Child & Family Social Work最新文献

This study explores the emotional impact of unplanned removals of foster children on foster parents in Norway. It aims to understand their experiences and identify the support they need during these challenging transitions. We employed a descriptive phenomenological approach. Fourteen in-depth interviews with 11 foster parents were conducted at various stages (before/during/after abrupt removal), revealing three key phases shaping their emotional journey: (1) the downward spiral leading to removal, (2) in the midst of the crisis: two diverging pathways and (3) the aftermath: unresolved grief versus recovery. Foster parents often felt rejected, unacknowledged and deeply wounded by the separation, particularly when excluded from decision-making. Two contrasting post-removal pathways emerged: one marked by recovery, supported through continued contact with the foster child and emotional assistance, and another characterized by enduring unresolved grief, with feelings of abandonment and personal guilt. The study underscores the need for more comprehensive and empathetic support, including transparent communication, follow-up care and opportunities to maintain contact with foster children. The conclusions suggest that child welfare services should consider a more human-centred approach, with a particular focus on promoting resilience and emotional recovery for foster parents.

Research on adoption traditionally focused on identifying difficulties in adopted children and adolescents. However, there is growing interest in adult adoptees. This study moves beyond the search for difficulties to analyse psychological well-being in adult adoptees, conceptualized as more than just the satisfaction of needs or the absence of problems. Previous research has highlighted preadoptive and postadoptive factors that might influence well-being, emphasizing the importance of family context during development for future adjustment. This work also aims to identify variables that promote psychological well-being, including both previous difficulties and positive influences from the family environment. The study included 73 adult adoptees (50.7% female) from a longitudinal study on domestic adoption in Spain, with a mean age of 7.18 in Wave 1, 13.18 in W2 and 29.58 years in W3. Their mean age at adoption was 1.85 years. Findings show that psychological well-being is influenced by previous difficulties and family factors during development. Moreover, there is an indirect effect that leads to considering all the variables included in the model. To conclude, despite the presence of difficulties that might influence adult psychological well-being, there are some variables related to the adoptive family that might buffer those effects.

Palmer, A. N., Patel, M., Narendorf, S. C., Sledge, S., & Sanchez, K. (2023). Changes in Flourishing From Adolescence to Young Adulthood: An 8-Year Follow-Up. Child & Family Social Work, 28(1), 194–209. https://doi.org/10.1111/cfs.12953.

This correction is to the data availability statement. The original openICPSR repository inwhich the data were stored was not allowable by the data use contract. The data arenow stored in the PSID Public Data Extract Repository, available at the new doi: https://doi.org/10.3886/E222301V1.

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Theorizing continues to be a challenge within the burgeoning field of care leaving. This article considers whether ‘social capital’ contributes to explaining the care-leaving experience. Various views of what constitutes social capital are explored, and a three-category typology is presented. Social capital theory is explored through the application of descriptive themes from a study undertaken across four African countries. The study adopted a resilience outcome-oriented mixed method design, which included peer researcher data collection, with 45 participants purposively selected from young people preparing to leave or having left the care of an international NGO providing a service in each country. Thematic analysis identified a series of cross-national dimensions. Framing these descriptive themes within social capital theory shifts the focus of understanding young people's experience away from their personal capacity to cope with the transition to adulthood. Instead, it highlights the types, range and quality of relationships that enable or frustrate their transition. This refocusing not only prompts an explicit relational understanding of care leaving but also suggests ways in which research, service design and practice might usefully be developed.

Retraction: A.B. Brik, “Examining the Impact of Pandemic Stressors on Parental Stress in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Double ABC-X and Moderated Mediation Model Analysis of Family Mechanisms,” Child & Family Social Work (EarlyView): https://doi.org/10.1111/cfs.13244.

The above article, published online on 12 November 2024 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com), has been retracted by agreement between the journal Editor-in-Chief, Antonio Garcia, and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. The retraction has been agreed due to unattributed overlap between this article and another article by the same author [Brik, 2023: https://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12982]. Comparative analysis of the articles revealed that the studies articulate the same research questions and used the same dataset, with this article failing to refer back to the previous publication to explain the variation of the results between the analytic samples. The author was unable to provide a satisfactory explanation for the overlap and as a result, the article must be retracted. A revised version of this article is forthcoming. The author Anis Ben Brik disagrees with this decision.

School staff make reports of concern to child protection agencies when they have concerns about child abuse and neglect. This decision has significant consequences for children, parents and communities, and for the data reports generate. Decisions occur within an ecological system context containing external, organisational, case and decision-maker factors. This article reports on the findings of qualitative interviews with school staff in Aotearoa New Zealand regarding their reporting rationales. Findings show that judgement processes were embedded in the relationships participants had with parents and children. This improved information quality, the tailoring and acceptance of supports and understandings of risks and protective factors. Participants preferred to ‘support not report’ until a tipping point was reached. Perceptions of engagement, the availability of community support services and values influenced tipping points. Service availability differed by the socioeconomic position of the school, affecting threshold decisions. The threshold for report acceptance by Oranga Tamariki (statutory agency) was perceived as increasing, which, combined with bureaucratic problems, reduced confidence in reporting, created ethical conflicts and reduced reporting. A changing policy orientation towards family preservation has resulted in a reconstruction of the statutory role, but little increase of support service resources, nor a robust discussion about power, in the community sector. Implications for families, inequities, system design and research are discussed.

Maintaining case records is an essential and necessary component of children's social work practice. Research and child abuse enquiries internationally have highlighted the need for child-centred and participatory approaches to case recording, yet consistently highlight significant deficiencies in child-centred case recording. This paper presents findings from a mixed-method study that sought to explore practitioners' experiences of child-centred case recording and identify new and innovative solutions to enabling this. Data were collected through focus groups and surveys with social work practitioners who worked in child protection and child looked after (CLA) contexts in two local authorities (LAs) in the north of England. The findings suggest practitioners have developed creative ways to help achieve child-centred recording in challenging circumstances, which could be built upon and more consistently applied across organizations, based on the foundations of relationship-based, ethical and humane practice.