UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa.  — The Penn State Child Maltreatment Solutions Network is seeking proposals for paper and poster presentations at its 2019 conference, which will be held Sept. 23-24 at the Nittany Lion Inn at University Park. The title of this year’s conference is “The Future of Foster Care: New Science to Address Old Problems.”

Proposals for 30-minute oral presentations and poster presentations are sought on the following topics:

— Interventions, practice reforms, or policies that improve the quality of foster children’s experiences in care. Care experiences include placement stability, foster parent-child relationships, and access to evidence-based services.

— Interventions, practice reforms, or polices that improve the performance of foster care agencies. Possible performance areas could include foster parent retention, quality of foster home environments, or workforce quality and retention.

— Interventions, practice reforms, or policies that improve the well-being of children who have experienced foster care. Well-being includes, but is not limited to, children’s physical, mental and behavioral health and academic achievement during or after their time in foster care.

— Research that identifies barriers to systems-level change and poses possible solutions.

— Research on how to improve the use of empirical evidence in foster care policy and practice.

The conference is devoted to presenting innovation in foster care science, so it’s important that speakers and poster presentations focus on what is effective and how effective is defined.

Those interested should prepare a 500-word abstract that details the objectives, methods and results of their study.

Four awards of $250 each will be given for the best posters/studies. Travel awards also will be available for students who quality.

Submit abstracts to Sarah Font, assistant professor of sociology, at saf252@psu.edu by April 1. For more information about the conference, visit http://solutionsnetwork.psu.edu/conf19.