Sarah A Font
Biographic Data
| ID | 240110 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sarah A Font |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sarah A |
| FAMILY NAME | Font |
| SIGNATURE | FONT S A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Pennsylvania State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4022-5517 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 51 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 258 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 51 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Juvenile Offending Among Maltreated Youth: Assessing Type-Specificity and Offense Specialization in the Cycle of Violence
This study assesses how different forms of abuse and neglect are associated with juvenile offending, with specific emphasis on whether youth commit offenses analogous to the illicit parental behaviors to which they were exposed. Using statewide child welfare system data linked with juvenile offending records, we assess rates and types of offending among a cohort of youth exposed to child maltreatment, including physical abuse, sexual abuse, and n…
Short-Term consequences of Parents’ criminal legal system involvement for Children’s academic performance
Uses longitudinal linked administrative data and multiple analytic approaches to assess associations between parent criminal legal involvement and children’s school test scores. • Children with parent CLS involvement are academically disadvantaged. • Associations between parent CLS involvement and children’s test scores are unlikely to be causal. • Children with non-carceral parent CLS involvement have similar test scores as children with an inca…
Care Arrangements for Children Exposed to Maternal Incarceration: Evidence From Wisconsin
Objective This study examines care arrangements for children before, during, and after maternal incarceration. Background Family systems theory suggests that maternal incarceration may drastically alter family life for marginalized children, but little is known about how children's care arrangements change during and after maternal incarceration versus other forms of criminal legal system (CLS) involvement. Method Leveraging longitudinal linked a…
Beyond child abuse: The Array of Family Problems Brought to the Child Welfare System
The majority of children who encounter the child protective services (CPS) system are referred for reasons other than suspected physical or sexual abuse. Yet, specific concerns or risks, typically falling under the umbrella of neglect, remain poorly documented in academic and public debate. Using population-based data for 145,745 children referred to the Pennsylvania child welfare system in 2021 for reasons other than physical or sexual abuse, th…
Does Multidimensional Self-Concept Mediate the Relationship of Childhood Sexual Abuse and Bullying Victimization on Deliberate Self-Harm and Suicidal Ideation Among Adolescent Girls
Prevalence and Treatment of Maternal Substance Use Disorder in Child Welfare
This cohort study demonstrates that formal child welfare services can facilitate substance use treatment for caregivers. As states seek to reduce the role of formal child welfare system responses in responding to parental substance use, alternative strategies to engage and retain parents in treatment are needed
Role of Child Welfare in Detection and Treatment of Early Childhood Developmental Concerns
This cohort study assesses the associations of child welfare system responses with developmental disorders and early intervention services
Infants in the Child Welfare System: Exposure and Risks of Parental Alcohol and Drug Misuse
Adoptee Experiences of Adoption Stigma
The intersection of prenatal substance exposure and child protection: Evidence from Pennsylvania
Current U.S. law mandates notification of substance‐affected infants to state child welfare systems (CWS) for the purpose of assessment and service connections. Yet, CWS appears to identify a small share of substance‐affected infants at birth, potentially reflecting inconsistent diagnosis of prenatal substance exposure (PSE) and emerging efforts to limit toxicology testing. This study uses linked maternal and child administrative records (2015 to…
Foster Care Entry and Later Academic Achievement Among Infants Involved With Child Protective Services
Timing of foster care placement, especially early in life, may have important implications for children's later academic functioning. Given racial disparities in placement decisions, examining associations between age at foster care entry and school outcomes by race is warranted. To address this gap, linked, longitudinal administrative data were used for a cohort of infants involved with child protective services by age one (n = 8795; 47% White, …
Do foster youth face harsher juvenile justice outcomes? Reinvestigating child welfare bias in juvenile justice processing
Research summary For decades, child welfare scholars and policy makers have been concerned with the strong association between foster care and juvenile justice involvement. Foster care placement may lead to differences in justice system outcomes if youth in foster care face “processing bias”—differentially harsh treatment by agents of the juvenile court. Previous research found that youth in foster care at the time of juvenile justice contact wer…
Gauging indirect stakeholder sentiment towards orphanage tourism on Twitter
This study examined 106,979 tweets posted by 34,370 unique users from 2010 to 2019 to understand the sentiment of those indirectly involved in orphanage tourism and its change over time. The result from this study indicated that despite recent critiques of orphanage tourism, the conversations on orphanage volunteering were still largely positive. The persistence of positive sentiment toward orphanage tourism was due to fleeting critiques, the low…
Set to See Us Fail: Debating Inequalities in the Child Welfare System of New York
Provider Attitudes and Self-Efficacy When Delivering a Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Module: An Exploratory Study
