‘You have to go hunting for information’: Barriers to service utilization among expectant and parenting youth with experience in foster care

• Published in: Child & family social work 2024-05, Vol.29 (2), p.571-583
• Main Authors: Villagrana, Kalah M., Carver, Ann Turnlund, Holley, Lynn C., Ogbonnaya, Ijeoma Nwabuzor, Stott, Tonia, Denby, Ramona, Ferguson, Kristin M.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Access; Child care; Child Rearing; Child welfare; Communication; Content analysis; Coordination; Employee retention; Employee turnover; Focus groups; Foster care; Hiring; Hunting; Interagency collaboration; Interorganizational networks; Interviews; Juvenile justice; Labor Force; Navigation; Negative Attitudes; Parenthood education; Parents & parenting; Services; System theory; Systems Approach; Systems theory; Training; Workforce; Youth
• ISSN: 1356-7500; 1365-2206
• DOI: 10.1111/cfs.13116

Unique service needs exist for expectant or parenting youth with foster care histories (EPY) and their families. Informed by Critical Ecological Systems Theory (CEST), this exploratory qualitative study presents findings from an inductive content analysis of in‐depth interviews and focus groups with EPY and service providers. The study included nine in‐depth face‐to‐face interviews with service providers ( n  = 5) and EPY ( n  = 4) as well as five focus groups with service providers ( n  = 23) and three with EPY ( n  = 7) to identify the characteristics of service providers, agencies and systems that may act as barriers to service utilization among EPY with a foster care history ( n =  10) or juvenile justice history ( n  = 1). Service provider characteristics included negative attitudes towards EPY and/or those with child welfare experiences. Agency characteristics included a lack of workforce diversity, employee turnover, lack of training about diverse communities, restrictive enrolment processes and eligibility requirements, lack of childcare and transportation and limited accessibility of services. System characteristics included a lack of up‐to‐date information about existing services, territorialism, funding sources that do not prioritize interagency collaboration and a lack of communication/coordination among agencies. Implications include hiring and retaining a diverse workforce, providing training about diverse communities and implicit biases concerning young parents, developing navigation services specifically for EPY and developing processes for sharing data and communicating across systems that interact with EPY.