STATUS OF COURT-CONNECTED PROGRAMS FOR CHILDREN WHOSE PARENTS ARE SEPARATING OR DIVORCING

This article reports on programs for children whose parents are divorcing or separating. Data were obtained from 67 courts and 81 program providers across the United States. Most court systems with children's programs used community providers and encouraged rather than required children's attendance. The average program consisted of one or two sessions, with a length of 4 to 5 1/2 hours. A partial list of commercially available curricula is provided in the appendix.     

Violence and Aggression in the Lives of Homeless Children

The present research examined the role of violence and aggression in the lives of children in homeless families, focusing on possible connections among family violence, children's aggression, and children's problems with social isolation and rejection. Measures were obtained from structured interviews with 93 sets of mothers and children. Consistent with past research, average estimates of specific violent incidents experienced by mothers (as adults) were quite high. Measures of this family violence were reliably correlated with children's behavior problems as well as with measures of aggression in peer relationships (victimization, ease of resolving fights with friends).Finally, results of regression analyses were most consistent with a model in which family violenceand economic distress contributed to problematic aggressive behaviors among children; that aggression, in turn, appeared to lead to social isolation and avoidance. The overall results emphasized the need to address violence and aggression in any intervention programs for homeless children and families.     

INTERPARENTAL CONFLICT AS A RISK FACTOR FOR CHILD MALADJUSTMENT: Implications for the Development of Prevention Programs

This article reviews research on the effects of interparental conflict on children and examines its implications for divorce education programs designed to reduce conflict after divorce. Basic research indicates that prevention programs for parents will be most effective in fostering children's adaptation to divorce if they can reduce the level of destructive conflict that children are exposed to, foster good parent–child relationships, and keep children from being caught in the middle of parental tensions and disagreements. Programs for children are likely to be most helpful if they help children learn ways to cope with situations in which they feel pressured to side with one parent against the other and avoid feeling responsible for parental problems. Although psycho-educational programs are widely available and often court-mandated, evaluation studies are rare and support for their efficacy is mixed.     

PROGRAMS FOR PROMOTING PARENTING OF RESIDENTIAL PARENTS: Moving From Efficacy to Effectiveness

This article reviews prevention programs that target primary residential parents as change agents for improving children's postdivorce adjustment. First, we review parental risk and protective factors for children from divorced families, including parenting quality, parental mental health problems, interparental conflict, and contact with the nonresidential parent. Following a discussion of brief informational interventions, we describe the findings of evaluations of three multisession, skill-building interventions for divorced parents. Impressive evidence is presented that parenting is a modifiable protective factor and that improving parenting leads to improvements in children's postdivorce adjustment. We then discuss, in greater detail, the New Beginnings Program, which we highlight because it has shown repeated, immediate effects on children's mental health outcomes as well as long-term effects on a wide array of other meaningful outcomes, such as diagnosis of mental disorder in the past year, externalizing problems, alcohol and drug use, and academic performance. Also, mediational analyses have shown that program-induced changes in parenting accounted for changes in mental health outcomes. The remainder of the article describes a research and action agenda that is needed to successfully implement the New Beginnings Program in domestic relations courts.     

Children's Medicaid enrollment: the impacts of mandates, welfare reform, and policy delinking

From 1984 to 1990. Congress enacted a series of mandates that expanded Medicaid eligibility for low-income children by gradually delinking Medicaid eligibility from welfare eligibility. The 1996 national welfare reform law nominally completed the delinking process when the statutory phase-in of children's Medicaid coverage was preserved even as the states were given increased flexibility for administering welfare programs. This article provides estimates of the impact of these fedcral policy changes on children's Medicaid enrollment rates and analyzes the degree of success in uncoupling children's Medicaid enrollment from welfare. Data from the Current Population Survey for 1979 to 1998 are used to provide standardized enrollment probabilities for the United States and individual states. The results show important enrollment increases associated with the period of the mandated expansions, followed by enrollment declines associated with welfare reform. The largest increases in enrollment during this period were in states with historically restrictive welfare eligibility, but rates also rose in states that previously had relatively expansive welfare eligibility. The net effect was a reduction in the extent of state-to-state variation in enrollment. The Medicaid expansion peaked in 1995, prior to the advent of national welfare reform. Since then, children's Medicaid enrollment has fallen, with the largest declines falling on families with the very lowest incomes. Consistent with the desire to delink children's Medicaid coverage from welfare, the association between Medicaid and AFDC/TANF enrollment weakened during the expansionary period, but there still was a relatively strong relationship between policy outcomes for these two programs. Despite the policy changes, Medicaid coverage of children is still influenced by state-level welfare policy.     