BACKGROUND: As constant figures in children's lives, parents are key in protecting children from sexual abuse. One barrier to reaching parents is that the topic can be difficult to broach and is sensitive in nature. Such barriers can interfere with implementation and fidelity of evidence-based prevention strategies that are focused on reducing rates of childhood sexual abuse (CSA). AIMS: In this exploratory study, we examine provider attitudes ab…
Child protective services involvement and exclusionary school discipline
The study examined the impact of child protective services (CPS) contact on out-of-school suspensions for 49,918 Wisconsin students (followed from ages 5–6 to 14–15; [school years 2010–2019; 74% White; 7% Black; 11% Hispanic; 8% other; 49% female]). A quasi-experimental design comparing recent CPS contact to upcoming (future) CPS contact shows that both recent CPS contact without foster care and future CPS contact predict higher odds of suspensio…
A Meta-Regression of Racial Disparities in Wellbeing Outcomes During and After Foster Care
Children in foster care face heightened risk of adverse psychosocial and economic outcomes compared with children in the general population. Yet, the effects of foster care as an intervention are heterogeneous. Heterogeneity outcomes by race and ethnicity are of particular interest, given that Black and Indigenous youth experience foster care at higher rates than other racial/ethnic groups and experience group differences in setting, duration, an…
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,…
Foster care, kinship care, and the transition to adulthood: Do child welfare system processes explain differences in outcomes
Reflections on the Use of Evidence in Child Welfare: A Commentary on Barth et al
To create a child welfare system that meets the needs of abused and neglected children, it is essential to critically evaluate core claims and assumptions about how the current child welfare system operates and its impacts on children and families. Yet, misleading and false claims are frequently repeated in academic, professional, and media outlets. Barth and colleagues (2021) sought to name and evaluate some of these claims, reasserting the cent…
The Centrality of Child Maltreatment to Criminology
Despite sufficient evidence to conclude that maltreatment exposure affects the risk of crime and delinquency, we conclude that the unique effects of child maltreatment on crime and delinquency, and the mechanisms through which those effects operate, remain poorly identified. Key challenges include insufficient attention to the overlap of child maltreatment with various forms of family dysfunction and adversity and a lack of comprehensive measurem…
Revisiting conventional wisdom: What do we know from 30 years of research on sibling placement in foster care
State contexts and foster care adoption rates
Gender Disparity in Pennsylvania Child Abuse and Neglect Sentencing Outcomes
Sentencing studies consistently show that male offenders receive more severe sentences than females. However, theory-based explanations for gender disparities in sentencing, which posit lenience is partially based on caregiver status, may be less relevant for crimes against children. This study leverages Pennsylvania Sentencing Commission data to assess sentence type and length among adults convicted of child neglect or physical abuse between 200…
Housing Insecurity, Maternal Stress, and Child Maltreatment: An Application of the Family Stress Model
While it is well documented that families involved in Child Protective Services (CPS) are likely to experience housing insecurity, the mechanisms that may account for the association between housing insecurity and child maltreatment remain unclear. We use data from the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study (FFCW) to examine associations between housing insecurity and child maltreatment risk. We assess three explanations for associations bet…
Readiness for college engagement among students who have aged out of foster care
Examining racial disproportionality in child protective services case decisions
Permanency and the Educational and Economic Attainment of Former Foster Children in Early Adulthood
Foster children are at disproportionate risk of adverse outcomes throughout the life course. Public policy prioritizes permanency (exiting foster care through reunification with birth parents, adoption, or legal guardianship) to promote foster youths' healthy development and well-being, but little empirical evidence indicates that permanency, including its most preferred form-reunification-promotes positive outcomes. Using multi-system, statewide…
Intersections of individual and neighborhood disadvantage: Implications for child maltreatment
Burnout in Child Welfare: The Role of Employment Characteristics and Workplace Opportunities
This study uses caseworker and agency data from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being to explore the relationship among employment characteristics, workplace opportunities for need satisfaction, and burnout among child welfare workers. In a four-step process, linear-regression models are estimated to determine whether employment characteristics are associated with worker burnout and to test whether workplace opportunities for ach…
Academic engagement and performance: Estimating the impact of out-of-home care for maltreated children
When Home Is Still Unsafe: From Family Reunification to Foster Care Reentry
Reuniting children with their families is the preferred outcome of foster care, yet many children reunited with their families reenter foster care. This study examined how parental substance abuse and mental health problems, and the time allotted for reunification, are associated with reentry risk. We used a complete cohort of children who entered the Texas foster care system in fiscal years 2008 and 2009 to identify the risk of foster care reent…
Inadequate housing and the child protection system response
The Scope, Nature, and Causes of Child Abuse and Neglect
