Melissa Jonson-Reid
Biographic Data
| ID | 1727009 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Melissa Jonson-Reid |
| GIVEN NAMES | Melissa |
| FAMILY NAME | Jonson-Reid |
| SIGNATURE | JONSON-REID M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Washington University in St. Louis |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2978-2408 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 77 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 492 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 77 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Supporting the educational success of children in foster care: The Educational Advocacy Program
Unique challenges in the cycles between caregiver psychological distress and adolescent behavioral issues: Does poverty matter
Understanding the Long-term Impact of Mother’s Criminal Legal Involvement on Child Outcomes
Is Child Welfare Oppressive
The association between mental health and educational problems among adolescent girls in child welfare: Moderating Role of Protective Factors
Creating a public facing dynamic literature map to advance the science in child maltreatment
Trajectories of ILS receipt and subsequent dual-system involvement: Examining the role of out-of-home placement type
From juvenile justice involvement to incarceration in young adulthood: Do independent living services matter
Balancing work and earnings: The long-term impact on mental health
Breaking the cycle between caregiver mental health and child behavioral issues: Does food insecurity matter
The Application of Family Stress Model to Investigating Adolescent Problematic Behaviors: The Moderating Role of Assets
Risk and Protective Factors for Parental Involvement and Early Indicators of School Achievement in Alaska
The stark implications of abolishing child welfare: An alternative path towards support and safety
Scholars and advocates are at odds about how to achieve higher levels of child safety and permanency. Calls for change include the recent upEND focus on eradication of child welfare services to a radical refocusing of the present system towards prevention/early intervention. To clarify the implications of reform over abolition, we seek to portray a future in which the abolition of child welfare has occurred, in juxtaposition to maintaining four c…
Strengthening Social Work Research Education in Pursuit of Social Justice
Research education in social work is becoming increasingly influenced by anti-scientific ideologies. Social work researchers and students now exist in an environment that is moving away from scientific and pedagogical touchstones. These touchstones include the expectation to (a) select research questions, (b) rely upon relevant and applicable methods that are tailored to answer those questions, and (c) engage in a free and open discourse about th…
Do the benefits of homeownership on mental health vary by race and poverty status? An application of doubly robust estimation for causal inference
Poverty or Racism? A Re-Analysis of Briggs et al. 2022
Purpose: This paper presents a re-analysis of the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) data presented by Briggs et al. (2022). Methods: We review five components of that article: The aims, variables, analytic strategy, analysis, and conclusions. Results: We conclude that several of the NCANDS variables used are invalid at the national level, and that this is sufficient to call the research into question. We find concerning issues…
Poverty Indicators in the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System Child File: Challenges and Opportunities
Purpose: The National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) Child File, the only national dataset cataloging child maltreatment reports. It includes variables representing economic distress frequently used in published research. At the national level, these variables are demonstrably implausible, substantially underestimating economic distress. Method: This paper reviews recent work using these variables, analyzes the NCANDS data directly,…
Improving child behavior through parent training in child welfare services: A mixed-methods study of families receiving in-home services
Behavioral parent training programs, such as Pathways Triple P (Level 5 of the Triple P parent support and training system, hereafter referred to as Pathways), have been shown to improve child behavior. However, Pathways has not been tested with a child welfare services (CWS) population. A mixed-methods, randomized control trial was conducted to examine its effectiveness with CWS-involved families. The sample included parents investigated for mal…
Does asset poverty moderate how food insecurity is associated with adolescent problematic behavior? An application of the family stress model using multi-group path analyses
Risk factors and neglect subtypes: Findings from a nationally representative data set
5,872), and 786 children with a first-time child protective services investigation for neglect allegations alone were selected. Multinomial logistic regression analysis was used to explore how individual, family, and community risk factors may be associated with specific neglect subtypes. Five risk factors were able to discriminate between subtypes of neglect. For example, being a young child is associated with a greater risk of experiencing mult…
Child Well-being in Post-Soviet Countries: Discipline Practices in Families in Azerbaijan
Research to Consider while Effectively Re-Designing Child Welfare Services: A Response to Commentaries
