Child Maltreatment最新文献

The present study is one of the largest quasi-experimental studies to date on the effects of home visiting on documented child maltreatment during a child's first two years of life. In this matched comparison group study, we compare 8796 families that participated in a home visiting program (HV families) to 8796 similar non-participating families (non-HV families) selected from birth records using Coarsened Exact Matching. Using sequential logistic regression, we identify that HV families have significantly higher odds of experiencing a child maltreatment investigation by their child's second birthday compared to non-HV families; however, among those that were investigated, HV families have significantly lower odds of having their first investigation substantiated for maltreatment. Overall, HV families do not differ significantly from non-HV families in the odds of experiencing a substantiated investigation over 2 years. We share implications for considering surveillance bias, and we highlight the importance of including both substantiated and unsubstantiated investigations when studying the effects of home visiting on documented child maltreatment.

Child maltreatment poses serious consequences, while sports participation among adolescents offers a potential avenue for mitigating such consequences. This study, based on self-determination theory (SDT), examines the associations among child maltreatment, sports motivation (intrinsic and extrinsic), and satisfaction or frustration of basic psychological needs (BPNs). This study also investigated the mediating role of sports motivation in the relationship between child maltreatment and psychological adaptation. Adolescents engaged in sports were derived from the first wave of a large two-wave study (wave 1: n = 1403; wave 2: n = 618) using data on child maltreatment, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and satisfaction and frustration of within the sports context. Subsequently, data on psychological adaptation, including self-esteem and satisfaction with life, were collected during the second wave. Path analyses revealed satisfaction and frustration of BPNs as significant mediators in the relationship between child maltreatment and sports motivation. In addition, intrinsic motivation mediated the relationship between child maltreatment and psychological adaptation after 18 months. Specifically, the results indicated that enhancing intrinsic motivation in adolescents with a history of child maltreatment by improving satisfaction of BPNs could be an innovative intervention target.

Although adolescents are at elevated risk of sexual victimisation, very limited research has focused on how best to interview suspected adolescent victims. The current study was conducted to lay the groundwork for the development of best-practice interviewing approaches with adolescents when sexual victimisation is suspected. Expert interviewers with experience and knowledge in interviewing suspected adolescent victims were asked about common challenges they encounter with adolescent interviewees and how they tailor their interviews for this population. The findings indicated that adolescents are often reluctant to disclose, and the strategies the interviewers use to meet the unique needs of adolescents hinge on respecting each adolescent as a relatively autonomous and independent person. Identifying which strategies expert interviewers use is a fruitful starting point for future experimental research that can test and ultimately develop evidence-based practices for this population, which is necessary to help interviewers interact with suspected adolescent victims in ways that align with their psychosocial and cognitive maturity.

One of the most widely used data sources for research on foster care and adoption is the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS). County identifiers in AFCARS are suppressed for all counties with fewer than 1000 cases to prevent the re-identification of vulnerable children, but this also impacts researchers' ability to study smaller communities and analyze how local environments may affect out-of-home placements. This study uses non-public AFCARS datasets to assess, for the first time, how data suppression rules impact data access and re-identification risk. It compares the long-standing 1000-case threshold against a wide range of potential alternatives and finds substantial data access gains coupled with moderate risk increases for thresholds between 400 and 700. Adopting a 700-case threshold leads to a 50% increase in the number of identifiable counties while also keeping the percentage of fostered children who face an elevated risk of re-identification below 1%. Making data from a substantial number of rural counties available to researchers requires much larger threshold changes, which in turn increases re-identification risks.

The examination by which physicians achieve board certification in CAP should reflect the knowledge and skills required of the modern practitioner. The American Board of Pediatrics (ABP) assembled a 12-member volunteer panel of practicing child abuse pediatricians to conduct a practice analysis. In the first phase of the project, the panel identified and documented the practice domains, tasks, knowledge, and skills required for clinical practice. During the second phase, the panel organized testable knowledge areas into content domains and subdomains and updated the ABP CAP content outline. Feedback on the revised outline was requested from all ABP board-certified child abuse pediatricians via an online survey and results from the survey informed final revisions to the outline.

