Child Abuse & Neglect最新文献

Background: Participation by children and young people is an increasingly important guiding principle in child protection policy and practice, thanks to the influence of Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and other factors. However, the scope, terms and timing of such participation are still often determined by adults.

Objective: Drawing on secondary qualitative data, this conceptual study explores children's experiences of participation in their own and their family's involvement in the child protection process.

Participants and setting: Twenty children and young people living in Ireland participated in the source study which provides illustrative material for this conceptual paper. They were aged 10-18 years and had experienced child protection involvement over the 18 months prior to interview.

Methods: A reanalysis of semi-structured individual interviews provided illustrative material for a conceptual exploration of children's experiences of participation in child protection involvement with their family.

Results: The conceptual analysis suggests that the children generally shared adult concerns about the child protection issues in their case, but that they also saw participation differently from adults especially in relation to certain aspects of risk and safety. They had concerns about the risk of stigma among peers and the community due to the intervention, and what they saw as the risk of insufficient ongoing dialogue between them and the professionals.

Conclusions: This conceptual paper opens up new child-centred perspectives on children's participation in child protection, arguing that more attention to child centred participation can enhance participatory and protective practices in the field of child protection.

Background: Competing theories have been posited to explain the association between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and later perpetration of intimate partner violence (IPV): social learning theory, trauma theory, and feminist theory. The objective of this study was to test these three theories explaining link between ACES and later perpetration of IPV in one sample.

Participants and setting: Adolescent boys (N = 498; 16.5 years old (SD = 1.35) at baseline) living in Soweto, South Africa.

Methods: Participants completed baseline and one-year follow-up questionnaires assessing ACEs, IPV perpetration, gender attitudes, and mental health symptoms. Structural equation modeling was used to assess the theories.

Results: Lifetime ACEs at baseline were significantly associated with IPV perpetration at follow-up (B = 0.21, SE = 0.05, p < .001). This relationship was fully mediated by psychological distress, supporting trauma theory. ACEs involving violence in the home and those involving violence in the community showed significant indirect effects on IPV perpetration (B = 0.02, p < .05; B = 0.02, p < .05, respectively), whereas ACEs not related to violence showed no effect; this finding provides some support for social learning theory. Gender attitudes did not mediate the association between ACEs and IPV perpetration, therefore feminist theory was not supported.

Conclusions: Multiple theories attempt to explain the link between ACEs and IPV perpetration. This study found support for trauma theory, and to some extent, social learning theory. Findings suggest the need for interventions to improve coping skills among youth, conflict resolution skills among family members, and non-violent norms among community members.

Background: Detailed prevalence data on child maltreatment types in Canada do not exist. The aims of the current study were to: 1) estimate the prevalence of child maltreatment types in Canada (i.e., emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect, exposure to intimate partner violence, any child maltreatment, and counts), and 2) determine if self-reports of child maltreatment experiences varied by gender identity, sexual identity, and age cohorts.

Methods: Data were collected from all ten Canadian provinces for the 2024 Childhood Adversity and Resilience-Youth and Early Adulthood Research Study (CARe-YEARS; n = 3767; ages 18 to 49 years). Descriptive statistics, logistic regression, and Poisson regression were used for analyses.

Results: Any child maltreatment was reported by 60.9% of the sample. Compared to men, women and gender diverse individuals had increased odds of reporting having experienced many child maltreatment types. Compared to individuals with a heterosexual identity, all other sexual identities had an increased likelihood of reporting experiencing most child maltreatment types. When comparing age cohorts, 18- to 29-year-olds compared to older age cohorts were more likely to report experiencing emotional abuse and more child maltreatment types in unadjusted models. No other age cohort differences were noted.

Conclusions: The current findings are the most comprehensive and up-to-date epidemiological prevalence data on child maltreatment in Canada, with a focus on gender identity, sexual identity, and age cohorts. Findings indicate that child maltreatment is highly prevalent in Canada and requires public health prevention approaches with a focus on diverse gender and sexual identities.

Background: Up to one in three children worldwide experience emotional abuse or emotional neglect, a great number of which develop mental health issues in adolescence and adulthood. Although the precise mechanisms by which these psychological consequences arise are still poorly understood, past research has identified difficulties with emotion regulation as an important, transdiagnostic factor that links experiences of childhood emotional abuse and neglect in childhood with later psychopathology. Past research has not sufficiently considered differences between childhood emotional abuse and emotional neglect in this respect, investigating it as one construct instead. Consequently, in this systematic review, we investigate how childhood emotional abuse and neglect are differentially associated with psychopathology through emotion dysregulation in mediation studies.

Methods: A tailored search strategy to identify relevant mediation studies was developed. The search was performed across five databases in May 2025, including citation searches. 33 articles met the inclusion criteria.