Barth et al. (2021) published an article in this journal identifying ten topics in the field of child welfare that are frequently discussed among professionals, advocates, and researchers in an effort to shape discussions of practice and policy reform. Concerned that these discussions are often poorly informed by the research evidence, Barth et al. intended to offer a corrective to these common, erroneous narratives. The Editor-in-Chief, Bruce Th…
Child fatality in families with prior CPS history: Do those with and without intimate partner violence differ
Compared to What? A Meta-Analysis of Batterer Intervention Studies Using Nontreated Controls or Comparisons
This meta-analysis updates the literature on the effectiveness of batterer intervention programs (BIPs) in decreasing recidivism of domestic violence (DV) by focusing on studies with nontreated comparison groups ( N = 17). Included studies were published between 1986 and 2016, and 14 of the 17 provided sufficient information for the meta-analysis. Analysis focused on three reported outcomes: DV recidivism reported by the criminal justice system, …
We’re in This Together”: Perceived Effects of Breast Cancer on African American Survivors’ Marital Relationships
Findings show variability in couples' responses to cancer, with some patients and couples adapting well and others needing additional support. During treatment and at follow-up, oncology social workers can assess patients' and family members' social support needs, provide mental health services, and provide patient navigation to help patients and caregivers access health care and community resources
Lifetime Prevalence of Investigating Child Maltreatment Among US Children
Objectives. To estimate the lifetime prevalence of official investigations for child maltreatment among children in the United States. Methods. We used the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System Child Files (2003–2014) and Census data to develop synthetic cohort life tables to estimate the cumulative prevalence of reported childhood maltreatment. We extend previous work, which explored only confirmed rates of maltreatment, and we add new es…
Race and child maltreatment reporting: Are Blacks overrepresented
Is the overrepresentation of the poor in child welfare caseloads due to bias or need
From placement to prison: The path to adolescent incarceration from child welfare supervised foster or group care
Foster Care and Future Risk of Maltreatment
Foster care re-entry: Exploring the role of foster care characteristics, in-home child welfare services and cross-sector services
Outcomes after child welfare services: Implications for the design of performance measures
Research to Consider While Effectively Re-Designing Child Welfare Services
An intense appetite for reforming and transforming child welfare services in the United States is yielding many new initiatives. Vulnerable children and families who become involved with child welfare clearly deserve higher quality and more effective services. New policies, programs, and practices should be built on sound evidence. Reforms based on misunderstandings about what the current data show may ultimately harm families. This review highli…
NIS interpretations: Race and the National Incidence Studies of Child Abuse and Neglect
Outcomes following child welfare services: What are they and do they differ for black children
Current calls to end structural racism in the US include proposals to abolish or radically transform child welfare services (CWS). While substantial research finds numerous poor outcomes following maltreatment, the efficacy and acceptability of CWS, particularly for children of color, has long sparked debate. This review summarizes the state of quantitative research across seven domains for children overall and by race with varying degrees of CWS…
Vile eloquence: Performance and identity in Greco -Roman rhetoric
Maltreatment is a significant risk factor for teen pregnancy among low income youth even after controlling for neighborhood disadvantage, other caregiver risks and indicators of individual emotional and behavioral problems
Onset of juvenile court involvement: Exploring gender-specific associations with maltreatment and poverty
Probation Foster Care as an Outcome for Children Exiting Child Welfare Foster Care
Little research has been done to help us understand what happens to children who exit child welfare foster care for reasons other than emancipation. Almost no research exists to help us understand out-of-home placement supervised by other providers of children's social services such as juvenile probation or mental health. This study examined school-age children who entered out-of-home placement supervised by probation departments after they left …
The Effect of the Experience Corps® Program on Student Reading Outcomes
A randomized field trial involving 883 students at 23 schools in three urban cities assessed the effectiveness of Experience Corps® (EC), a program that places older adult volunteers in elementary schools to tutor students who are poor readers. Students were assessed at the beginning and end of the academic year with standardized reading measures. Program effects were analyzed using Generalized Estimating Equations (GEE) to adjust for clustering …
Understanding service use and victim patterns associated with re-reports of alleged maltreatment perpetrators
After a Child Abuse Report: Early Adolescents and the Child Welfare System
