Child & Family Social Work最新文献

Fatherhood interventions have emerged as significant tools for strengthening father identity and parenting skills. Despite the growing evidence of the effectiveness and benefits of these interventions for fathers and their families, there are limited studies on fathers' and providers' perspectives and experiences with the implementation of father-based interventions. To fill this gap, we explore the unique experiences of the Black and Latino programme staff and fathers in the implementation of the 24/7 Dad® intervention. Qualitative data were collected between October 2021 and February 2022 from all programme staff (n = 7) and selected Dad 24/7 fathers (n = 20) from the English (n = 10) and Spanish (n = 10) intervention groups. All programme staff completed a semi-structured interview via phone and/or video conferencing. A qualitative descriptive approach was used for analysis. Average age of staff was 53 years; mean age of fathers was 43 years. Among staff, 43% were Black, and 57% were Latino. Fathers self-identified as Black (30%) and Latino (70%). Three key staff themes were benefits to fathers, impact on fathers and facilitators, and ways to strengthen fatherhood interventions. Three key father themes were intervention benefits, intervention impact (what ‘made it work’) and ways to strengthen intervention services. Fathering is a key component in maintaining healthy families and communities. Fatherhood interventions have great potential for empowering fathers and strengthening families. Finding ways to a relational approach, allocating more time for robust participation and building on facilitators' experiences and assets can help strengthen the impact of fatherhood interventions.

Family-centred practice (FCP) has been suggested as a best practice for treating youth with emotional and behavioural difficulties in residential care. In this preregistered systematic review, we examined how FCP is operationalized and measured in residential youth care and which family outcomes are associated with FCP. Our systematic search in six databases identified 5784 articles. We analysed included articles by coding the operationalizations of FCP in the interventions and study measures. Further, we descriptively summarized relations between FCP and family outcomes. Thirteen articles met our inclusion criteria. In these articles, FCP was operationalized by five types of youth worker actions in interventions and was measured as five types of family involvement. Ten articles examined pre–post differences in family-centred interventions. Only four articles analysed relations between FCP and a family outcome. Studies found some support for a positive association between FCP and whole-family functioning, but overall, the association between FCP and family outcomes remains unclear. Our findings demonstrate that more research is needed that specifically examines different aspects of FCP and how they relate to family outcomes in residential youth care. Such studies can benefit from the conceptual model proposed for FCP in residential youth care interventions.

Depression and Internet addiction are common public health problems among adolescents. Previous literature has examined this association, but its underlying mechanisms remain unclear. The present study aims at identifying the influencing mechanisms of this association by constructing a moderated mediation model focusing on social withdrawal and school belonging. A sample of 616 Chinese middle and high school adolescents are surveyed regarding Internet addiction, depression, social withdrawal and school belonging. The Macro PROCESS was used to examine the proposed theoretical model. Results reveal that social withdrawal partially mediates the nexus between Internet addiction and adolescent depression. In addition, school belonging significantly moderates the association of social withdrawal with adolescent depression. These findings may guide future prevention and intervention strategies for depressed teenagers affected by Internet addiction.

The safety of practitioners working in the area of domestic abuse is a current subject of research and practice concern, as services endeavour to better understand constantly evolving tactics of violence and abuse and respond appropriately. This paper reports on a subset of findings from a practice-led research project focussed on capacity-building workers and their organizations to address domestic abuse, which highlighted the ongoing concerns expressed by practitioners—particularly female practitioners—about their own physical, emotional, and professional safety. Ethnographic notes were taken of Community of Practice discussions in four regions of New South Wales, Australia, involving 69 senior health practitioners from a range of service streams: specialist domestic abuse, mental health, substance use, and child protection. Themes identified through thematic analysis included the following: a tailored approach to practising safely; attending to physical safety; threats to professional identity; promoting emotional well-being; documentation to support worker safety; and attending to cultural safety. These themes are encapsulated in the practitioner question: Who's got my back?—highlighting the importance of legislation, policy, and practices that provide an environment in which safety and support are embedded in a culture of care at every organizational level.

The sexual exploitation of children and youth remains a critical issue within the child welfare system, despite the limited availability of models of care to support these vulnerable individuals. The START with the YOUTH (STAR-Y) program adopts a preventative approach, offering personalized care and wraparound support to youth exhibiting at-risk behaviours. This paper employs a case study methodology using both thematic and content analyses to longitudinally assess the effectiveness of this exploratory program. This evaluation encompasses a comprehensive assessment of various factors associated with the risk of sexual exploitation among program participants. Throughout the program's extended duration (originally planned for one year), predefined risk factors, including concerning Internet behaviours, were monitored and analysed. Qualitative data were gathered through interviews and observations, focusing on the experiences of both the youth and their foster parents. The results highlight the program's successful implementation, with youth enrollment (N = 3) demonstrating a reduction in sexual exploitation risk factors over time, including a decrease in behaviours such as concerning Internet usage. The importance of wraparound support and the foster parent-youth relationship in mitigating risk and nurturing resilience became evident. This exploratory evaluation serves as the initial phase of a comprehensive assessment aimed at understanding how to effectively support youth within this population, including those at higher risk, such as those possibly involved in sex trafficking. The study's findings provide valuable insights into strategies for mitigating the risk of sexual exploitation among vulnerable youth, informing future endeavours to develop and implement similar programs within the child welfare system.

