Child Protection and Practice最新文献

Background

Objective

Participants

Methods

Results

Conclusions

Background

Victim disclosure is crucial in uncovering and preventing child sexual abuse, but many victims are reluctant to disclose. While research on child sexual abuse has identified a range of barriers and facilitators for disclosure, the disclosure process for technology-assisted child sexual abuse (TA-CSA) is largely unexplored.

Objective

Gain a first-person perspective on TA-CSA disclosure.

Participants and setting

Seven young women (aged 7–13 at onset of abuse, 17–24 at interview) were interviewed about the barriers to disclosure they had faced and potential facilitating factors that would have helped them disclose earlier.

Methods

The interviews were analyzed using data-driven reflexive thematic analysis.

Results

A wish to tell captures the desire to have had someone to share abusive experiences with. Fearing who would find out encapsulates the fear that disclosing to one person will spread beyond the initial disclosure. A need for a cue reflects the participants' lack of knowledge and the need for invitations to talk about sex and abuse. Fearing it was my fault conveys the participants' sense of guilt and their wish to understand that they were not to blame.

Conclusions

Despite a wish to disclose, shame, guilt, and fear were barriers that held them back. Knowledge about TA-CSA, and invitations to the topic were seen as potential facilitators. Four suggested facilitating factors for disclosure, which society and the adult world should prioritize, were synthesized from the interviews: open dialogue on sensitive topics, providing an opportunity to tell, allowing the child to be in control of the story, and lifting the shame and self-blame.

Research on adverse childhood experiences and resilience (the process of overcoming trauma) has been dominated by studies originating in wealthy democracies of the global north. We call for more global and ecological approaches not only for documenting the true global burden of childhood adversity, but also for advancing the science of resilience and understanding pathways to overcoming trauma. We identify several forms of trauma that need better consideration in prevalence estimates, including state, political, and institutional violence, crisis migration, climate change and related natural disasters, and global health crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. We also need more nuanced analyses of culture and place and to recognize that the global south and global north are not monolithic concepts. We offer illustrative examples of how more global, ecological approaches can enhance our understanding of pathways to overcoming even high dosages of childhood adversity. One of the key insights of ACEs research, the dose-response relationship between trauma burden and outcomes, has been extended to research on resilience. Concepts that capture the total “dose” of positive assets and resources (people's resilience portfolios) are showing how people might overcome even high doses of trauma. This work can become more global by including incorporating strengths and healing processes common in collectivist, versus individualistic, cultures. It can become more ecological by recognizing that physical environments—both natural and human-made built aspects—play key roles in resilience. Recognizing the intersectionality among these elements can take us to the next generation of trauma and resilience science.

This article presents a theoretical exposition of Arendtian political philosophy for child protection and welfare social work. The aim is to better understand and inform social work in the field of child protection and welfare, whilst accounting for the political context of practice. Sustaining the exposition is the view that power-laden child protection systems are ultimately socio-political through their authority to intervene in private family life. This is partly owing to the instrumental power inherent in child protection systems to exert dominance and control over service users and social groups leading to raced, gendered and classed outcomes in child welfare. To unpack the political nature of social work in child protection and welfare, a tripartite conceptual frame of private, public and social domains is derived from Arendt’s philosophical work. This is critically applied to put forward seven propositions for how social work can develop in child protection and welfare, with respect to practice in a socio-political context. Practical implications for future social work include implementing evidence-informed advocacy efforts and conducting empirical research toward preserving balance in social work attention to public and private life.

Background

Objectives

Participants and setting

Methods

Results

Conclusions

Background

It is common in parenting research for parents to report on the parenting strategies they utilize rather than soliciting children and youths’ experiences of being parented. Who we include in research may change our understanding of parent-child relationships and related outcomes for children and youth.

Objective

To: a) examine similarities and differences among 21 parent- and youth-reported parenting strategies and b) examine the differences in trends for each parenting strategy and youth-reported resilience depending on who reported the parenting strategies.

Participants and setting

Data were from the Well-being and Experiences (WE) Study (n = 1000 youth/parent dyads), a community sample of youth aged 14–17 years and parents from Canada collected from 2017 to 2018.

Methods

Descriptive statistics, McNemar's test, and linear regression models were used to analyze the data.

