defines intensive family preservation programs as those intended to help children at risk of foster-care placement remain with their families. Also appropriate are services providing follow-up care to families to which a child has been returned after a foster-care placement and services designed to improve parenting skills through self-assessment and empowerment with respect to coping with stress, nutrition, child development, and family budgeting (U.S. Code Congressional and Administrative News, 1993).

This article presents research findings from a national study that examined the attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of family preservation workers regarding the special-population service criterion. The following account of special populations in the child welfare system addresses their particular vulnerability, for which targeting is essential.

Decision Making and Special Populations

Out-of-Home Placement

Throughout the United States, child welfare systems provide publicly funded substitute care for children who are temporarily or permanently removed from their families. Increasingly, child welfare systems are experiencing unprecedented demands on their resourcesboth human and financial-with inadequate funding to meet these needs (Children's Defense Fund, 1995; W. K. Kellogg Foundation, 1995). Throughout the past 10 years, the number of children in substitute care has risen, with current estimates indicating 500,000 children in public foster care (Children's Defense Fund, 1995; National Association of Black Social Workers, 1992; W. K. Kellogg Foundation, 1995).1 Children not placed for adoption typically include sibling groups, children who are mentally or physically challenged, and children of color. Child welfare agencies have not been particularly effective at recruiting foster families for special-needs children, particularly children of color (Billingsley, 1968; Day, 1979).

As the number of children in substitute care increased through the years, so did the number of problems associated with the child-placement system. The child welfare system has responded differently to the needs of children and has been influenced by different theories, information, and service trends. During the 1960s and 1970s, medical thinking and diagnostic information dominated national thinking and policy formulation in the realm of child welfare. The system responded by removing numerous alleged child victims from their families, which flooded the out-of-home placement system (Howard, 1984). The family preservation movement of the 1980s was influenced by mental health theory and practice and emphasized the use of services to keep families together or to reunite families. This was evident with the passage of the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980 (PL 96-272), which required states to assist troubled families with reunification when it is possible or to find permanent alternative homes (U.S. Code Congressional and Administrative News, 1980). In the 1990s, childprotective-service workers have focused more on system self-examination and reform, evaluating what is done, when intervention into family life occurs, and why such intervention is necessary. Despite efforts to reform the child welfare system at the national and state levels, many children who are removed from their families will remain in substitute care for an average of 3.5 to 5.5 years prior to adoption; children not placed for adoption remain adrift in temporary placements until the age of emancipation (W K. Kellogg Foundation, 1995).

Special Populations

The number of children in substitute care continues to rise (W. K. Kellogg Foundation, 1995) despite the legislative intent of the Family Preservation and Support Services Act and child welfare reform initiatives at the state level. Children who are most at risk for remaining in substitute care for extended periods are children with special needs, specifically children of color (Gustavasson & Segal, 1994; National Black Child Development Institution, 1989; W. K. Kellogg Foundation, 1995). The particular vulnerability of children of color in the child welfare system coupled with national program goals provide a rationale for targeting special needs or special populations for family preservation services. For children of color, the prospect for a positive outcome-returning to their families or being placed in a permanent, loving home-is especially bleak.

The situation for children of color is particularly disturbing. They make up nearly 57 percent of the children in substitute care in the 37 states from which data are availablenearly twice their population. In large urban areas like New York and Chicago, children of color constitute 80-90 percent of the child welfare population. (W K. Kellogg Foundation, 1995, p. 3)

What is known about the devastating outcomes for children of color placed in substitute care (McRoy, 1994; National Association of Black Social Workers, 1992; National Black Child Development Institute, 1989) has caused some social workers to ask the following question: Are family preservation services being targeted to children of color? If they are not, why not?

Other examples of special populations are medically fragile children, children already in out-ofhome placement, children on the verge of placement disruption (Feldman, 1990; Walton, Fraser, Lewis, Pecora, & Walton, 1993), sibling groups, and children who are difficult to place because of their age. It should be noted that although ethnic minority children are a special population in and of themselves, they also disproportionately constitute membership in these other categories of special populations.

