At the same time, dogs receive valuable training. Caring Connections serves as a foundation for teaching compassion, nurturance, and communication skills to at-risk youth by combining educational and therapeutic support with animal activities. AHA has developed the program design and curriculum for Caring Connections, and field-tested the program in Minneapolis, Minnesota. AHA also evaluates outcome information in order to determine the program s level of success for both youth and dogs. It produces statistics used by many researchers in the field of child maltreatment.
More states continue to participate each year.
AHA works with states providing technical assistance, data analysis, and statistics for the yearly report. The objectives of this project are to develop an understanding of how law, policy, practice, case, and decision-maker characteristics are related to unsubstantiated disposition distributions and outcomes, and how they compare across states. The research will be conducted jointly by a research team consisting of staff from American Humane Association, American Public Human Services Association, and Walter R. McDonald and Associates. The research is expected to inform national and state policy makers about unsubstantiated report decision making, and clarify longstanding issues regarding disposition categories and their interpretation. This will include the development of safety outcome measures and criteria for risk assessment validation.