Findings

The prevalence of five parenting strategies were statistically similar when reported by youth and parents, while three parenting strategies were statistically higher among youth reports compared to parent reports, and 13 parenting strategies were statistically higher among parent reports compared to youth reports. Only one parent-reported parenting strategy was associated with decreased youth-reported resilience. No parent-reported strategies were associated with increased youth-reported resilience. For youth-reports, five parenting strategies were significantly related to increased youth resilience and three parenting strategies were significantly related to decreased youth resilience. Findings indicate that children's and youths' voices should be prioritized in future parenting research, which may inform parenting supports and interventions to prevent child maltreatment and to promote resilience for children and youth.

Exposure to Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) can increase the risk of physical, mental, behavioral, and educational difficulties across the lifespan. ACEs research to date has largely had an individualistic approach, considering experience impacting one person within their own family. In order to be more relevant across societies and cultures around the globe, there is a need to build on current ACEs research by also considering broader aspects of the social ecology including individual, societal, and cultural factors. This commentary discusses the limitations of the current ACEs research and the need to also consider social and methodological aspects of adversity. The importance of considering protective factors is also discussed.

Background

The relationship between parent and child adverse childhood experience (ACE) exposure remains underexplored, particularly within justice-involved samples.

Objective

This objective of the study was to examine the intergenerational continuity of ACEs within a UK prison population.

Participants

294 males aged 18–69 years in a Welsh prison, with father reported data for 671 children they had fathered.

Methods

A face-to-face ACE questionnaire measured exposure to 10 ACE types. For each child they had fathered participants were asked to report their child's gender, age and their exposure before the age of 18 to the same ACE types, except having a household member incarcerated.

Findings

Paternal ACE exposure was found to increase the risk of child ACE exposure, both to multiple ACEs and individual ACE types. Compared to children of fathers with no ACEs, those of fathers with 4+ were almost three times more likely to have been exposed to 2–3 ACEs and six times more likely to be exposed to 4+ ACEs. The risk of a child residing in a household where mental illness was present was 7.4 times higher where their father had 4+ ACEs.

Conclusion

Findings highlight the need for prevention interventions to break the intergenerational continuity of ACEs. Further research is needed to explore what protects against the intergenerational continuity of ACEs. Criminal justice systems and wider services need to ensure that they support those incarcerated alongside their families who are at high risk of ACEs and consequently poorer education, health and criminal justice outcomes.

Medically minor abusive injuries, known as sentinel injuries, are often missed in clinical settings. Child physical abuse, which frequently presents with medically minor or no visible injury, is a common adverse childhood experience (ACE). Practitioners are not typically trained to consider the increased risk of detrimental outcomes described with ACE exposures when young children present with sentinel injuries. However, these injuries may be the only visible signs that a young child is at increased risk of detrimental health, social, and behavioral concerns both imminently and over the lifespan. This Practice Perspective aims to describe common sentinel injuries, discuss why they are underrecognized by practitioners, and describe the clinical approach to assessing these injuries from a Canadian perspective. It will also discuss how improving recognition could decrease subsequent severe presentations with child maltreatment while also identifying children at risk for the detrimental outcomes described in adults with exposures to ACEs.

Background

Child maltreatment has received substantial academic attention. However, little remains known about the intersection of different types of child maltreatment and their association with young people's use of violence in the home.

Objective

To examine the intersection of child maltreatment types and the intergenerational transmission of violence through young people's use of violence in the home.

Participants

and setting: A total of 5021 young people (16–20 years old) completed an online survey, recruited using non-probability sampling via survey panels.

Methods

Analyses were carried out using χ² tests and a series of binary logistic regressions to examine the association between participant characteristics and unique child maltreatment experiences with different forms of maltreatment and young people's use of violence.

Results

Overall, 29.9% of participants had experienced at least one form of maltreatment and 16.7% reported experiences of multi-type maltreatment. The most common experiences were childhood experiences of domestic violence (CEDV) (27.3%), followed by verbal/emotional abuse (17%), which both increased the likelihood of also experiencing physical abuse (OR = 5.85 and OR = 10.21, respectively). Cisgender females and children living with a disability were more likely to experience all four types of maltreatment. Experiences of verbal/emotional abuse (OR = 4.56), and CEDV (OR = 4.52) increased the risk of young people's use of violence in the home.

Conclusions

Findings contribute to a growing body of work recognising CEDV as a distinct form of child maltreatment which intersects with other experiences of abuse, including young people's use of violence in the home.