The 2017 national conference of Citizen Review Panels (CRPs) will be held on the UAA campus May 10-12, hosted by the Alaska Citizen Review Panel and sponsored by a number of organizations. Federal law requires all states to establish CPRs, to help protect children from abuse and neglect.
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The 2017 national conference of Citizen Review Panels (CRPs) will be held on the UAA campus May 10-12, hosted by the Alaska Citizen Review Panel and sponsored by a number of organizations inside and outside UAA. Diwakar Vadapalli, assistant professor of public policy at ISER, chairs the Alaska panel, and ISER is sponsoring the keynote speaker, Debra Schilling Wolfe, a nationally recognized expert on child welfare and executive director of the Field Center for Children’s Policy, Practice, and Research at the University of Pennsylvania.
Federal law requires all states to establish CPRs, to help protect children from abuse and neglect. The panels give the public opportunities to comment on policies of the agencies responsible for protecting children, and they also review child-protection policies and make recommendations for change.
To learn more about the conference and how to register, download the flier (PDF, 377KB).
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Diwakar Vadapalli, assistant professor of public policy at ISER, is the lead author of Alaska Office of Children’s Services: Results of the 2016 Annual Staff Survey, a report recently released by the Alaska Citizen Review Panel. He is also the chair of that panel. This report is not an ISER publication, but it adds to Dr. Vadapalli’s ongoing research on child welfare.
Federal and state laws require the Alaska Citizen Review Panel to review the policies, procedures, and practices of child protection services in Alaska and make recommendations for change. In 2015, the panel recommended that OCS re-structure its annual survey of employees and further analyze the resulting survey data. OCS responded by asking the panel to conduct the 2016 survey. In turn, Dr. Vadapalli enlisted students in his graduate-level research methods course at UAA to re-structure and carry out the survey.
Download the report (PDF) from the review panel’s website.
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Nearly 2,700 Alaska children were in foster care in any given month of 2015—20% more than in 2014. More children of all races, all ages, and all regions of the state were in foster care in 2015. But the fastest growth was among White and other non-Native children; among the youngest children; and among children in Anchorage. These are among the findings of a new paper by Diwakar Vadapalli and Jessica Passini that reports on trends among Alaska children in foster care from 2011 through 2015.
Download the paper, The Growing Number of Alaska Children in Foster Care, 2011-2015 (PDF, 2.0MB). If you have questions, get in touch with Diwakar Vadapalli, assistant professor of public policy, at dkvadapalli@alaska.edu or 907-891-6686.
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Research Matters No. 95. Assessing Repeat Child Maltreatment in Alaska December 15, 2015 Statistics from the federal Children’s Bureau show that the rate of repeat child abuse and neglect in Alaska is among the highest in the country. But a new study by ISER researchers Diwakar Vadapalli and Jessica Passini finds that even those grim numbers may underestimate how many children in Alaska are repeatedly abused or neglected.
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Close to 1% of those 21 or younger in Alaska were in foster care in recent years—about twice the average of 0.5% among all those the same age nationwide. That's one of the findings of a new report by ISER researchers Diwakar Vadapalli, Virgene Hanna, and Jessica Passini, examining trends in the age, gender, and ethnicity of children and teenagers in Alaska's foster care system from 2006 through 2013. They also found that younger children make up an increasing share of those in Alaska's foster care system; that girls are somewhat more likely than boys to be in foster care; and that Alaska Native children account for about 60% of all those in foster care.
Download the report, Trends in Age, Gender, and Ethnicity Among Children in Foster Care in Alaska, by Diwakar Vadapalli, Virgene Hanna, and Jessica Passini. If you have questions, get in touch with Diwakar Vadapalli at 907-786-5422 or diwakarvk@uaa.alaska.edu.
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Anyone who believes a child in Alaska is being neglected or abused can call the state Office of Children's Services, which records the allegation and determines whether to investigate it. A new paper by Diwakar Vadapalli and Virgene Hanna of ISER looks at trends from 2006 through 2012 in allegations of child abuse and neglect and in the share OCS decided to investigate. The authors found a sharp increase in the number of allegations, especially of neglect. The number of investigations also increased, but not by nearly as much—and the increase was entirely in investigations of neglect, while the number of investigations of abuse was virtually the same in 2012 as in 2006.
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Download the paper (PDF, 1.0MB)
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In recent times ISER has broadened its research capacity in economics and public policy by adding three new faculty members.
Diwakar Vadapalli is an assistant professor of public policy at ISER. His PhD in social welfare is from Case Western University. Before coming to ISER he worked as a community planner and local government specialist in rural Alaska.
Mouhcine Guettabi is an assistant professor of economics at ISER, with a PhD in economics from Oklahoma State University. His fields of specialization are regional and urban economics, applied microeconomics, and health economics.
Matt Reimer holds a PhD in agricultural and resource economics from the University of California, Davis. He is an assistant professor of economics at ISER, with interests in environmental and resource economics, focusing on fisheries policy.
Read more about the work these new faculty members are doing.
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ISER faculty will teach a variety of courses in spring 2012, including classes on energy and environmental economics, communications policy, public land management, research methods, and culture and globalization.