Targeting the Appropriate Children and Families

Researchers have argued the merits of intensive family preservation services. In fact, some researchers have concluded that evaluations of family preservation programs lack research rigor and that these programs have not proven to be effective at reducing out-ofhome placement rates (Heneghan, Horwitz, & Leventhal, 1996). Other researchers (Feldman, 1990; Rossi, Freeman, & Wright, 1979; Schuerman, Rzepnicki, & Littell, 1994) have observed the significance of targeting the appropriate families for services and believe that the problem with proving program effectiveness may lie therein. Despite these challenges, most agree that intensive family preservation services play a critical role in the child welfare system (Pecora, 1994; Rznepnicki, 1994). Despite the importance of these services, reports and research findings indicate that children of color and their families do not receive services as a means of reducing the probability for child placement out of the home (Close, 1983; National Association of Black Social Workers, 1992; National Black Child Development Institute, 1989; Pinderhughes, 1991; Stehno, 1990). It stands to reason that if intensive family preservation programs are important in reducing out-of-home placement rates and if special populations disproportionately occupy out-of-home placement rolls, the two worlds would converge. In other words, if intensive family preservation programs are going to be used substantially to reduce placement rates, they should target those groups of children that are most at risk of out-ofhome placement. This line of reasoning is purportedly part of the thinking that went into legislative initiatives such as PL 96-272 as well as the more recent 1993 Family Preservation and Support Services Act. This act specifically directs states to utilize new funding "as a catalyst for establishing a continuum of ... culturally relevant services for children and families" (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1994, p. 2).

Despite legislative support for family preservation services, many families, particularly special populations, are not targeted for services intended to deter the threat of placement. As family preservation services evolve, particularly during periods when resources are few and service demands are increasing, decisions about who should receive service and for what purpose are critical to program effectiveness. Although family preservation research has primarily considered the characteristics of children and families who have had the least success in service, little is known about the use of targeting in programs. We do not know, for example, what determines the willingness or unwillingness of agen- . cies to target services using a criterion such as special population.

Although arguments can be developed both in support of and against targeting, we believe that targeting family preservation services can result in the desired outcome of reducing out-of-home placements. When an agency opts not to target it is possible that family preservation programs may not serve families in need of support. Certainly, family preservation services that are thought to be cost effective can prevent in some cases the need for substitute care, which is more expensive. It can be argued that targeting allows for more precision in directing service so that the "net-widening" effect of delivering service to families who would otherwise do fine without them is minimized.

If placement rates are to be reduced, effective ways of targeting the appropriate families for service must be developed. However, we must better understand how and why agencies and personnel make decisions regarding the question of targeting family preservation services.

This article is a component of a larger study that examined decision makers (i.e., family preservation workers) and their use of the special-population service criterion. Although it is critical that researchers also study the impact of other decision points (including program administrators' attitudes toward the special-population service criterion, court mandates, and the use of risk-assessment tools), this study examines the crucial role played by individual workers who make decisions about service delivery, reporting on their attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs.

Methodology

This research endeavor sought to provide information about the issue of targeting in family preservation programs by proposing research questions that would approximate answers and provide an initial broad understanding. Such an exploration potentially can prompt continued dialogue about the issue of targeting special populations. The overall design for this study is descriptive research by means of a cross-sectional mail-survey method. The persistent overrepresentation of children of color in the child welfare system raises several issues that warrant examination. The following questions considered how workers' attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs may influence this trend and served as a point of inquiry in gathering data: (a) What are workers' attitudes toward using the designation of special population as a service criterion? (b) To what extent do workers use the special-population designation as a service criterion? (c) Why are workers against using the special-population service criterion? Sample

The "attempted" sample consisted of 500 family preservation workers. The sample contained workers employed by agencies that serve families with issues related to child abuse and neglect, child mental health, juvenile delinquency, and child-developmental disability. A list of 250 agencies was generated by means of a systematic random sampling of agencies selected from the National Resource Center on Family-Based Services' (1994) Annotated Directory of Selected Family-Based Services Programs, National Association of Social Workers' (1992) Directory of Programs, Consultants, and Resource Materials, and the Child Welfare League of America's (1981) Directory of Associate Agencies. Twentythree questionnaires were returned because of address problems. One agency name appeared twice because it was listed under two different administrators. Fifteen agencies either wrote or called to say that they were not family preservation programs or no longer operated the family preservation component of their agency. These factors led to the sample size being reconstructed. The true sample size was 211 agencies (each agency received two instruments for a total attempted sample size of 422). At the termination of data collection, 254 questionnaires were received from 161 agencies, a 60% return rate.

