Child Abuse Review最新文献

The aim of this study is to determine if adverse childhood experience (ACE) is a predictor for non-parental care status based on the Head Start Impact Study data. ACEs consisted of parental alcohol/drug use, depression, neglectful parenting practices, family violence and single parenthood. Children's non-parental care status was based on whether children lived in a placement away from their biological parents. This study examined (i) if each of the ACEs have any association with the status of non-parental care and (ii) if the cumulative number of ACEs have any impact on these associations. Each of the ACEs was associated with the likelihood of children living apart from their biological parents except parental alcohol/drug abuse. As children's ACE scores increased, so did the likelihood of them being in non-parental care. Children whose mothers had less than a high school education, those speaking English at home and children living in rural areas were more likely to be in non-parental care, whereas recently immigrated families were less likely to be in non-parental care. ACEs screening and family-focused trauma-informed care should be implemented within early childcare and education programs, such as Head Start, to ensure wellbeing among young at-risk children with ACEs.

This naturalistic study researched online help-seeking conversations between children and young people (CYP) experiencing emotional abuse and/or neglect and their peers. We believe this is the first study internationally to perform such research. Engagement with anonymous, online communities potentially offer children a source of knowledge and a platform to express and understand their experiences with peers on their own terms, using their own words. This study, co-produced with 10 young co-researchers (YCoR) (aged 14–18 years), aimed to explore the experiences, psychological characteristics and interactions of CYP engaging with an online peer-peer message board service to explore theoretical and methodological approaches to examine such ‘real world’ data and inform service evaluation. Incorporating contextualised interpretations by the YCoR, a phenomenological approach explored how the experiences of abuse were constructed and questioned by CYP in online texts, and what motivates help-seeking. Findings detail the context of CYPs emotionally abusive or neglectful experiences, their language, disclosed mental health challenges, explicit and inferred help-seeking motivations. The co-produced methodology facilitated a nuanced interpretation of CYPs' experiences to convey the impacts of emotional abuse and neglect disclosed in this anonymous environment. Validation with YCoR with diverse experiences would facilitate further translation of findings.

Paediatric pharyngeal trauma is common and frequently occurs after falls or other accidents. Children with these injuries typically present to emergency departments with drooling, respiratory distress, stridor and hematemesis. Although most cases of pharyngeal trauma are minor, some can have rare, life-threatening complications.

Trauma-informed care is emerging as a promising good practice to recognise, treat and prevent trauma in young children. The use of trauma-informed care in childcare organisations might have a positive impact on children who suffer from child maltreatment. The current study organised desk research and focus group discussions with professional experts in Latvia, Italy, Hungary and Belgium to assess if trauma-informed care is known, applied or taught. The joint conclusions of the desk research and the focus group discussions demonstrated that childcare professionals currently lack the knowledge, skills and attitude to engage in trauma-informed care. Even though they have ways to prevent and tackle trauma, these ways are often based on gut feeling or experience and are not formalised or explicitly addressed. This lack of conscious knowhow is an issue that possibly leads to underreporting of situations of child maltreatment and a lack of attuned responses to children suffering from child maltreatment. Overall, there were no training initiatives focused on trauma-informed care for childcare professionals, which might explain why these good practices do not reach the sector.

This paper reports on the evaluation of an integrated violence and abuse prevention programme for children aged 5–11, focusing on children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). The Speak Out Stay Safe (SOSS) programme was delivered in mainstream primary schools across the UK. A small-scale study of children with SEND nested within the larger evaluation captured their understandings of abuse and harm and readiness to seek help. A specially adapted survey was completed by 76 children with SEND (aged 6–7 and 9–10) at baseline (31 intervention; 45 comparison schools), 12 in intervention schools post-programme and 37 (four intervention; 33 comparison schools) six months post-baseline. Qualitative data was captured through 16 teacher interviews. Whilst this nested study was compromised by the COVID-19 pandemic, it provides important evidence that with appropriate adaptations, a survey approach to investigating the learning of children with SEND can be effective. Findings indicate that awareness of abuse and help seeking strategies may improve over time, whilst interview data suggests that adapting the programme to be inclusive of those children may have a better effect. However, a much larger sample of children with SEND is required to confidently measure the effects of such programmes for this population.