Child welfare researchers long have advocated a developmental perspective in research, practice, and policy. However, this perspective rarely has been applied to the study of children older than the age of 6 years reported for maltreatment. The present study was an exploratory examination of whether child welfare system responses and recurrent reports varied as a function of age among older children: late childhood (7 through 10 years), early ado…
Child Maltreatment and Delinquency Onset Among African American Adolescent Males
Child welfare and criminology research have increasingly sought to better understand factors that increase the likelihood that abused and neglected children will become involved in the juvenile justice system. However, few studies have addressed this relationship among African American male adolescents. The current study examines the relationship between child maltreatment (i.e., neglect, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and other/mixed abuse) and t…
The relationship between child welfare financing, screening, and substantiation
What do we really know about usual care child protective services
Group Care and Young Children
The average age of children residing in foster care has declined considerably in recent years because of the large influx of infants and very young children into care. The large majority of these young children are placed in foster family homes or with kin, but a not insubstantial number are placed in group care settings. We review group care for young children in California against the standards of child welfare philosophy: to protect children a…
An examination of class-based visibility bias in national child maltreatment reporting
Young Adult Outcomes of Juvenile Court–Involved Girls
The recent increase in the number of girls involved in the juvenile justice system has resulted in increased academic and public attention. Thus far, this attention has focused on entry into the juvenile justice system rather than longer-term consequences. This research helps fill this gap by examining a sample of 700 maltreated and/or impoverished juvenile court-involved females. Competing risks models were used to control for time from juvenile…
A Practical Framework for Considering the Use of Predictive Risk Modeling in Child Welfare
Predictive risk modeling (PRM) is a new approach to data analysis that can be used to help identify risks of abuse and maltreatment among children. Several child welfare agencies have considered, piloted, or implemented PRM for this purpose. We discuss and analyze the application of PRM to child protection programs, elaborating on the various misgivings that arise from the application of predictive modeling to human behavior, and we present a fra…
Resilience among adult survivors of childhood neglect: A missing piece in the resilience literature
Poverty or Racism? A Re-Analysis of Briggs et al. 2022
Purpose: This paper presents a re-analysis of the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) data presented by Briggs et al. (2022). Methods: We review five components of that article: The aims, variables, analytic strategy, analysis, and conclusions. Results: We conclude that several of the NCANDS variables used are invalid at the national level, and that this is sufficient to call the research into question. We find concerning issues…
Vile eloquence: Performance and identity in Greco -Roman rhetoric
Maltreatment is a significant risk factor for teen pregnancy among low income youth even after controlling for neighborhood disadvantage, other caregiver risks and indicators of individual emotional and behavioral problems
Group Care and Young Children
The average age of children residing in foster care has declined considerably in recent years because of the large influx of infants and very young children into care. The large majority of these young children are placed in foster family homes or with kin, but a not insubstantial number are placed in group care settings. We review group care for young children in California against the standards of child welfare philosophy: to protect children a…
From maltreatment report to juvenile incarceration: The role of child welfare services
Outcomes after child welfare services: Implications for the design of performance measures
From placement to prison: The path to adolescent incarceration from child welfare supervised foster or group care
Evaluating Empowerment in a Community-Based Child Abuse Prevention Program: Lessons Learned
Confusion regarding the definition and use of community empowerment can significantly affect program evaluation. This paper illustrates the issue with highlights from a three-year process and outcome evaluation of a community-based program designed to prevent child abuse. Lessons learned from this evaluation suggest ways to improve future research. These suggestions include: (1) researching how a project defines community empowerment; (2) using a…
Severe emotional disturbance and violent offending among incarcerated adolescents
The study reported in this article examined the prevalence of eligibility for educational services for serious emotional disturbance (SED) among incarcerated youths, as well as how this designation relates to offender type. Administrative data from juvenile corrections, county child welfare agencies, and the state Department of Education (special education services for SED) were matched across systems and used to investigate the relationship of S…
Adolescent sexual offenders: Incidence of childhood maltreatment, serious emotional disturbance, and prior offenses