Wounding Words: Maternal Verbal Aggression and Children's Adjustment

Psychological maltreatment, including verbal aggression, has been implicated as an important contributor to children's behavioral problems. The present study looked specifically at the relationship between different forms of maternal verbal aggression and their association with children's adjustment. Mothers from Violent and Nonviolent families were compared on their use of various verbal aggression tactics, as measured by the Conflict Tactics Scale (Straus, 1979). Mothers from both groups used threats and insults with comparable frequency. In both groups, insults were predictive of children's adjustment. The relationship was particularly striking in children from violent homes. We conclude that chronic exposure to inter-parental violence may render children emotionally susceptible to maternal disparagement.     

ASSISTING CHILDREN THROUGH TRANSITION:Helping Parents Protect Their Children From the Toxic Effects of Ongoing Conflict in the Aftermath of Divorce

The negative effects of prolonged interparental conflict on children are well documented. This article describes a preventive intervention designed to help separating parents to (a) reduce the stress of a breakup on their children and (b) learn skills for protecting them from the toxic effects of ongoing conflict. Assisting Children through Transition-(A.C.T.) For the Children is based on a risk and resilience model emphasizing skills training and effective parenting practices. Post-program results from 609 participants indicate that the majority of male and female participants reported an increased awareness of the deleterious effects of interparental conflict on children and learned skills for protecting children from ongoing conflict. Most participants reported firm intentions to continue to use skills for reducing conflict with a former spouse and to support their children's healthy relationship with both parents. Study limitations, directions for future research, and implications for legal and mental health practitioners are discussed.     

The need for child maltreatment research and program evaluation

The knowledge base supporting child abuse treatment and prevention rests upon clinical experience and applied research. An analysis of program funding in the United States indicates that unevaluated clinical programs are funded rather than research or program evaluation projects. Grant funding patterns for the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect were analyzed for 4 years. Overall, 66% of projects had no research or evaluation component. Without such programs, we cannot determine the effectiveness of treatment and prevention efforts that, while well intended, may have no effects on the participating parents and children, or, worse still, may have unintended negative consequences. Quality programs must be based on the maintenance of a balance between research and clinical efforts with evaluation being an important component of the latter.Portions of this paper were presented at the Seventh International Congress on Child Abuse and Neglect, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 27 September, 1988.     

Understanding Children's Use of Secrecy in the Context of Eyewitness Reports

To investigate socioemotional influences on children's eyewitness accuracy, we examined children's reports for activities they were motivated to conceal. Forty-eight 3–6-year-old children participated in a standardized play session with their mothers. Half of the children were told by an experimenter not to play with certain toys, but did so at the urging of their mothers, who told their children to keep the play activities secret. The remaining children were not restricted from playing with the toys, nor told by their mothers to keep the play activities secret. Later, all children were interviewed about the activities with free narrative and detailed questions. Half were given an interview that consisted of highly suggestive questions; half were given an interview consisting of specific, less suggestive questions. Results indicated that older children who were instructed to keep events secret withheld more information than did older children not told to keep events secret. Younger children's reports were not significantly affected by the secret manipulation. There were no significant effects associated with interview type. We discuss implications for understanding the development of children's knowledge and use of secrecy, and applications of the research to issues that arise when child witnesses give reports in legal contexts.     

PREVENTION PROGRAMS FOR DIVORCED NONRESIDENT FATHERS

Divorced nonresident fathers are a promising target for preventive efforts to assist families after divorce. The research literature suggests that such programs should focus both on the frequency and the quality of the child's contact with the father, as well as the quality of postdivorce mother–father relations. Dads For Life (DFL) is the program for this target group with the most convincing evidence of preventive effects. This eight-week program centers on professionally made videos. It was tested in a randomized trial with 214 families. In comparison to control families, children in families in which the father participated in DFL had significantly lower internalizing problems. The preventive impact of DFL was strongest for the most troubled youngsters.     

