(Initiated 2010)
In 2010, the Children’s Bureau, a federal agency with the mission of improving child abuse prevention, foster care, and adoption, issued a presidential funding initiative. They sought demonstration projects to test evidence-based strategies to improve outcomes for children in foster care who face the most serious barriers to permanency. This call for proposals was met by a group in Kansas comprising professionals from the University of Kansas (KU), the state’s child welfare agency, and four private foster care providers. The Kansas group, called Kansas Intensive Permanency Project (KIPP), won a 5-year grant with their proposal to conduct a randomized controlled trial (RCT) in which they offered GenerationPMTO to birth parents to strengthen their parenting skills and compared this group to families who received treatment as usual. The Kansas team focused on families of children (ages 3-16) with severe emotional disturbance and living in foster care, as these children tend to languish in foster care for years. In several publications, they have described the process of identifying this high-risk group, their selection of GenerationPMTO as their evidence-based program, their RCT with more than 900 families, and the positive outcomes for the children’s and parents’ well-being. In recent years, the Kansas PMTO Governing Authority has expanded to include 5 agencies, which continue the partnership with child welfare and KU to deliver GenerationPMTO services to families, train and coach new clinicians, and monitor fidelity.
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