A Critical Content Analysis of the Child and Family Services Reviews for the States of New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia in 2004 and 2009

The study will begin by identifying various types of maltreatment that are committed against some of our Nation's youth while simultaneously assessing the physical, psychosocial and emotional symptoms associated with exposure to these horrible acts. Despite the incremental increase in government funding for the creation of various social service programs and services, this problem has stretched over time and its negative impact continues to drastically change the fragile lives of these at-risk youth. The bulk of this study is dedicated to analyzing what our government is currently doing to help prevent the occurrence and recurrence of abuse and neglect among these very valuable but inherently vulnerable young members of our society. In order to gain a better understanding of how effective current practices, programs, and services are in addressing this issue, it is necessary to evaluate what the state and federal government is doing to prevent and hopefully eradicate these crimes perpetrated against children. Although this problem(s) had already been identified for decades, it wasn't until 2004 that a comprehensive evaluation of these social service agencies tasked to perform these preventive measures and restoration services was conducted. This evaluation known as the Child and Family Services Reviews and the instrument used to drive this process are scrutinized for their usefulness, practicality, validity, and reliability while focusing on ways to improve current practices. In the end, this study should serve as a recipe for implementing changes that will help to improve current evaluation practices, not only in states like New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia that were included in this study, but every county in all fifty states as well as Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C.