Children and Youth Services Review最新文献

Poverty continues be most prevalent among young children under three years of age, when development, particularly in communication and language skills, is rapid and vulnerable to socioeconomic impacts. Home visiting was intentionally formulated to support parents in promoting children’s development and health, offsetting poverty’s threats. Little Talks, a parent-mediated intervention to promote children’s communication and language growth, was designed for implementation in home visiting programs. Developed through community-partnership research methods, Little Talks is a modular intervention that is tailored to parents’ styles and preferences for interacting with their children. A randomized control trial of Little Talks’ effectiveness in attaining outcomes aligned with the two-generational processes inherent in home visiting was undertaken. Situated in an Early Head Start program, home visitors and the families they served were randomly assigned to receive EHS with Little Talks and typical EHS services. Assessed across four time points during a 10-month period, Little Talks was demonstrated to significantly enhance the quality of home visits and parents’ involvement in their children’s early learning experiences. In addition, parents’ depressive symptoms did not increase as noted for the comparison condition. Communication and language growth improved for EHS Little Talks children, although statistical significance was not attained. Moreover, parenting outcomes were greatest for families who were less acculturated to US either by immigration status and/or language preferences. Implications advancing Little Talks as a feasible and effective addition to home visiting programs are offered.

This study examined patterns of adverse childhood experience and its association with community environments. Using the 2020 National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH) data, 30,056 children who are 6–17 years of age were our samples for the investigation. Among them, 14,026 children with at least one Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) were profiled through latent cluster analysis. We found four classes of ACEs: separation/divorce, multiple low-risk, multiple high-risk, and alcohol/drug problem. Moreover, controlling for socio-demographic variables (i.e., race/ethnicity, the highest education level of primary caregiver in a household), we found significant differences in the quality of supportive neighborhoods and the number of positive and adverse community amenities across children categorized into four classes of ACEs and no ACE class (i.e., children without ACEs, n = 16,030). Implications for research on ACEs and their association with the community environment are discussed.

Background

Families of children with disabilities and chronic health conditions experience unique challenges associated with school, therapies, and social supports. However, little is known about the COVID-19 pandemic’s influence on these families.

Aims

To understand the lived experiences of families with children with disabilities and chronic health conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods and Procedures

We gathered narrative accounts from 25 mothers of children with disabilities and chronic health conditions using individual interviews (n = 19) and one focus group (n = 6). A phenomenological approach was used to analyze the data.

Outcomes and Results

Three overarching themes were identified: isolation, connection, and thriving. Families experienced isolation due to the pandemic causing stress and poor mental health; maintained social connections with other family members, friends, and care providers using virtual platforms; and discovered unexpected benefits from the pandemic including a better understanding of their children and a slower pace of life.

Conclusions and Implications

Therapy and support for children with disabilities and their families should prioritize reducing everyday stress, developing social connections that leverage existing networks and identify potential new ones, implementing approaches that build on children’s strengths, and maintaining choice in delivery of professional and peer-led support.

Purpose

Although spiritual/religious strengths (SRS) are widely believed to be a protective factor for youth physical and mental wellness, scant evidence is available regarding how much and in what direction a person’s past adverse experiences can affect the said protection. The study aims to validate the overall protective effect of SRS on health and investigate the mutual effect modification of SRS and accumulated adverse experiences exposure.

Methods

The study is a cross-sectional design utilizing the Child and Adolescent Needs and Strengths (CANS) administered to foster care youth aged between 5 and 17 in a large, mid-western state from July to December 2020. Logistic regressions were used on a gender-balanced working sample of 4,802 youths to model the odds of physical and mental unwellness measured by 12 behavioral and emotional needs (BEN) items in CANS and the combined multi-BENs (MBE) as 4 or more BEN items, given the presence of (a) SRS identified by CANS, (b) past trauma as having 4 or more out of 10 adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) items on the CANS, denoted as multi-ACEs (MAC), and (c) co-occurring SRS and MAC.

Results

Primarily, the study found supported the protective benefits of SRS as the presence was associated with lower levels of BEN. However, the higher levels of adverse experiences exposure were associated with an attenuation of the relationship between SRS and BEN. Secondarily, females were found to have higher SRS and lower BEN than males; adolescents between 13 and 17 had disproportionally more ACES, greater BEN and lower SRS; Black youth had disproportionally more trauma exposure and higher BEN, but had higher SRS.

Conclusion

The findings imply that having spiritual/religious strength helps promote wellbeing among foster care youth. However, it appears the greater levels of traumatic experiences exposure can overwhelm this positive impact. These findings are consistent with the complex literature on the role of spiritual/religious strength in mental health and may help clarify this complex relationship. Trauma-informed intervention should be considered nuanced approaches to address SRS among children and youth who present with these strengths.

In response to the pandemic-induced economic crisis for U.S. families, the federal government expanded the Child Tax Credit (CTC) via the distribution of monthly payments in the second half of 2021. Studies have found that these monthly payments corresponded with reductions in food insecurity, but what is not yet clear is whether these declines were stable across and within the months of receipt. Using novel, daily survey data among a sample of low-income families at high risk of food insecurity (N = 146), we tested whether the CTC payments were associated with stable rates of day-to-day food security. We found consistent declines in food insecurity across CTC months, though smaller declines for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients who experienced lower food insecurity rates, on average. Within a CTC month, we found that food insecurity was stable for non-SNAP families for the first few weeks, but spiked in the week prior to the next payment. SNAP families’ within-month patterns of food insecurity, however, appeared to be tied more to their SNAP benefit timing than CTC payment timing. Both groups saw end-of-the-month spikes in food insecurity among those who received higher CTC amounts, suggesting the money may have been more difficult to stretch across families with a greater number of children. These results suggest that the effectiveness of cash payments like the CTC in reducing economic hardships may depend on family characteristics like receipt of other federal benefits and household size. Accordingly, future provisions of cash assistance may benefit from going beyond income alone and tailoring the amount to a family’s benefits package.

