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“One of the reasons we started this program was to improve children’s placement stability. [W]e are seeing that participation in PC-Care is related to children staying in the home longer and having fewer placement disruptions.”

Lindsay Armendariz, M.S. &
Brandi Hawk, Ph.D.

In this episode, Lindsay Armendariz and Brandi Hawk discuss Parent-Child Care (PC-Care), a brief intervention designed to respond to the needs of parents, foster parents and children in the child welfare system. They will tell you how they assessed the climate and needs of the foster care system in Sacramento County, CA, conducted research and responded with an adapted intervention – PC-Care. Implications for placement stability and other outcomes are described.

Lindsay Anne Forte Armendariz, M.S. earned her Masters in Child Development from University of California, Davis where she studied the outcomes and risk factors of children in the child welfare system who participate in Parent-Child Interaction Therapy with both foster and biological caregivers. She is currently the PCIT & PC-CARE Training Coordinator at the CAARE Center in the Pediatric Department of the UC Davis Children’s Hospital and is a co-developer of Parent-Child Care (PC-CARE). Her research interests include program development and evidence based treatment dissemination and training, effective programs to reduce risk for young children in the child welfare system, and mental health treatment for traumatized children in community mental health center settings.


Brandi Hawk , Ph.D. earned her degree in Clinical and Developmental Psychology from the University of Pittsburgh, where she studied the impact of institution-wide caregiver interventions on the development of young children reared in institutions in the Russian Federation. She is currently a licensed psychologist at the Child and Adolescent Abuse Resource, Evaluation, Diagnostic, and Treatment Center (CAARE Center) within the Department of Pediatrics, University of California Davis Children’s Hospital. She is the clinical manager for programs providing mental health services to children experiencing homelessness and young children in new foster placements and is a co-developer of Parent-Child Care (PC-CARE). Her current research interests include the effectiveness of dyadic interventions in the treatment of trauma and disruptive behavior disorders.

Interviewer: Annette Semanchin-Jones, PhD

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