Data Collection

A self-administered questionnaire, the "Decision-Making Survey," contains a special-population measure (see Figure 1). Variables measuring concepts related to the use of special population as a criterion in service delivery were derived from a literature review as well as findings from preliminary work by Walton and Denby (1997). The Special Populations section of the Decision-Making Survey includes a series of Likert scales containing 67 items.

To ensure that the issue of validity was attended to, the Decision-Making Survey was constructed with prescribed categories (Dillman, 1978) as follows: (a) 17 items that measure attitudes about special populations, (b) 10 items that measure behaviors related to the use of special populations, (c) 18 items that measure beliefs about special populations, and (d) 22 items that measure family preservation workers' attributes. Care was taken to ensure that intersection contamination was kept to a minimum. That is, the items were divided into the separate parts so that the type of information being sought was clearly conveyed. Although care was taken to develop a valid instrument, it should be noted that, as a new scale, the Decision-Making Survey is susceptible to issues of validity and consequent limitations.

To examine and establish the accuracy of the conclusions drawn from the Decision-Making Survey, a pilot study was undertaken to determine the instrument's validity and reliability. A sample of local (i.e., Ohio) family preservation workers was used to pilot the study. The survey was administered only once; therefore, discussion of reliability focuses on its stability. Cronbach alphas were computed to determine the reliability of the various subscales contained in the special-population section of the instrument. Alpha scores were computed to represent an estimate of the interitem correlation between the subscales. The Special Populations measure is fairly strong. The results of every subscale exceed .70. Significantly, the subscale Attitude Toward Special Population as a Service Criterion is especially robust (.98) and far exceeds accepted standards for a newly developed scale (Henenson, Morris, & Fitz-Gibbon, 1987).

Analysis

Various descriptive and inferential statistics were used. First, descriptive statistics were generated for all sociodemographic variables. Descriptive statistics were also used to organize raw responses into indices (i.e., frequency distributions, measures of central tendency, measures of variability) that would summarize the entire data set. Second, discriminant analysis was used to discover linear combinations of variables that distinguish between workers who target services by the special population criteria and those who do not. Specifically, workers' attitude scores and belief scores were used to discriminate among groups of cases and to predict which category or group of behaviors a case fits, as determined by the value of the variables (SPSSX User's Guide, 1986).

Findings

Results of the study are presented in three parts. Part one provides a description of the sample. Part two summarizes workers' attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors toward the special-population service criterion. Part three reports those conditions that predict whether workers target services to special populations.

Part One: Sociodemographics

A profile of the sociodemographic characteristics of the 254 family preservation workers who formed the study's sample was developed, including the percentages for each level of selected variables. Selected agency and worker demographic data are displayed in Table 1.

The sample was composed largely of workers from private, nonprofit agencies (63%) and public child welfare agencies (31%). Most respondents described their program's treatment model as that of family systems. Twenty percent used the Homebuilders model, 12% used a modified Homebuilders approach, and the remaining 13% used a combination of the aforementioned approaches, a treatment model specific to their agency setting, or various other approaches. Almost 70% of the respondents encountered child abuse and neglect as the primary presenting problem of their service population. Seventy percent of the respondents indicated that their primary service group was European American (i.e., Caucasian). When asked to describe the second group most often served, 35% stated that African Americans composed this category. Finally, 37% indicated biracial children and interracial families as the third group most often seen for service.