The power of stories shared by young people in foster care is well-documented. Largely left unexplored is a story of foster care that is told within a fuller context of the life course. Using narrative and life history methods, this study sought to retrospectively identify and connect life experiences in histories of young people and explore how systems are portrayed. Twelve adults formerly in foster care completed three interviews each and nominated six professionals from foster care for an interview. A three-phase analytical process identified and displayed themes across six developmental stages. Results suggest that life stories contained adversities that were: (1) intergenerational, (2) chronic, (3) complex, and (4) structural. The participants intentionally acted to try to mitigate adversities by accessing opportunities for prosocial pathways. These exploratory findings challenge child welfare policy and practice to attend to young people's life stories and their conceptions of systems that advance well-being.

Limited research is available examining distal child welfare outcomes after participation in evidence-based parenting interventions. To address this gap, this study employed a multi-tiered analytic approach to examine child welfare outcomes after participation in Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up (ABC). Using propensity score analytic techniques to establish a matched comparison group, logistic regressions examined subsequent maltreatment reports and substantiation, and survival analyses observed time to and likelihood of reunification for children who received one of three ABC curriculums compared to comparison group children (child welfare services as usual). In total, 205 children were included in the impact analysis (n = 66 treatment; n = 139 comparison); the majority of the children were White (53.7%), non-Hispanic (84.4%), males (59.5%) with an average age of 6 months (M [SD] = .50 [1.0]). Over half (56.1%) of the study sample was in out-of-home placement; 23.5% of the removed children experienced reunification. No statistically significant group differences were observed on the likelihood of subsequent or substantiated maltreatment reports. All three ABC curriculums were associated with a statistically significant increased likelihood of reunification, when compared to their matched counterpart. Additional research is warranted, though results indicate ABC may be a promising intervention to help enhance the likelihood of reunification.

We asked 111 6- to 11-year-old maltreated children to tell "everything that happened" on their last birthday, the last time they did something they liked to do outside, and yesterday. All children produced details in response to the like to do and yesterday narratives, compared to 98% of children in response to the birthday narrative. Questions about yesterday were more likely to elicit productive responses (93%) than questions about the child's birthday (90%) or things they liked to do (88%). Older children produced the most details in response to questions about yesterday, and older children's birthday narratives were more productive than those about favorite activities. Narratives about children's birthday and yesterday produced comparable percentages of negative details (15%), whereas 32% of children mentioned something negative when discussing a favorite activity. The results suggest that although children find yesterday easier to recall than their last birthday, the birthday narrative is a productive tool for encouraging children to practice recalling more remote events, preparing them for abuse disclosures.

Child maltreatment (CM) is associated with negative health outcomes in adulthood, including deliberate self-harm (DSH), suicidal behaviours, and victimisation. It is unknown if associations extend to emergency department (ED) presentations for non-DSH related injuries. Birth cohort study data was linked to administrative health data, including ED presentations for non DSH related injuries and agency-reported and substantiated notifications for CM. Adjusted analyses (n = 6087) showed that any type of agency-reported notification for CM was significantly associated with increased odds of ED presentation for injuries (aOR = 1.57; 95% CI 1.32-1.87). In moderation analyses, women yielded significantly higher odds of notified and substantiated physical abuse, substantiated emotional abuse, and being subject to more than one type of substantiated abuse than males. ED presentations for injuries could be a proxy for risky behaviours, disguised DSH/suicidal behaviours, or physical abuse. The consistent findings in women may point to victimisation via interpersonal violence.

This proof-of- concept study focused on interviewers' behaviors and perceptions when interacting with a dynamic AI child avatar alleging abuse. Professionals (N = 68) took part in a virtual reality (VR) study in which they questioned an avatar presented as a child victim of sexual or physical abuse. Of interest was how interviewers questioned the avatar, how productive the child avatar was in response, and how interviewers perceived the VR interaction. Findings suggested alignment between interviewers' virtual questioning approaches and interviewers' typical questioning behavior in real-world investigative interviews, with a diverse range of questions used to elicit disclosures from the child avatar. The avatar responded to most question types as children typically do, though more nuanced programming of the avatar's productivity in response to complex question types is needed. Participants rated the avatar positively and felt comfortable with the VR experience. Results underscored the potential of AI-based interview training as a scalable, standardized alternative to traditional methods.