APS Webinars

As more states improve their data systems, Adult Protective Services (APS) agencies are eager to examine administrative data to improve their work. This presentation will use non-technical language to review practical considerations related to organizing and analyzing APS administrative data. We will address approaches for handling erroneous and missing data, as well as defining metrics and comparing findings from multiple locations or programs. Reviewing these details can help practitioners generate more accurate conclusions and improve research quality in this important area. (Materials: slide presentation)

Presenter: Kenny Steinman has over 20 years’ experience collaborating with community leaders and agency professionals to conduct rigorous, relevant research. He was a faculty member of the Ohio State University’s College of Public Health for 11 years and most recently has focused his scholarly work on health policy and its intersection with family violence. Steinman’s projects include an assessment of Ohio’s APS system, evaluating programs to prevent child maltreatment in families who struggle with substance use, and how state efforts to expand Medicaid have helped Ohio residents. 

Elder abuse victimization is increasingly recognized as a pressing public health concern. However, few empirical studies have investigated whether childhood adversities and poor physical and psychological health in midlife heighten risks for abuse in late life. The webinar will review prior literature on the topic; describe the methodological approach within a new study by the presenters; highlight major findings; and discuss implications for clinical practice, treatment, and future research on elder abuse. (Materials: slide presentation)

Presenters:

Scott Easton, PhD, is associate professor, chair of the Mental Health Department, and co-director of the Trauma Integration Initiative at the Boston College School of Social Work. His primary program of research investigates long-term health outcomes of adults who experienced early life-course trauma such as child sexual abuse.

Jooyoung Kong, PhD, focuses her research on the effects that childhood adverse experiences have on later-life health and well-being. Guided by the life-course perspective, she is interested in identifying risk factors that prolong the negative impact of childhood adversity on physical, psychological, and social health in adulthood and identifying resilience factors that can mitigate these harmful effects.

The webinar presenters will introduce the standardized measures used in the Elder Justice Innovation Grant: The Identification, Services, and Outcomes (ISO) Matrix. The assessment tool aims to capture adult protective services (APS) outcomes. The psychometric quality of the measures and measurement burden on APS staff will be discussed. In addition, analysis of extreme cases using the ISO Matrix will be presented to demonstrate how standardized measures can provide feedback to improve APS practice. 

Presenters:

Pi-Ju (Marian) Liu, PhD, is an assistant professor at Purdue School of Nursing and a faculty associate in the Center on Aging and the Life Course at Purdue University. She works with APS at the county, state, and national levels to conduct applied and translational research around elder justice issues, covering topics on elder abuse, neglect, and exploitation.

Kendon J. Conrad, PhD, is professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His interests are in long-term care, mental health, substance abuse, measurement, and evaluation research methodology. He and Dr. Madelyn Iris and others developed the Elder Abuse Decision Support System which, was further developed and field-tested in California as the ISO Matrix with Dr. Marian Liu.

Sara Stratton, LCSW, is an experienced APS supervisor. She has worked with San Francisco’s APS program for 20 years and has provided supervision and development of APS program components and policies and procedures. Stratton is part of the research team for the Administration for Community Living’s Elder Justice Innovation Grant to study outcomes for APS provided to at-risk adults.

The Administration for Community Living facilitated the development of the first research agenda focused exclusively on adult protective services (APS). The research agenda consists of 61 high-priority research questions and is intended to provide guidance to researchers, APS programs, and funders by highlighting research gaps. It is the hope that the research agenda will also encourage researchers to partner with APS programs to answer these important questions. Partnerships between researchers and APS programs are essential to ensure that research is relevant and useful to practitioners and sensitive to the complexities of APS work and the rights of clients. In addition, the agenda is expected to help build the evidence for APS practices and procedures.

This webinar provides an overview of how the research agenda was developed and key questions identified by the field.

(Materials: slide presentation)

Presenters:

Mary Twomey, MSW, and Anne Leopold, MSc, New Editions Consulting, Inc.

In a recent webinar, staff from NCCD and Parents Anonymous® discussed an NCCD study that found some encouraging reductions in child abuse and maltreatment outcomes for Parents Anonymous^® participants in two southern California counties. A two-page summary of the study is available here.

In this webinar, Dr. Erin Espinosa discusses her latest research on pathways to the juvenile justice system and how gender, mental health system involvement, and trauma affect those pathways.

An innovation project was funded to support enhanced partnership between APS and the University of Colorado Colorado Springs (UCCS). The partnership increased the rate of capacity evaluations for the community, and an evaluation of the project generated insights into the challenges of such partnerships. The purpose of this presentation is to share information about the findings related to factors that make this partnership work. Attendees can expect to learn key barriers to partnership even when a provider and funding are available, practical strategies to support successful partnership, and factors to consider when designing a partnership.

(Materials: slide presentation)

Presenter:
Sara Honn Qualls, PhD, ABPP
Kraemer Family Professor of Aging Studies and Professor of Psychology
Director, Gerontology Center, UCCS

In this NCCD-hosted webinar moderated by Jennifer Cotter, an associate director at NCCD, David Burnes, PhD, introduces the idea of goal attainment scaling (GAS), a client-centered tool to generate intervention plans and measure case resolution in APS and other elder abuse response programs. GAS allows workers to capture nuanced aspects of APS work and its various moving parts involved in case intervention/progression. Without a tool that measures overall case resolutions, the effectiveness of different APS intervention models/practices cannot be systematically compared. Dr. Burnes is an assistant professor at the University of Toronto, Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, and an affiliate scientist at Baycrest Health Sciences, Rotman Research Institute. Dr. Burnes’ research centers on understanding and preventing elder abuse in the community, developing/evaluating interventions, and developing intervention outcome measures.