One half of the family preservation workers were employed in urban areas. The sample was composed of 82% contract workers (i.e., workers who receive referrals, including workers employed in a family preservation unit within a major agency) and 11% referring workers. Nearly one half (48%) of the family preservation workers surveyed ranged in age from their mid-thirties to fifty years. Consistent with the respondents' ages, 60% had worked in the field of social services for 10 or fewer years. In keeping with the relative newness of family preservation services, the majority of the sample (65%) had worked in family preservation for five or fewer years. The sample was composed of 84% European Americans and 16% non-European Americans. The non-European American category included 9% African American, 2% Hispanic, less than 1% Native American, and 2% biracial individuals. A highly educated sample, 65% of the respondents had at least a master's degree. In an even split, 50% of the respondents held social work degrees and 50% held social work-related degrees, such as counseling, criminal justice, sociology, and family relations.

Part Two: Attitudes, Beliefs, and Behavior Toward Special Populations

This article focuses on three research questions aimed specifically at identifying workers' attitudes about the special-population service criterion, the extent of their use of this service criterion, and the reasons workers opt not to use the special-population service criterion. The following sections describe the results of the three questions.

Workers' attitudes toward using special population as a service criterion. On the subscale Attitude Toward Special Population as a Service Criterion2, workers indicated their level of agreement with targeting services to 16 specific groups considered to be special populations. Another survey item concerned workers' feelings in general about prioritizing services by the special-population service criterion as a whole. Overwhelmingly, 63% of the workers do not believe that services should be prioritized to special populations. Of the 16 special populations, the group in which the average disagreement score was strongest was racial and ethnic minority children (M = 2.35). The group in which the average agreement score was strongest was children younger than five years (M = 2.85).

Workers' use of the specialpopulation service criterion. The subscale Behavior Toward Special Population as a Service Criterion3 examined the extent to which workers actually use the special population criterion in their decision to deliver services. For the most part, workers do not deliver services to a family because a child is considered a member of a special population. However, findings indicate that 60% of the respondents gave services to at least one of their last eight cases because of a consideration of the child's being part of a special population.

Why workers are against using the special-population service criterion. The subscale Reasons Special Population Is Not Used to Determine Service Eligibility4 was used to ascertain further the reasons and conditions that prevent workers from targeting services to special populations. Pronounced above all other items, the variable "if I target special populations, other groups of children will not receive services" (M = 2.79) seemed to be a major consideration in not targeting services by the special-population criterion.

Part Three: Determining Whether Workers Use the Special-Population Service Criterion

Because conclusive answers to the research questions were not fully obtainable through the use of descriptive data alone, further analyses were undertaken. For the most part, these analyses corroborated many of the earlier findings reached through the use of the descriptive tests; however, some were not corroborated. Likewise, the more robust tests undertaken in this phase of the analysis yielded some findings undetected in the descriptive data. In order to identify further differences between those family preservation workers who use the special-population service criterion and those who do not use it, discriminant analyses were computed between these two groups with attitude and belief variables as predictors. The dichotomous criterion variable was whether family preservation workers used special population as a primary consideration in service decisions. It should be noted that the authors chose not to draw a composite score on the entire Behavior Subscale for use as a criterion variable. This decision was made because of the amount of missing data for some items. Meaningful discriminant analyses should contain large subject-tovariable ratios. The discriminant test is sensitive to missing data. If the entire scale had been taken, the overall N would have been greatly decreased. The authors chose instead to use the single item in the Behavior Subscale that had the least amount of missing data.

Stepwise discriminant analysis was used to determine which variables best revealed a distinction between those workers who use the special-population criterion and those who do not use it. In using stepwise discriminant analysis in this study, the first variable that entered the Attitude Model was the one that maximized separation between those workers who use special population as a service criterion and those who do not (Stevens, 1992). The subsequent variables to enter were ordered according to which added the most to further separating the two groups of workers.

Model one. The results of the attitude model are displayed in Tables 2 and 3. The key correlates of a service decision were the opinions about children already in substitute care (disagreement), children who are HIV/AIDS infected (agreement), and young children (agreement). This model correctly classified 76% of the cases with a canonical correlation of .33 (p

Model two. In a different model, belief variables were used in a prediction of workers' service decisions. This model, displayed in Tables 4 and 5, was more successful in predicting service decisions (80%). The key predictors of service decisions turned out to be beliefs related to the agency's treatment model not being conducive to special populations, beliefs about too few community resources available to support the delivery of services to special populations, beliefs about the agency's support of special population as a targeting criterion, and beliefs about so few cases actually being classifiable as special population.