Child maltreatment is a complex problem affecting millions of children in the United States every year. This article examines existing knowledge on the scope, nature, and causes of child abuse and neglect. First, we review the discordant definitions and conceptualizations of child maltreatment and consider the implications of broad and narrow definitions for the size and scope of the child welfare system and for child safety. Second, we provide a…
Prevalence and Risk Factors for Early Motherhood Among Low-Income, Maltreated, and Foster Youth
Early childbearing is associated with a host of educational and economic disruptions for teenage girls and increased risk of adverse outcomes for their children. Low-income, maltreated, and foster youth have a higher risk of teen motherhood than the general population of youth. In this study, we assessed differences in the risk of early motherhood among these groups and investigated whether differences likely reflect selection factors versus effe…
Predicting recurrent maltreatment among high-risk families: Applying the Decision-Making Ecology Framework
Service Referral Patterns Among Black and White Families Involved With Child Protective Services
Racial disproportionality in child protective services is widely studied, yet the role of race in caseworkers' service referral decisions remains less understood. Using the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being II, multiple regression models and Blinder-Oaxaca decompositions assess whether the intersection of caseworker and child race predicts differences in service referral decisions, and whether service disparities were primarily e…
Intergenerational transmission of child abuse and neglect: Effects of maltreatment type and depressive symptoms
Measurement and correlates of foster care placement moves
A short-term evaluation of a hospital no hit zone policy to increase bystander intervention in cases of parent-to-child violence
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…
Socioeconomic Resource Environments in Biological and Alternative Family Care and Children's Cognitive Performance
We examined social and economic resources in the environments of children involved with child protective services and their associations with children's cognitive performance. We used a national dataset of child protection investigations (children aged 6-16 at Wave 1). Using latent class analysis, we constructed profiles of the financial resources, parental education and employment, and family structure and size. We then examined within- and acro…
Is Sexual Abuse a Unique Predictor of Sexual Risk Behaviors, Pregnancy, and Motherhood in Adolescence
This study tested sexual abuse as a unique predictor of subsequent adolescent sexual behaviors, pregnancy, and motherhood when in company with other types of maltreatment (physical abuse, neglect) and alternative behavioral, family, and contextual risk factors in a prospective, longitudinal study of maltreated ( n = 275) and comparison ( n = 239) nulliparous females aged 14–19 years old assessed annually through 19 years old. Hierarchical regress…
Are children safer with kin? A comparison of maltreatment risk in out-of-home care
Reflections on the Use of Evidence in Child Welfare: A Commentary on Barth et al
To create a child welfare system that meets the needs of abused and neglected children, it is essential to critically evaluate core claims and assumptions about how the current child welfare system operates and its impacts on children and families. Yet, misleading and false claims are frequently repeated in academic, professional, and media outlets. Barth and colleagues (2021) sought to name and evaluate some of these claims, reasserting the cent…
The Centrality of Child Maltreatment to Criminology
Despite sufficient evidence to conclude that maltreatment exposure affects the risk of crime and delinquency, we conclude that the unique effects of child maltreatment on crime and delinquency, and the mechanisms through which those effects operate, remain poorly identified. Key challenges include insufficient attention to the overlap of child maltreatment with various forms of family dysfunction and adversity and a lack of comprehensive measurem…
Revisiting conventional wisdom: What do we know from 30 years of research on sibling placement in foster care
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,…
Foster care, kinship care, and the transition to adulthood: Do child welfare system processes explain differences in outcomes
Placement Moves of Foster Children as Perceived by Foster Parents Residing in Urban and Semi-Urban Communities
Placement instability is a concern in foster care. Understanding foster parents' perceptions of the children's move experiences within their homes is important to developing policy and practices that aid foster families and children through these difficult transitions. A sample of 105 foster parents randomly selected from a statewide list responded to a cross-sectional survey that was designed to explore: (1) the nature of placement moves in fost…
Readiness for college engagement among students who have aged out of foster care
Examining racial disproportionality in child protective services case decisions
Burnout in Child Welfare: The Role of Employment Characteristics and Workplace Opportunities
This study uses caseworker and agency data from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being to explore the relationship among employment characteristics, workplace opportunities for need satisfaction, and burnout among child welfare workers. In a four-step process, linear-regression models are estimated to determine whether employment characteristics are associated with worker burnout and to test whether workplace opportunities for ach…
Service Referral Patterns Among Black and White Families Involved With Child Protective Services