Adolescents incarcerated for sexual offenses were compared to those incarcerated for other crimes on measures of prior child abuse and neglect, serious emotional disturbance, and involvement in child welfare and the juvenile justice system. Sexual or physical abuse was more common than neglect among sexual offenders with fewer than three prior maltreatment reports. Sexual offenders were twice as likely to be receiving special education services f…
Mental Health Problems and Sexual Abuse Among Adolescents in Foster Care: Relationship to HIV Risk Behaviors and Intentions
After a Child Abuse Report: Early Adolescents and the Child Welfare System
Child welfare researchers long have advocated a developmental perspective in research, practice, and policy. However, this perspective rarely has been applied to the study of children older than the age of 6 years reported for maltreatment. The present study was an exploratory examination of whether child welfare system responses and recurrent reports varied as a function of age among older children: late childhood (7 through 10 years), early ado…
Substantiation and Recidivism
This article reports rates of recidivism among initially substantiated and initially unsubstantiated child maltreatment events to determine if substantiation status is associated with higher risk of recidivism. This is an important question given recent concerns that unsubstantiated cases may have as high or almost as high a risk of recidivism as do substantiated cases. The data are analyzed at both the victim level and the case level, divided by…
Foster Care and Future Risk of Maltreatment
Probation Foster Care as an Outcome for Children Exiting Child Welfare Foster Care
Little research has been done to help us understand what happens to children who exit child welfare foster care for reasons other than emancipation. Almost no research exists to help us understand out-of-home placement supervised by other providers of children's social services such as juvenile probation or mental health. This study examined school-age children who entered out-of-home placement supervised by probation departments after they left …
Prisoners Once Removed: The impact of incarceration and re-entry on children, families and communities
Dating violence among emancipating foster youth
Onset of juvenile court involvement: Exploring gender-specific associations with maltreatment and poverty
Time to Leave Substantiation Behind: Findings From A National Probability Study
Data from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-being, a national probability study of children and families investigated for child maltreatment, were analyzed to answer the question: Do substantiated and unsubstantiated cases differ in rates of recidivism over 36 months? Recidivism was classified as (a) any re-reports, (b) substantiated re-reports and (c) subsequent foster care placements. Bivariate (survivor functions estimated by th…
Child Maltreatment and Delinquency Onset Among African American Adolescent Males
Child welfare and criminology research have increasingly sought to better understand factors that increase the likelihood that abused and neglected children will become involved in the juvenile justice system. However, few studies have addressed this relationship among African American male adolescents. The current study examines the relationship between child maltreatment (i.e., neglect, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and other/mixed abuse) and t…
Is the overrepresentation of the poor in child welfare caseloads due to bias or need
Race and child maltreatment reporting: Are Blacks overrepresented
Needs and outcomes for low income youth in special education: Variations by emotional disturbance diagnosis and child welfare contact
Children with Disabilities in Poor Households: Association with Juvenile and Adult Offending
Disabled youths are arrested, adjudicated, and recidivate at higher rates than their nondisabled peers. Although multiple theories have been offered to explain the relationship between disability and delinquency, the empirical evidence is limited and contradictory. Little is known about how disability may be associated with offending once poverty and family risks like maltreatment are controlled for. Using administrative data from a Midwest state…
Understanding service use and victim patterns associated with re-reports of alleged maltreatment perpetrators
Young Adult Outcomes of Juvenile Court–Involved Girls
The recent increase in the number of girls involved in the juvenile justice system has resulted in increased academic and public attention. Thus far, this attention has focused on entry into the juvenile justice system rather than longer-term consequences. This research helps fill this gap by examining a sample of 700 maltreated and/or impoverished juvenile court-involved females. Competing risks models were used to control for time from juvenile…
Racial Bias in Child Protection? A Comparison of Competing Explanations Using National Data
OBJECTIVE: Cases of child abuse and neglect that involve black children are reported to and substantiated by public child welfare agencies at a rate approximately twice that of cases that involve white children. A range of studies have been performed to assess the degree to which this racial disproportionality is attributable to racial bias in physicians, nurses, and other professionals mandated to report suspected child victimization. The prevai…
Psychology (72 works) · Medicine (60 works) · Child Abuse and Trauma (51 works) · Psychiatry (39 works) · Child Welfare and Adoption (35 works) · Political science (32 works) · Poison control (30 works) · Homelessness and Social Issues (29 works) · Welfare (29 works) · Developmental psychology (27 works)