The key correlates of a service decision to use special population as a criterion were (a) agreement that the agency supports targeting to special populations, (b) disagreement with the survey question that too few community resources exist to assist workers in service delivery to special populations, (c) agreement that the agency treatment model is conducive to targeting special populations, and (d) disagreement with the item that so few cases are actually special populations. With the enhancement of the predictor capability of this model over the previous one, the canonical correlation was improved to .39 (p

Discussion

Care should be exercised in generalizing the findings derived from the descriptive indices to all family preservation workers, primarily because of the bias in the sociodemographic data derived from the sample. This study included an overwhelming majority of contract workers, a few referring workers, an overwhelming majority of workers who use the family systems approach, and a few workers who use the Homebuilders (i.e., more intensive models) approach. However, it is important to note that this constraint can later prove beneficial in the use of more robust inferential statistical analyses, in which the researchers can draw discernible differences about attitudes toward special populations from some of the defining sociodemographic characteristics previously mentioned. As noted earlier, this article's scope is limited only to a description of worker and program characteristics and a descriptive and inferential examination of the effects of workers' attitudes and beliefs on their decisions to target special populations for servic-delivery. Future analyses of this data set should answer the question "are service delivery decisions reflective of a program's context?" In short, future analyses should inferentially probe the effect that program sociodemographics and worker characteristics and attributes have on service-delivery decisions.

In general, workers felt strongly that family preservation services should not be targeted using the special-population service criterion. They especially felt that such a targeting strategy should not occur along racial or ethnic lines. In the instances in which workers exhibited favoritism toward this service criterion, they did so in the cases of children younger than five years and children with HIV/AIDS. It is noteworthy that one of the variables that best distinguishes between those workers who target special populations and those who do not is the category concerning children already in substitute care (disagreement with this category). As noted above, this category contains many children of color.

In this study, workers' use of the special-population service criterion is consistent with their attitude toward it. They do not deliver services on the grounds that a child could be considered part of a special population. However, this measure does indicate that some of the workers' most recent cases were special populations. Outside referrals for services can influence workers' special-population case loads. However, given the structure of the data-collection instrument, it is not possible to know the proportion of specialpopulation referrals or cases in relation to actual case-load size. In other words, at this time, the researchers are unable to determine what proportion of the 60% of the special-population cases were influenced by the decisions of someone other than the worker who provided the service.

Agency-level, macro-structural issues do not hinder workers from targeting services to special populations in cases in which they disagree about its use. Moreover, the researchers did not find overwhelming support for the premise that moderating variables, such as agency policies or funding specifications, cause workers to avoid using special population as the service criterion. Workers who are against the use of the special-population service criterion seem to be so because of the conceptualization of the term, their own internal ideologies, and concerns about the feasibility and appropriateness of targeting in this manner Workers felt that few cases involved people whom they would classify as members of special populations and that the lack of community resources available to aid them in their delivery of services to special populations could potentially be hindering factors. Other researchers have noted also that the availability of resources influenced workers' decisions (Jenkins & Sauber, 1966; Jones, Newman, & Shune, 1976; Shyne, 1969). In addition, workers tended not to want to deliver services using special population as their service criterion because they felt that other children who also needed the service would be excluded.

Conclusion

As services evolve and the concern for targeting builds, family preservation experts express an interest in special populations. According to the findings of this study, however, workers do not appear to support targeting services using the special-population criterion because of three main reasons: (a) individual ideologies concerning the perception that the targeting criterion is exclusionary, (b) problems with conceptualization, and (c) lack of resources to support service delivery.

The research offered represents a beginning step to understanding workers' attitudes toward special population as a service criterion in an effort to contribute to a larger, growing literature base on targeting services in family preservation programs. Although much remains to be learned about targeting approaches in family preservation services, it is evident that the influence of workers is crucial in directing policy and deciding on final service criteria.