Racial disproportionality in child protective services is widely studied, yet the role of race in caseworkers' service referral decisions remains less understood. Using the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being II, multiple regression models and Blinder-Oaxaca decompositions assess whether the intersection of caseworker and child race predicts differences in service referral decisions, and whether service disparities were primarily e…
Inadequate housing and the child protection system response
Academic engagement and performance: Estimating the impact of out-of-home care for maltreated children
Predicting recurrent maltreatment among high-risk families: Applying the Decision-Making Ecology Framework
Child Maltreatment and Children's Developmental Trajectories in Early to Middle Childhood
Associations between experiencing child maltreatment and adverse developmental outcomes are widely studied, yet conclusions regarding the extent to which effects are bidirectional, and whether they are likely causal, remain elusive. This study uses the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a birth cohort of 4,898 children followed from birth through age 9. Hierarchical linear modeling and structural equation modeling are employed to estimat…
Are children safer with kin? A comparison of maltreatment risk in out-of-home care
Housing Insecurity, Maternal Stress, and Child Maltreatment: An Application of the Family Stress Model
While it is well documented that families involved in Child Protective Services (CPS) are likely to experience housing insecurity, the mechanisms that may account for the association between housing insecurity and child maltreatment remain unclear. We use data from the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study (FFCW) to examine associations between housing insecurity and child maltreatment risk. We assess three explanations for associations bet…
Pathways from childhood abuse and other adversities to adult health risks: The role of adult socioeconomic conditions
Income and child maltreatment in unmarried families: Evidence from the earned income tax credit
Contextual factors associated with the use of corporal punishment in U.S. public schools
Intersections of individual and neighborhood disadvantage: Implications for child maltreatment
Is Sexual Abuse a Unique Predictor of Sexual Risk Behaviors, Pregnancy, and Motherhood in Adolescence
This study tested sexual abuse as a unique predictor of subsequent adolescent sexual behaviors, pregnancy, and motherhood when in company with other types of maltreatment (physical abuse, neglect) and alternative behavioral, family, and contextual risk factors in a prospective, longitudinal study of maltreated ( n = 275) and comparison ( n = 239) nulliparous females aged 14–19 years old assessed annually through 19 years old. Hierarchical regress…
Intergenerational transmission of child abuse and neglect: Effects of maltreatment type and depressive symptoms
Measurement and correlates of foster care placement moves
A short-term evaluation of a hospital no hit zone policy to increase bystander intervention in cases of parent-to-child violence
Permanency and the Educational and Economic Attainment of Former Foster Children in Early Adulthood
Foster children are at disproportionate risk of adverse outcomes throughout the life course. Public policy prioritizes permanency (exiting foster care through reunification with birth parents, adoption, or legal guardianship) to promote foster youths' healthy development and well-being, but little empirical evidence indicates that permanency, including its most preferred form-reunification-promotes positive outcomes. Using multi-system, statewide…
When Home Is Still Unsafe: From Family Reunification to Foster Care Reentry
Reuniting children with their families is the preferred outcome of foster care, yet many children reunited with their families reenter foster care. This study examined how parental substance abuse and mental health problems, and the time allotted for reunification, are associated with reentry risk. We used a complete cohort of children who entered the Texas foster care system in fiscal years 2008 and 2009 to identify the risk of foster care reent…
Parenting influences on adolescent sexual risk-taking: Differences by child welfare placement status
Prevalence and Risk Factors for Early Motherhood Among Low-Income, Maltreated, and Foster Youth
Early childbearing is associated with a host of educational and economic disruptions for teenage girls and increased risk of adverse outcomes for their children. Low-income, maltreated, and foster youth have a higher risk of teen motherhood than the general population of youth. In this study, we assessed differences in the risk of early motherhood among these groups and investigated whether differences likely reflect selection factors versus effe…
Socioeconomic Resource Environments in Biological and Alternative Family Care and Children's Cognitive Performance
We examined social and economic resources in the environments of children involved with child protective services and their associations with children's cognitive performance. We used a national dataset of child protection investigations (children aged 6-16 at Wave 1). Using latent class analysis, we constructed profiles of the financial resources, parental education and employment, and family structure and size. We then examined within- and acro…
Gender Disparity in Pennsylvania Child Abuse and Neglect Sentencing Outcomes
Sentencing studies consistently show that male offenders receive more severe sentences than females. However, theory-based explanations for gender disparities in sentencing, which posit lenience is partially based on caregiver status, may be less relevant for crimes against children. This study leverages Pennsylvania Sentencing Commission data to assess sentence type and length among adults convicted of child neglect or physical abuse between 200…
Psychology (43 works) · Medicine (38 works) · Child Abuse and Trauma (35 works) · Child Welfare and Adoption (28 works) · Developmental psychology (20 works) · Homelessness and Social Issues (19 works) · Poison control (19 works) · Political science (19 works) · Psychiatry (18 works) · Nursing (17 works)