Child Maltreatment最新文献

Consultation following evidence-based practice (EBP) training enhances the uptake of EBPs. Yet, little is known about what occurs during consultation, and it is often difficult for providers to engage in consultation. This study examined provider engagement in consultation and the content and strategies used during consultation following training in Trauma-focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) as part of a community-based learning collaborative (CBLC). Minute-to-minute live coding of consultation calls revealed most content was clinically-oriented and the most common strategies used by consultants were didactic in nature. Providers with more years of professional experience and those with greater TF-CBT knowledge attended significantly more consultation calls. Providers with a greater average weekly caseload and providers who were supervisors presented significantly more cases on calls. Providers with greater TF-CBT knowledge spoke significantly more minutes on calls. Consistent with previous work, findings highlight difficulties with provider engagement in consultation and that providers with more baseline expertise are most likely to be engaged. Findings suggest tailoring EBP training efforts to better engage providers at greatest risk for low engagement.

Achieving permanency is a main goal of the child welfare system. To promote timely achievement of permanency, it is important to understand the determinants associated with permanency outcomes. This study aims to examine the length of time children spend in foster care and identify factors associated with achievement of permanency using administrative data from one state spanning a six-year timeframe and including a final sample of 1,874 children. Determinants associated with achievement of permanency were examined through multivariate survival analyses using Cox proportional hazards regression models. The median length of time in days to achieve permanency was: 188 for reunification, 505 for guardianship, and 932 for adoption. Race/ethnicity, age at removal, number of placement changes, number of siblings, having a removal family team decision meeting (FTDM), and placement type were significantly associated with achievement of permanency. Given the findings, this article proposes implications for practice and policy surrounding racial disproportionality, family engagement, kinship care, and placement stability.

Understanding service disposition pathways is critical to provide deeper insight into why certain subgroups of the population are at risk for recurrent Child Protective Services (CPS) involvement and may highlight disparities across groups or geographic areas. Using the Decision-Making Ecology Framework as a lens, the present study examines whether service disposition pathways are influenced by risk assessment, safety concerns, child age, maltreatment type, previous CPS involvement, and/or county-level structural vulnerability. We linked administrative data from New Mexico's Department of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF) to data from the American Community Survey. Multilevel models examining associations between case (N = 12,960) and county (N = 33) characteristics revealed that both case (age, maltreatment type, risk/safety assessments, previous CPS involvement) and county-level factors (transportation and housing) were associated with service disposition. Additionally, we observed considerable variation at the county level in both the provision of services and the relationship between risk assessment and service provision. By linking different factors of the decision-making process in child welfare cases to intervention strategies, the analysis reveals that the perception of risk can vary based on geographical context resulting in different outcomes for families who have similar risks but different county-level vulnerabilities.

Previous studies have shown that parents with a history of childhood abuse are at increased risk of perpetrating child abuse. To break the cycle of childhood abuse we need to better understand the mechanisms that play a role. In a cross-sectional extended family design including three generations (N = 250, 59% female), we examined the possible mediating role of parental psychopathology and emotion regulation in the association between a history of childhood abuse and perpetrating child abuse. Parents' own history of childhood abuse was associated with perpetrating abuse toward their children, and externalizing (but not internalizing) problems partially mediated this association statistically. Implicit and explicit emotion regulation were not associated with experienced or perpetrated abuse. Findings did not differ across fathers and mothers. Findings underline the importance of (early) treatment of externalizing problems in parents with a history of childhood abuse, to possibly prevent the transmission of child abuse.

Contamination is a methodological phenomenon occurring in child maltreatment research when individuals in an established comparison condition have, in reality, been exposed to maltreatment during childhood. The current paper: (1) provides a conceptual and methodological introduction to contamination in child maltreatment research, (2) reviews the empirical literature demonstrating that the presence of contamination biases causal estimates in both prospective and retrospective cohort studies of child maltreatment effects, (3) outlines a dual measurement strategy for how child maltreatment researchers can address contamination, and (4) describes modern statistical methods for generating causal estimates in child maltreatment research after contamination is controlled. Our goal is to introduce the issue of contamination to researchers examining the effects of child maltreatment in an effort to improve the precision and replication of causal estimates that ultimately inform scientific and clinical decision-making as well as public policy.