Having said this, it is troubling that social workers, particularly seasoned, professionally trained workers who are knowledgeable about the disparate status of African American children specifically and children of color generally, refuse support of the special-population service criterion. Although the results of this research promote greater understanding of the attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of social workers providing family preservation services, additional information is needed. Future research should include direct questions about those who make service decisions related to special populations on cases in which workers report using the criterion even though they oppose its inherent value. In addition, qualitative technique of individual interviews or the use of focus groups with social workers, administrators, clients, and other stakeholders could possibly uncover more in-depth reasons as to why specific targeting is not executed. This research direction would help ensure clearer and more cogent answers to the behavior items studied. Lastly, the discriminant function of the models, which proved to be the best predictors of service utilization vis-a-vis the targeting criterion special population, could achieve greater validation by testing it on a new sample.

Pinderhughes (1991) suggested that services to achieve reunification are generally not available to African American families. Through a review of case histories, she concluded that the refusal to target services to families of color directly influences the inadequacy of services to African Americans. Morisey (1990) suggested that the refusal by White social workers to target family preservation services to families of color stems from a media-driven stereotypic view that such families are dysfunctional; a preference exists for targeting "treatable" populations versus poor, ethnic, minority populations with multiple problems.

Some social workers suggested to researchers that to target services to children of color is to promote an affirmative action type of rationing of services (Denby & Alford, 1995). This sort of thinking attempts to present these researchers and other supporters of targeting services to special populations as shallow and self-promoting. However, as long as African American children and other children of color are disproportionately represented among those who are experiencing family disruption, they must be considered a special population and receive services intended to support, maintain, and retain family reunification. Such services should be strengths oriented and culturally congruent. Gray and Nybell (1990) assert the notion that service providers must take a culturally relative and nondeficit view when helping African American children and families ameliorate their condition. A culturally driven approach and factual knowledge about the cultural behavior of African American clients can help social workers be more effective with regard to targeting services and overall service delivery (Dodson, 1983; Gray & Nybell, 1990). Likewise, it is appropriate to expect social workers who target family preservation services to be culturally sensitive and culturally competent (Fong, 1994). Given this premise, the social work profession must proactively examine and confront the unnecessary denial of services to African American children, who are among the most needy.

These research findings suggest several fronts from which this issue can be approached. First, if special population is to be used as a service criterion, the following should be considered: redefining or reconceptualizing the term "special population" so that it is more specific and advocating strongly for additional resources to support targeting services for special-population groups. Second, indigenous communities must assume a strong advocacy stance for inclusion of special populations in service delivery and for local agency support that special populations be targeted. Third, these aforementioned efforts must be coupled with renewed commitment to the needs of special populations, which will likely require education about different group needs. Such education should also emphasize to workers the many children of color who need services and remind them of why such groups require the special-population designation (Gray & Nybell, 1990; Hodges, 1991; Stehno, 1990). Finally, although many workers are willing to target medically fragile children and very young children, the question must be asked why many social workers are unwilling to target services to African American children and other children of color. Social workers must confront the issue of racism and whether the refusal to target children of color is based on personal prejudice and underlying racism (Close, 1983; McMahon & Allen-Meares, 1992).

1. This calculation is based on a formulation conducted by the North American Council on Adoptable Children (NACAC) and cited in the W. K. Kellogg Foundation (1995) report. The NACAC used projections from selected states to update a 1992 figure of 442,000 children in public foster care reported in the Green Book by the Ways & Means Committee, U.S. House of Representatives.

2. Scale values for the subscales Attitude Toward Using Special Populations as a Service Criterion and Reasons Special Population Is Not Used to Determine Service Eligibility range from 1 to 4, with 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = agree, and 4 = strongly agree.

3. Scale values for the subscale Behavior Toward Special Population as a Service Criterion were dichotomous. Frequency counts were made of the number of "yes" and "no" responses.

4. Scale values for the subscales Attitude Toward Using Special Populations as a Service Criterion and Reasons Special Population Is Not Used to Determine Service Eligibility range from 1 to 4, with 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = agree, and 4 = strongly agree.

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Ramona W. Denby is assistant professor, College of Social Work University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee. Carla M. Curtis, is assistant professor, College of Social Work Ohio State University, Columbus Ohio. Keith A. Alford, is assistant professor, School of Social Work Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York

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