Adults’ Judgments of Children's Coached Reports

This study investigated adults’ judgments of the honesty of children's coached true and fabricated mock testimony. Adults saw video clips of children testifying in a mock court about a true or fabricated event in their lives. They were asked to make an assessment of the truthfulness of the testimony, and respond to questions about their perception of children's credibility. Half of the adults saw children testifying after a competence examination, and the other half saw children testifying without a competence examination. Overall, girls were rated as more competent than boys, and their testimony was more likely to be believed. Younger children were more likely to be rated as incompetent than older children. A factor analysis of adults’ responses revealed six factors which significantly predicted adults’ overall assessment of children's credibility, and their evaluations of children's competence to testify. Adults’ detection accuracy was at chance, with the majority of children rated as truthful. Viewing the competency examination and cross-examination did not improve the adults’ detection accuracy. However, seeing the cross-examination made adults’ less likely to believe children's testimony. The implications of these results for the judicial system are discussed.     

Disclosure of children's free and reduced price meals and free milk eligibility information in the child nutrition programs. Final rule

This final rule establishes requirements for the disclosure of children's free and reduced price meals or free milk eligibility information under the Child Nutrition Programs. The Child Nutrition Programs include the National School Lunch Program, School Breakfast Program, Special Milk Program, Summer Food Service Program, and Child and Adult Care Food Program. Within certain limitations, children's free and reduced price meal or free milk eligibility information may be disclosed, without parental/guardian consent, to persons directly connected to certain education programs, health programs, means-tested nutrition programs, the Comptroller General of the United States, and some law enforcement officials. Additionally, officials also may disclose children's free and reduced price meal or free milk eligibility information to persons directly connected with State Medicaid (Medicaid) and the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) when parents/guardians do not decline to have their information disclosed. These regulations affect State agencies and local program operators that administer the Child Nutrition Programs and households which apply for and/or are approved for free and reduced price meals or free milk. The final rule reflects the disclosure provisions of the Healthy Meals for Healthy Americans Act of 1994 and comments received on the proposed rule published in anticipation of implementing those provisions. Additionally, this final rule includes the regulatory disclosure provisions implementing the Agricultural Risk Protection Act of 2000 and comments received on the interim rule issued to implement those provisions. This final rule also implements nondiscretionary provisions of the Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act of 2004, allowing certain third party contractors access to children's eligibility status and will allow school officials to communicate with Medicaid and SCHIP officials to verify that children are eligible for free and reduced price school meals or free milk. The disclosure provisions are intended to reduce paperwork for administrators of certain programs that target low-income households and for low-income households which may benefit from those programs by allowing some sharing of household's free and reduced price meal eligibility information. This rule also includes several technical amendments.     

FAMILIES IN TRANSITION

This article describes one of the first mandatory divorce orientations in the country. Beginning in 1976, this program has served as the model for other highly successful programs throughout North America. The program helps couples deal with the psychological and social divorces as well as the legal divorce. It also provides information for parents about how to tell their children and to monitor the effect of divorce on their children's lives.     

Effects of Past Abuse Experiences on Children's Eyewitness Memory

Relations between child maltreatment and children's eyewitness memory were examined. A matched sample of abused and nonabused 3- to 10-year-old children (n = 70) participated in a play session with an unfamiliar adult and were interviewed about the interaction 2 weeks later. Consistent with results from previous research, older compared to younger children's reports were more complete and accurate. Abused and nonabused children performed similarly with several exceptions: Nonabused children were more accurate in answering specific questions, made fewer errors in identifying the unfamiliar adult in a photo identification task, and (at least for younger boys) freely recalled more information. Most effects remained when group differences in IQ and behavioral symptomology were statistically controlled. Importantly, abused and nonabused children did not differ in their accuracy or suggestibility in response to questions that were relevant to abusive actions. Among abused children, however, those who suffered more severe sexual abuse made more omission errors to specific abuse-relevant questions. Contributions to psychological theory and legal implications for understanding children's eyewitness memory and testimony are discussed.     