COVID-19 lockdown has been worldwide considered one of the major collective traumatic experiences for everyone, vulnerable adolescents included. Surprisingly, however, research on the experiences of adolescent living in residential care (RC) – considered it to be particularly exposed to traumas and developmental challenges – has been underdeveloped in the pandemic scenario. Bridging this gap and drawing on a national survey with Italian adolescents living in RC, the current study examines their psychosocial wellbeing, i.e., their perceived subjective and relational wellbeing, during lockdown. In terms of subjective wellbeing, results show increased irritability, but, differently from general population, no sleep quality deterioration. In terms of relational wellbeing, we document a general sense of safeness and protection in RC, a significant sense of being listened to by caregivers, and continuity of care with professionals and keypersons. We confirm and display two distinctive effects as well: a) the “gender effect” – i.e., compared to boys, girls reported higher irritability, and b) the “length of placement in RC” effect – i.e., adolescents living in RC for more than 3 years reported increased irritability and a lower relational wellbeing, counterbalanced by a higher competence in keeping their contact with their schoolmates outside RC. Proposals for targeted psychosocial interventions, limitations and implications for future research in the developmental areas are discussed in the conclusions.

Families involved with child welfare services (CWS) often diverge systematically from the general population. They are more likely to live in challenging circumstances characterised by adverse socioeconomic conditions (e.g. poverty) and psychosocial adversities (e.g. mental health problems and substance misuse). Past research has primarily focused on the development and lifelong health and social outcomes of children who have experienced out-of-home care (OHC). However, the separation could also trigger negative emotions and other changes in parents, but much less attention has been paid to the associations between children’s placement and parents’ lives.

This scoping review synthesises results from quantitative studies investigating the socioeconomic and psychosocial outcomes of parents who have experienced the removal of a child into OHC. Six databases were comprehensively searched, with 15 studies selected for inclusion in the review. Studies were conducted among countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) with substantial heterogeneity in the methods and designs, as grouped into three categories: “cross-sectional assessments” (4 studies), “longitudinal assessments” (7 studies) and “pre-post assessment” (4 studies).

To a large extent, studies focus on psychosocial outcomes among mothers. The majority indicate that having a child placed in OHC is associated with the deterioration of psychosocial or socioeconomic outcomes among parents. We may conclude that parents who have experienced the removal of a child are a group that deserves tailored support and counselling. However, further quantitative research into aspects of parents’ lives after children’s OHC placement is needed, particularly with longitudinal designs and more rigorous methods to enable a better understanding of the causes and effects of these associations. This might support the development of targeted and effective interventions for these families.

The purpose of this article is to describe how Dissemination and Implementation (D&I) science approaches can be applied to better understand and evaluate community ACEs prevention programs. While the D&I science research base for ACEs screening and intervention in clinical settings is growing, limited D&I research exists related to ACEs screening and prevention efforts in community settings, like early childhood education (ECE) settings, which are ideal for the application of D&I research because they are common, real-world settings where ACEs and other health-promoting interventions are often implemented. This article describes a proposed D&I framework for a community-engaged ACEs prevention program implemented in 15 rural ECE settings. The proposed framework was applied to previously collected qualitative data from 37 interviews with community members to understand how well the framework captured relevant community context for an ACEs prevention intervention. Themes from the interviews were compared with relevant domains and constructs within the D&I framework. Overall, the themes aligned with and supported the framework. This framework, specific to ACEs prevention research in the ECE setting, can help inform the implementation and evaluation of future ACEs interventions in community settings.

Home and school contexts represent distinct microsystems, each having an associated set of potential risks and protective factors that contribute to children’s developmental outcomes. In the present study, we analyzed a large, nationally representative sample of children and parents from the United States. Data were drawn from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class 2010–2011 (ECLS-K: 2011) to examine whether early adolescents’ sense of connectedness or social exclusion in school moderate the relationship between parental depression and students’ emotional and behavioral wellbeing. We estimated multilevel regression models to adjust for the nesting of students (mean age 11 years; N=3,512) within schools (N=274), and to capture the school context at two levels, both students’ individual perceptions and school-level aggregates. Individual-level perceptions of school connectedness and exclusion were more predictive of internalizing and externalizing behaviors than were school-level measures. Cross-level interactions found that school-level connectedness may buffer against risks from parental depression. For early adolescents with depressed parents, attending a school with a one standard deviation (SD) higher level of overall connectedness was associated with 0.66 SDs lower internalizing behavior problems. This link was not significant among those whose parents were not depressed. These results suggest a school-wide culture of connectedness may be protective for early adolescents facing heightened risk factors in the home environment. Findings have implications for policy makers and practitioners who seek to optimize the protective effects of school contexts and ameliorate risks for vulnerable children.

Prior research finds that some high-quality preschool programs are successful in generating significant initial academic gains and long-term benefits for students as they progress through school. This study examines one of the mechanisms through which North Carolina’s statewide pre-K program (NC Pre-K) may generate such benefits: improvements in the teaching environments of the elementary schools in which NC Pre-K graduates enroll. We find that an increased presence of former NC Pre-K students in elementary schools over the period 2004–2018 was associated with better teachers’ perceptions of different dimensions of their teaching environment, as well as increased teacher and principal retention. Our findings suggest that pre-K expansion policies may benefit the entire school community.