Child Abuse Review最新文献

School teachers are a professional group that are responsible for a large proportion of reports concerning suspected child abuse and neglect. This study looks at which concerns are more often reported by schools and if these reports are more likely substantiated when the school is the reporter. The study was designed as a retrospective case-file study (N = 883). Results show that concerns about the child being exposed to physical abuse were notably more frequent in reports from schools compared to other reporters and were more often substantiated when the reports came from schools as opposed to other reporting agencies. The odds for substantiation of abuse were 6.4 times higher if an abuse concern had been raised in the report compared to when it had not. This effect was not significantly mediated by the school being the reporter. School reports contain to a lesser extent concern about risk factors within the family and local environment. This is not necessarily a shortcoming on behalf of schools but may represent conditions that a teacher has less knowledge of and that constitute a ‘blind spot’ for employees in the education sector. The child welfare service must take this into account when assessing school reports.

Drawing on interviews with key stakeholders who have diverse experience of working with children in Ireland, this article highlights that children in residential care are being targeted for sexual exploitation in an organised manner, by networks or gangs of predatory men. The study found that current staffing challenges in the care environment are making it difficult for children to develop trusting relationships to feel sufficiently comfortable to disclose their experiences of sexual exploitation and seek help. It also found that some professionals saw children who were sexually exploited in residential care as ‘problematic’ or even at times inadvertently blamed them for their own exploitation. It further found that the risk of sexual exploitation for children is increased when care staff lack the skills and language to identify, speak about and respond to reports of sexual exploitation. Although there is some evidence of children in families being sexually exploited, a particular context for targeting children for sexual exploitation, that of being in state care, is clearly highlighted in this paper and aligns with evidence from other jurisdictions. The findings suggest a need for a national policy on the protection of children in care from sexual exploitation that would not only prioritise the issue but would trigger increased training and education of social carers, social workers and the Irish police force on the complexities underpinning sexual exploitation so that they are better equipped to protect children in care.

This study responded to a recommendation in the independent Duty of Care Report that called for standardised data to be collected and analysed regarding safeguarding cases in sport. A standardised case data tool was developed and piloted before being adopted by National Governing Bodies across England and Wales. An analysis of the first 4 years of data shows that a total of 3129 cases were managed. Overall, 54% of cases concerned behaviour outside of the context of sport. This demonstrates that sport plays an important role in the broader child protection system. In the remaining 46% of cases, the safeguarding concern was related to behaviour in the context of sport. The most commonly reported forms of concern in sport were physical abuse (20%), contact sexual abuse (20%), non-contact sexual abuse (17%) and emotional abuse (17%). The threshold for cases to be included in the analysis was that the case was judged to be sufficiently serious to involve referral to, or consultation with, the Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO), Children's Services or the Police. There are clearly many cases that did not meet this threshold or were never reported, and hence, these data provide an indication of the safeguarding issues related to sport. The need to expand the tool to collect lower level concerns as well as to include safeguarding concerns regarding adults is advocated.

It is generally understood that individuals who experience exposure to parental violence (EPV) during childhood may come to perpetrate violence, but not all will. Research has shown that individuals who experience EPV can model maladaptive modes of problem-solving that can later be seen in sibling relationships as aggression. This can lead to a heightened risk of adulthood intimate partner violence perpetration (IPV). This study aimed to examine the mediating role of proactive and reactive sibling aggression in the associations of three forms of childhood EPV—violence directed from mother-to-father, father-to-mother, bidirectional—and perpetration of sexual and physical IPV types during adulthood. Participants were 322 emerging adults in the age range 18–29 years (M = 24.69, SD = 2.91; 182 female) recruited online via Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Findings indicated that our sample endorsed bidirectional EPV (41.3%), proactive sibling aggression (87.2%) and reactive sibling aggression (94.7%) in childhood. In adulthood, they endorsed physical IPV (20.8%) and sexual IPV (22.7%). The mediation model indicated that those who had bidirectional EPV were more likely to engage in proactive aggression, which was associated with engagement in physical perpetration of IPV, and sexual perpetration of IPV. Findings suggest the need for intervention programs during childhood in those with exposure to parental violence and sibling proactive aggression.

