Grant Recipient: Children’s Home Network
Principal Investigators: Kerry Littlewood, AAJ Research & Evaluation, Inc.
Michelle Rosenthal, AAJ Research & Evaluation, Inc.
Nisaa Kirtman, AAJ Research & Evaluation, Inc.
Term: 2022 – 2029
Funding: $450,663
Summary: This randomized controlled trial (RCT) will evaluate KIN TECH — a kinship navigation program designed to support kinship caregivers, i.e. grandparents or other relatives caring for abused or neglected children that have been formally placed with them by Child Protective Services. KIN TECH is a home visiting program offering a three to six ‑month intervention that connects these families to community resources and public benefits, provides peer-to-peer support, and addresses complex needs with an interdisciplinary team.
The KIN TECH program was previously evaluated in a randomized controlled trial and found to produce a roughly 25 percentage point reduction in child maltreatment substantiations at a 36 month follow-up. There were random assignment limitations in the previous RCT, but the results were sufficiently promising to warrant further evaluation. Should the new study find that KIN TECH is effective in reducing child maltreatment, it would likely make KIN TECH eligible for federal reimbursement as a “well-supported” intervention under the Title IV‑E Prevention Program established by the Family First Prevention Services Act.
The study team will recruit and randomly assign 600 caregivers to either a group that will receive an offer to participate in KIN TECH or to a control group that will receive usual care services. The primary outcome will be substantiated reports of child maltreatment, measured over the 36-month period after random assignment with administrative data from the Florida Safe Families Network database. The study will also measure children’s placement stability with administrative data at 36 months after random assignment.
The study’s pre-specified analysis plan will be posted shortly.