The criminalization of young women in care remains an important practice and policy issue in England despite 2018 national guidance and the subsequent development of local authority protocols to reduce the criminalization of care-experienced young people. This paper contributes to the emerging research on young women whose behaviour challenges professionals, through secondary analysis of case file data and narrative interviews with 24 care-experienced young women from a national project on care and offending. Analysis focused on young women's pathways through the care, justice and education systems and identified five domains within young women's lives where available risk or resilience factors were significant in directing young women towards prosocial opportunities, to new types of victimization or to criminalization and offending. These domains consisted of placements and caregiver relationships; partner relationships; pregnancy and motherhood; participation in education; and the transition to adulthood through leaving care. The paper concludes with implications for practice for professionals working with young women, in particular emphasizing that how the care, justice and education systems respond to young women can contribute to negative pathways or transform them.

The context of this paper is family situations where young people are experiencing significant behavioural and emotional problems. Based on a qualitative study, it offers an empirical and theoretical contribution to the understanding of family-related factors that promote or hinder behaviour change. Data were collected through face-to-face, semi-structured group interviews with nine families (28 participants), all of them mandatory recipients of child welfare services in Croatia. Thematic analysis comprised primary coding designed to elicit information about individual family members' capacity for change and secondary coding of family-level phenomena. The results indicated 10 phenomena that were judged to represent factors that helped or hindered change. The discussion section suggests three broad categories of capacity to change at family level (Goals and Priorities; Problem solving dynamics; and Development of role relationship). This analysis is offered as the basis for an examination of the concept of family capacity for change.

This article brings together the experiences of parents whose children are placed in out-of-home care (OHC) with the theoretical concept of moral injury. The findings are based on empirical data from a research and development project conducted in seven Swedish municipalities with the aim of developing support for such parents. This article draws on a data set of qualitative interviews with 40 parents, 30 mothers and 10 fathers, with children in OHC. The interview transcripts were analysed thematically, with an abductive approach to theories and the empirical data. The findings illustrate how parents of children in OHC experience moral injury in relation to seven aspects: professionals' morally problematic and distressing behaviour, problematic services, an adversarial system, systemic bias, parent's actions, children's withdrawal and feeling excluded. The injuries are related to events in several periods—prior to the child's removal, during the execution of removal and during OHC—and tend to last for many years. These findings stress that the social services must be aware of the injuries parents experience and must minimize the possible harm and moral injury. We also suggest that parents of children in OHC should have an appointed social worker as a means of support.

Social workers often fail to engage fathers in child protection investigations (CPIs), especially when they involve domestic abuse (DA) by fathers. The aim of this study is to examine the strategies used by social workers to achieve cooperation with fathers in CPIs that involve the father being suspected of DA against the child's mother. With the use of qualitative methods, we conducted 31 semi-structured interviews with 15 social workers during their work on 12 CPI cases. Through thematic analysis, two main strategies for achieving cooperation were created: (1) Securing an Initial Bond, which involved reducing the tension in CPI proceedings and affirming the father; (2) Maintaining the Bond while addressing the father's abusive behaviour, which involved negotiating with fathers about the DA and helping them shift their perspective on how their behaviour has impacted the victims. This analysis is rooted in the framework of shame, guilt and social bonds. However, there is a risk that these strategies may lead to the DA being minimized or overlooked. Striking a balance between building a bond and addressing abuse is crucial, and the timing of addressing DA plays a central role.

Families from migrant backgrounds are found to generally underutilize mainstream child and family support services and recourse more to their social networks and community-based actors for support. This article explores the role of migrant community resource persons (CRPs). Drawing on the novel concept of welfare bricolage, the study sought to unravel CRPs' take on family support and their position in the family support landscape beyond the dominant framing as instrumental intermediaries. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with 27 CRPs in Flanders, Belgium, to which thematic analysis was applied. This thematic analysis was guided by key principles of welfare bricolage. The findings add to the existing knowledge that CRPs creatively and flexibly shape community-based family support outside and independent of the predefined, mainstream pathways. CRPs seek to strengthen families and their communities by purposefully assembling and deploying a wide range of resources from various support systems. The findings expand the notion of family support, what it is and who provides it, and thus provide an impetus to reconsider child and family social work in superdiverse settings. This article therefore informs government authorities and formal and informal actors working to support family welfare.