Men who have sex with men (MSM) report childhood sexual abuse (CSA) at higher rates than heterosexual men. The literature has established a clear association between CSA and sexual risk taking. Biomedical HIV preventative approaches are effective tools for reducing HIV acquisition. Since many studies are conducted on MSM broadly, the objective of this review was to examine outcomes of studies on MSM with CSA histories and HIV biomedical approaches. The PRISMA checklist was used to extract data from the included studies. Of 124 studies retrieved, seven articles (n = 7) met the inclusion criteria. Studies included in the review were predominately correlational. Four themes were identified which were sexual behaviour, mental health, drug use/polydrug abuse and intimate partner violence. All identified variables impacted biomedical adherence either directly or indirectly. However, negative childhood experiences were not the dominant priority in the studies reviewed. In addition, there were confusion over how some variables were operationalized. This systematic review highlights the need for further research and intervention development based on past experiences and trauma, especially among MSM of colour. Approaches that incorporate past trauma should be the future focus of HIV prevention and management.

This article explores the rarely considered role of friends and peers supporting young people after sexual abuse experienced in adolescence, drawing on participatory research with 32 young people in the UK with lived experience. The article considers ways in which relationships with friends and peers interplay with recovery from abuse. This includes friends and peers as recipients of disclosure, conduits to professional support, sources of emotional support and distraction, and being embroiled in often challenging, precarious peer cultures that young people navigate post-abuse. The article explores young people's rationale for, and experiences of, reaching out to friends and peers. It considers what young people seek and gain from these relationships in the aftermath of abuse, while acknowledging complex risks and precarity of these relationships. It argues that support from friends offers something distinct to family and professionals. It explores benefits of these relationships, but also potential for peer responses to undermine wellbeing if not sufficiently supportive or informed. The article ends by arguing for professionals to better recognise and respond to these relational contexts and consider whether there are safe and appropriate ways to ‘support young people to support’ without responsibilisation, and recognising welfare needs of those providing such support.

In this article we explore a Finnish nationally representative self-report survey (N = 155, 299) conducted in a school as a tool to advance the study of violence in alternative care. By analysing the survey, we were able to provide plausible prevalence and estimates of risk factors of violence in alternative care, suggesting that self-report surveys conducted in schools are a useful and valid methodology for this type of research. Conducting the survey in a school setting enabled us to reach a nationally representative population of adolescents living in alternative care, which would be difficult to achieve in any other way. However, studying violence in alternative care with a school survey requires a large sample size. Even with quite a substantial dataset, detailed explanatory analyses were not possible due to the low number of observations. This emphasises the importance of other types of data in addition to survey data in explanatory analysis. Based on this study, we concluded that nationally representative self-report surveys conducted in schools could provide a useful tool and possibilities for replicable research design, which could thereby develop the research field further.

Extensive evidence indicates that adults with experience of childhood trauma and disorganised attachment are at a higher risk of suffering from depressive symptoms, while at the same time dissociation and mentalisation are very important risk and protective factors in this relation. Although mentalisation and dissociation are mentioned as potential mediators of this relationship, very few studies have analysed the mutual relations between these variables. Bearing in mind the importance of creating more specific and effective ways for dealing with depression, especially within vulnerable groups such as the traumatised, the aim of this research is to examine a serial mediation model in which disorganisation is modelled as effecting a decrease in mentalisation, in turn lead to dissociation, thereby resulting in depressive symptoms. Adult respondents (N = 153) with a history of interpersonal childhood trauma were selected from a larger geographical cluster sample from the general population of Serbia. The respondents filled in a battery of instruments, including The Childhood Traumatic Events Scale, Relationship Questionnaire – CV, Patient Health Questionnaire, Short Scale for the Assessment of Stress-Related Dissociation Symptomatology and the Mentalisation Scale. Our findings suggest that disorganisation has an effect on depression by leading to a decrease in the ability to mentalise, which further triggers dissociation, resulting in depressive symptoms as a final consequence (estimated indirect effect = 0.014, 95 percent CI = 0.005 to 0.026). Additionally, the specific indirect effect involving dissociation as the sole mediator was also significant (estimated indirect effect = 0.058, 95 percent CI = 0.030 to 0.091). Targeting dissociative symptoms in the treatment in patients struggling with depression aftermath of traumatic experience could gain a great benefit for recognition and selection of more adequate treatment strategies.