The need to involve children and families in Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews (CSPRs) is set out within the current statutory guidance. However, there remains limited guidance that sets out how this should be done and the available research indicates that children and families are often excluded or choose not to be involved. The aim of this study was to explore how children and families are currently being involved in CSPRs in order to support the development of best practice approaches. The study was conducted by undertaking a thematic analysis of the involvement of children and families in the CSPRs published on the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) repository since the implementation of the guidance in 2018. The analyses identified four themes: ‘reports do not mention family involvement’, ‘children and families were excluded’, ‘children and families were invited but were not involved’ and ‘children and families were invited and at least one member was involved’. The study concludes that there is a necessity for clearer guidance regarding how, when and who will engage with the children and families, taking an individualised approach that offers flexibility, provides support and addresses trauma.

Recruiting foster parents is a worldwide challenge. In the US, foster parents are supposed to volunteer but receive stipends to cover the cost of foster children. Thus, Foster Care agencies hesitate to highlight the Stipend in their recruitment messaging to prospective foster parents. This hesitation is to weed out extrinsically (stipend) motivated prospective parents early in the application, training and licensing process.

The first step in foster parent recruitment is to start the conversation between prospective foster care parents and foster parent recruiters.

Extant research has relied on current or former foster parents to find their motivations for fostering and continuing to foster. We believe ours is the first study to empirically examine whether mentioning money (stipend) early in the recruitment process makes a difference in the response of prospective foster parents.

The research reports Google ads data from two foster parent recruitment campaigns. These Google search ads showed when “foster parenting” related words were Googled. One ad had the word “stipend,” and the other did not. We then examine differences in response between high and low-income towns. Next, we analysed differences in click behaviour over 207 days between the two versions of the ads. We then examined differences in click behaviour between residents of high and low-income towns. We used the t-test to test for differences in our data analysis approach.

We find no statistical difference in response between the ads that mention ‘stipend’ and those that do not (t = 0.64, p = 0.26). However, residents of low-income towns are five times more likely to click on a foster parent ad than residents from high-income towns, irrespective of whether the stipend is mentioned in the ad (without mentioning stipend: t = 3.21, p = 0.0008; mentioning Stipend: t = 3.77, p = 0.0001).

The well-being, particularly academic performance, of left-behind children (LBC) by their migrant parents has been studied. Although extensive literature pronounces the adverse impact of parental migration on LBC's academic outcomes, a growing body of evidence has found that these children might perform equally or even better academically than non-left-behind children (NLBC), which inspires the present review. This innovative study has systematically reviewed previous studies to provide evidence of a silver lining for parental migration and its implications. We searched for relevant studies from reliable sources and screened them between January and April 2023, following the PRISMA guidelines. After two authors independently screened the title, abstract and full text, 11 potential studies that met the inclusion/exclusion criteria were reviewed. The results indicate that eight eligible studies found no significant difference in academic performance between LBC and NLBC, while the remaining studies showed that LBC outperformed NLBC. Additionally, the age of left-behind children, the duration and reasons for parental migration and household remittance practices were key factors in determining the resilience of LBCs towards academic engagement and performance. The present review findings suggest that future studies need to examine the positive consequence of parental migration on LBCs' academic and nonacademic outcomes by performing rigorous and robust methodology that unfolds and provides casual relationships, which insist on feasible practical and policy effective implications.

The negative effects of child neglect on the development of children are serious and have far-reaching negative consequences for children, especially in Brazil, with great social inequality. The research investigated the consequences of neglect for children in their early years of schooling. The academic performance was evaluated in three groups: children with formal notification of neglect, children with suspected unreported neglect and children who did not suffer any form of abuse. Information was collected from different sources: parents/caregivers, teachers and the children themselves. The groups comprised children in their early school years, aged between six and eight. The results showed that neglected children had borderline or clinical levels of school skills and below-average school performance. The reference group had, for the most part, normal scores and average or above-average school performance. Considering that school is a protective factor, children with learning difficulties and neglected children need support that favours child development.