While a number of studies have examined the risk of reentry after exiting foster care, few studies have examined the risk of rereport to Child Protective Services (CPS) in the United States. Understanding more about rereports may help identify targets for supportive services that prevent reentry and promote safety. This study is the first to use nation-wide linked data to examine the risk of rereport for reunified children. The sample included children reunified after experiencing their first episode in foster care with at least one CPS report prior to care. With a 2000-day observation period, flexible parametric survival models with time varying hazard ratios were used to model the hazard or rereport conditional on prior CPS and foster care characteristics. Over 50% of the sample experienced a rereport after reunification. Results indicate that children entering foster care following a history of multiple CPS reports prior to placement were at substantially increased risk of rereport after returning home. A group of children with shorter stays in care had a high risk of recurrence within the first month, but this was not true over time. Implications for future research as well as permanency planning and addressing the needs of families with chronic reports are discussed.

This paper describes incident characteristics and dynamics associated with six specific forms of image-based sexual exploitation and abuse of children (IBSEAC). Data were collected on a national sample of 2639 individuals aged 18-to-28 from a probability-based online panel. Respondents completed a self-administered survey questionnaire, providing detailed follow-up information on their experiences of image-based sexual victimization before the age of 18. A total of 607 incidents of IBSEAC were included in the analyses. Findings show substantial diversity in incident characteristics within and across the six forms of IBSEAC (nonconsensual sharing of sexual images, nonconsensual taking or making of images, forced image recruitment, threatened sharing, voluntary image sharing with an older adult, and commercial sexual exploitation involving images). Some notable patterns include frequent involvement of perpetrators who are other youth or young adults, who are known in-person to the victim, and who are intimate partners. The diversity and complexity of dynamics revealed in this study underscores the need for careful design and evaluation of prevention programs and the core messages directed at youth.

Parents with serious mental health (MH) and substance use disorders (SUD) can face profound challenges caring for their children. MH/SUD treatment can improve outcomes for both parents and their children. This study evaluated whether parents with Medicaid with MH/SUD conditions whose children had child protective services (CPS) involvement were receiving MH/SUD treatment and whether receipt differed by race. We analyzed the 2020 Child and Caregiver Outcomes Using Linked Data (CCOULD) which contains Medicaid and child welfare records from Kentucky and Florida on 58,551 CPS-involved caregivers. Among caregivers with an MH diagnosis, White individuals were more likely than Black individuals to have received counseling (42% vs. 20%) or an MH medication (69% vs. 52%). Among caregivers with an SUD, White individuals were more likely than Black individuals to have received counseling (43% vs. 20%) or an SUD medication (43% vs. 11%). More effort is needed to connect parents with CPS involvement to MH/SUD treatment, particularly Black parents.

Ample research has examined how point-in-time or static measures of economic deprivation are associated with children's mental health outcomes. Less is known about the relationship between early childhood unstable income and mental health outcomes. Using the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study, this study examined (1) the latent patterns of early childhood economic well-being, predicted by income level and instability (i.e., direction and frequency of income change); (2) the association of income deprivation patterns with subsequent anxiety and depression symptoms, paying particular attention to the mediating roles of parenting stress and child maltreatment risk. The latent class analysis results suggested four distinct groups representing different combinations of income level and instability. Structural equation modeling results indicated indirect links between income deprivation patterns and mental health outcomes, through parenting stress and physical and psychological abuse. Findings indicated the importance of policies and programs promoting economic stability over the long run.

Child Maltreatment (CM) is a widespread public health problem, with adverse outcomes for children, families, and communities. Evidence-based parenting support delivered via a public health approach may be an effective means to prevent CM. The Every Family 2 population trial applied a public health approach to delivering evidence-based parenting support to prevent CM in disadvantaged communities. Using a quasi-experimental design, 64 matched low socioeconomic communities in the Australian states of Queensland and New South Wales received either the full multi-level Triple P system (TPS) of parenting support, or Care as Usual (CAU). Two population indicators of CM, the number of substantiated cases of CM, and the number of notifications of CM to protective services were compared using Welch's t-test to evaluate intervention effectiveness. After two years of intervention, medium to large effect sizes favoring TPS communities were found for substantiations (d = 0.57, p < .05) and notifications (d = 1.86, p < .001). These findings show the value of the TPS, deployed using a public health approach, in efforts to prevent CM in socially disadvantaged communities. A number of uncontrolled contextual factors are described that may have contributed to some of the differences detected between TPS and CAU communities.