Child & Family Social Work最新文献

The goal of the present study was to investigate the developmental trajectories of cybervictimization, as well as to identify how risk factors such as the sharing of personal information online and engaging in online socializing was related to cybervictimization from age 13 to 16 for Canadian adolescents. Participants included 354 adolescents from the Lower Mainland of British Columbia who were in Grades 6 and 7 at Wave 1 of the study (193 boys, M_age = 13.65 years, SD = 0.71 year). Three years of longitudinal data on cybervictimization, sharing personal information online and time spent socializing online were collected from self-reports surveys. Results from latent class growth analysis identified three different trajectories of cybervictimization: a moderate-increasing trajectory (49 adolescents, 12.7% of the sample), low-increasing trajectory (292 adolescents, 75.8% of the sample) and high-decreasing trajectory (13 adolescents, 3.44% of the sample). Adolescents who reported higher scores on sharing personal information and socializing online were more likely to be in moderate-increasing subgroup. This study makes a substantial contribution to our understanding of the developmental trajectories of cybervictimization in a Western context, from late childhood through to early adolescent.

A supportive social network is crucial for the well-being of child welfare involved youth; however, their social networks are often small and/or unable to provide necessary support. Child welfare workers can play an important role in strengthening and expanding the social networks of youth. In this Norwegian study, 15 child welfare workers' experiences with social network enhancement were examined using semi-structured interviews. Data analysis applied a social capital lens to identify whether and how this framework could enhance our understanding of this issue. Study findings highlight three main objectives, implemented to (a) strengthening the youth's existing network, (b) supporting the youth to take part in (new) social arenas and (c) cultivating the youth's social skills and relationship building. Findings suggest that this approach can contribute to the development of bonding and bridging social capital. Within all objectives and associated strategies, trusting relationships between youth and child welfare workers were considered a prerequisite for success. Several barriers and impeding factors were also identified, such as the limited size of the social networks or lack of social skills. These barriers show how social network enhancement can be complicated, in actual practice.

Military-connected adolescents face unique challenges associated with military life, and some coping strategies are more beneficial to their well-being than others. It is important to understand their use of various coping strategies in connection with their psychological well-being and if there are family circumstances in which these coping strategies are more or less effective for enhancing psychological well-being. Two hundred sixty-six Army families completed surveys. A path analysis examined the associations between military-connected adolescents' use of three distinct coping strategies (i.e., engaging in activities, utilizing self-reliance and optimism, and venting negative feelings) and their psychological well-being (i.e., depressive symptoms, anxiety and life satisfaction). The moderating role of family functioning (reported by mothers) was also examined. The three coping strategies were uniquely related to indicators of the adolescents' psychological well-being, particularly their life satisfaction. Family functioning was not a robust moderator of these associations but was directly associated with greater well-being. Study findings emphasize the salience of various coping strategies for military-connected adolescents. In addition to initiatives that foster healthy family functioning, implications include programming to enhance adolescents' use of coping strategies that encourage self-reliance and optimism along with engaging in demanding activities while minimizing adolescents' reliance on venting negative feelings as a coping strategy.

Being a foster, relative or adoptive parent (herein referred to as ‘resource parent’) is a crucial but highly challenging role. Resource parent trainings are designed to build knowledge, skills, preparation and confidence in resource parents prior to beginning their support of children and youth. However, often resource parents go into these roles feeling unconfident and unprepared to fulfil their responsibilities. The National Training and Development Curriculum for Foster and Adoptive Parents (NTDC) is a new curriculum developed with support from the United States Children's Bureau. This study compares the perceived preparation, confidence and willingness to care for a variety of subgroups of children at baseline and 6 months after training of caregivers who participated in NTDC training curriculum versus training as usual to assess whether the NTDC curriculum led to improved caregiver preparation to foster or adopt. NTDC caregivers were found to have more positive differences than control group caregivers from baseline (pretraining) to follow-up on confidence to care for children considered challenging, confidence to care for children across multiple age ranges and perceived preparation to care for children aged 13 years and older. NTDC is a promising new resource that can help overcome some traditional resource parent training and preparation-related challenges.

Domestic violence (DV) shelters provide a safe place for women and children; however, they are only intended to be a temporary solution until residents can find a safe place of their own. In Sweden, the social services are responsible for helping and supporting victims of DV to get away from the violence, which can include everything from practical help and housing to emotional support. The present article aims to investigate mothers' descriptions of leaving a DV shelter where they were staying with their children. Interviews with 13 mothers of children aged 0–6 years are analysed using thematic analysis. The results show that the process of leaving a DV shelter begins almost as soon as the mother and her children arrive, as it can take quite some time to find a new safe place and to mentally prepare for the move. Additionally, it takes a lot of effort to plan for life outside the shelter. This involves hardship for the mothers and children, meaning that they need support from both shelter staff and social services. Implications for social work practice and policy are discussed.

The article presents a study on structured support for the professional assessment of emergent domestic violence in families with children. Data are presented on the development and study of a new structured support called iRiSk emergency, which was developed jointly by the authors of this article, and an emergency social work unit in Stockholm, Sweden. The model was developed from the iRiSk model, which, translated from Swedish, stands for ‘Interventions and Risk and Protection Assessments for children exposed to violence’. Structured support for emergency risk assessments is rare as existing instruments mainly focus on screening for violence and are not designed to guide professionals in situations of identified violence. The purpose of the research project is elaborated through two research questions: (1) Which information is needed for emergency assessments, and how can it be collected? (2) What are the specific preconditions of the child welfare service emergency work to be taken into account in terms of emergency risk assessments? The feedback from the social workers was that iRiSk emergency was flexible to use, decreased the risk of missing important risk factors and made the assessments more child-centred. The model appears to be a viable approach for enhancing the systematic evaluation and testing of structured support for emergency risk assessment in social work, surpassing the limitations of the current study.

High employee turnover represents a substantial problem in child welfare work. To prevent turnover, knowledge about risk factors, mechanisms, and conditional factors that can explain turnover and turnover intent is highly important. This study investigated a moderated mediation model with (1) emotional dissonance as a predictor of subsequent turnover intent, (2) job dissatisfaction and burnout as potential mediators, and (3) being overly nurturing as a potential moderating variable. The associations were examined using data from a two-wave prospective questionnaire survey of 424 child welfare workers in Norway. Emotional dissonance was positively related to burnout and job dissatisfaction (cross-sectionally) and had a significant indirect association with increased turnover intent 6 months later (prospectively) through burnout, but not job dissatisfaction. An antagonistic interaction effect of being overly nurturing was found on the association between emotional dissonance and burnout, and the indirect association with turnover intent. Specifically, having low scores on the overly nurturing trait had a protective effect on burnout and turnover intent in cases of low to moderate exposure to emotional dissonance. In cases of high emotional dissonance, all employees reported the outcomes as equally negative irrespective of their tendency to be overly nurturing. The findings highlight the importance of organizational efforts that can help child welfare workers deal with emotional demands.