Results: Of the identified studies, 32 investigated emotional abuse and 16 emotional neglect. All but one study (97%) found significant indirect effects of emotion dysregulation from emotional abuse towards psychopathology, regardless of clinical status. For emotional neglect, only half of the studies found significant indirect effects of emotion dysregulation towards psychopathology.

Conclusion: Our findings assert the significance of emotion dysregulation in explaining the relationship between emotional abuse and psychopathology. There is less certainty for emotional neglect, a difference which should be explored by future research. Long-term longitudinal studies are needed to support these relationships as a developmental sequelae.

Background: Reported trends in child maltreatment encounters throughout the pandemic were varying, with few studies examining referrals to child abuse pediatrics programs in non-acute settings.

Objectives: This study investigated the trend over time of physical abuse and neglect referrals for medical evaluation to a child abuse pediatrics program in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Methods: This single-center, cross-sectional study used retrospective chart review data from electronic medical records of patients referred between June 1, 2018, and March 31, 2022. An interrupted time series analysis was conducted to assess variations in referrals before, during, and post-pandemic (mass school and daycare reopening).

Results: 2039 cases were referred for physical abuse and neglect concerns. Pandemic-related closures resulted in an immediate 25% decrease (IRR 0.75, 95% CI 0.60-0.93) in physical abuse referrals, followed by an increasing trend of 2% per month (IRR 1.02, 95% CI 1.003-1.04), largely due to increasing referrals for school-age children. School and daycare reopening was associated with an immediate decrease of 31% (IRR 0.69, 95% CI 0.49-0.98). Referrals for neglect and other forms of abuse increased during the pandemic (IRR 1.05, 95% CI 1.00-1.10), followed by a decreasing trend of referrals post-pandemic by 20% per month (IRR 0.80, 95% CI: 0.68-0.92).

Conclusion: Referrals to a child abuse program showed an increasing trend of physical abuse and neglect cases during the pandemic followed by a decrease with mass school and daycare reopening. The increasing physical abuse cases were largely driven by school-age children.

Background: Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are strongly associated with negative life outcomes. However, few studies have examined their impact on educational outcomes, and the impact of expanded ACEs such as bullying, community disorder, the death of a parent, a serious illness/injury, or foster care.

Objective: This study aimed to examine the associations between total and individual ACEs before age 9, and mental health and educational outcomes at ages 9, 13, 17/18, and 20.

Participants and setting: There were 4729 participants (50.7% male; 43.7% urban residents) from the Growing Up in Ireland longitudinal study.

Methods: Multiple linear regression and binary logistic regression analyses were used to examine twelve ACEs, biological sex, and living region, and their associations with mental health and educational measures.

Results: Almost three-quarters (74.8%) of participants experienced at least one ACE by age 9. Total and individual ACEs weakly to moderately predicted mental health and educational outcomes (p < .001). The ACEs most strongly associated with poorer mental health outcomes were bullying (β ranged from 0.08 to 0.27), community disorder (β = 0.12 to 0.16), and physical neglect (β = -0.13 to 0.09). The ACE most strongly associated with worse educational outcomes was physical neglect (β = -0.19 to -0.14, OR = 0.08 to 0.43).

Conclusions: ACEs occurring before age 9 significantly worsened mental health and educational outcomes from middle childhood to young adulthood, with physical neglect and community disorder having some of the strongest associations with both outcomes.

Background: Child sexual abuse (CSA) in sport remains a focal issue within Australia's national safeguarding agenda, prompting calls for more comprehensive, system-oriented prevention strategies. Football, the most widely participated organised sport among Australian children and adolescents, offers a representative context for examining CSA prevention and management across diverse communities and governance structures.

Objective: The aim of this study was to understand the control structure of the current safeguarding system in football in Australia using the Systems Theoretic Accident Model and Processes (STAMP).

Methods: A STAMP control structure was developed through a multi-phase validation process.

Participants and setting: Nineteen subject-matter experts (14 females, 5 males; mean age = 46.1, SD = 10.8) with an average of 5.8 years (SD = 7.6) in their current safeguarding roles and a further average 10 years (SD = 10.8) of related experience, recruited through targeted sampling across multiple levels of the safeguarding system, participated in the study.

Results: The resulting control structure model included 161 actors and organisations across 7 hierarchical levels of the broader sports system, 120 control mechanisms, and 94 feedback mechanisms across six hierarchical levels.

Conclusions: The STAMP control structure supports a systems-thinking understanding of risk propagation and highlights how structural vulnerabilities and control mechanisms can contribute to safeguarding inadequacies. The developed control structure enables the identification of structural vulnerabilities, supports the detection of leading indicators of CSA, and informs systemic safeguarding reform. By integrating actionable feedback, the model promotes adaptive learning and a shift from compliance-driven reporting to proactive, system-wide responsiveness.