Perceived Needs and Interests of Juveniles Held in Preventive Detention

The current study assesses the perceived needs and interests of juveniles held in preventive detention. The study involved 70 juveniles assigned to residential units at a juvenile detention facility. Juveniles were administered a written questionnaire that requested both quantitative and qualitative responses to items related to juveniles' perceived needs and interests. Frequency tests were performed to determine which perceived needs and interests are most and least pronounced among detained juveniles. The areas of need most commonly cited by detained juveniles were learning how to make better choices, learning more about computers, and learning to control anger better. Juveniles expressed an interest in most activities, with children versus staff contests, cultural diversity education, learning new board games and card games, doing arts and crafts, and taking care of a pet being the most popular items. In order to ensure that programs are helpful and enjoyable for detained youth, detention staff members should tailor programs and activities to the perceived needs and interests identified in the current study.     

A Review of Forensic Science Higher Education Programs in the United States: Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees*

Abstract: As the number of forensic science programs offered at higher education institutions rises, and more students express an interest in them, it is important to gain information regarding the offerings in terms of courses, equipment available to students, degree requirements, and other important aspects of the programs. A survey was conducted examining the existing bachelor’s and master’s forensic science programs in the U.S. Of the responding institutions, relatively few were, at the time of the survey, accredited by the forensic science Education Programs Accreditation Commission (FEPAC). In general, the standards of the responding programs vary considerably primarily in terms of their size and subjects coverage. While it is clear that the standards for the forensic science programs investigated are not homogeneous, the majority of the programs provide a strong science curriculum, faculties with advanced degrees, and interesting forensic‐oriented courses.     

儿童美德的形成与道德发展

美德是道德教育理论中的一个重要概念,它对儿童道德发展至关重要。美德有四个基本成分：优良品质、中庸之道、意志力和内在的善。美德的这四个基本成分是儿童道德社会化的基础。儿童美德形成的途径主要为：通过儿童道德习惯的养成和移情体验形成儿童优良的品质,创设适当的环境矛盾教孩子学会采用中庸之道做出正确的道德判断和选择,通过意志力的培养帮助儿童克服意志的弱点和形成自律的习惯,通过内在动机的激励帮助儿童形成为获得内在的善而工作和学习的习惯,为儿童未来的道德生活莫定发展的坚实基础。     

Evaluation of a sexual abuse prevention program for preschoolers

Many sexual abuse prevention programs have no research basis to support their claims of effectiveness. The Sexual Abuse Prevention Program for Preschoolers (SAPPP) was developed by modifying a popular prevention program to include behavioral training and rehearsal, and evaluation components. Children were taught to identify different types of touch, to say “no,” and to “tell others.” Each of the six SAPPP lessons included a topic introduction, stories related to the topic, target behavior rehearsal: This was followed by class discussion. Four university preschool children, three females and one male, between the ages of 3 and 4 participated in the program. All of the children showed improvement from pretest to post-test. The improved post-test scores were the result of correct verbal responses. Correct behavior demonstration responses did not increase for any child. A successful child sexual abuse prevention program should train children to demonstrate appropriate preventive behaviors. Suggestions for improving preventive behavior skills demonstrations and increasing the number of children in future research are discussed.     

CRITICAL ASPECTS OF PARENTING PLANS FOR YOUNG CHILDREN

The debate about the benefits and drawbacks of overnight schedules for young children is hotly contested in family law. This study investigated connections between occurrence of overnights, schedule consistency, number of caregivers, and young children's adjustment to parental separation and divorce. Families ( N = 161) with children aged 6 years or younger were recruited at the time of filing for divorce or child custody (if unmarried); follow-up data were obtained from 132 families 15 to 18 months later. Results indicated that parenting plan variables are related to children's social, cognitive, and emotional behavior, with caregivers and schedule consistency more salient than overnights. Girls benefited from overnights and more caregivers, whereas boys did not. Overnighting children aged 4 to 6 years when their parents filed manifested fewer problems 1.5 years later than did younger children. Even when controlling for parental conflict and parent-child relationship variable, the constellation of parenting plan variables contributed to young children's adaptation.     

A comprehensive 5-year evaluation of project 12-ways: An ecobehavioral program for treating and preventing child abuse and neglect

Evaluations of services designed to ameliorate the problems associated with child abuse and/or neglect (CAN) are relatively rare. The present investigation examines the impact of ecobehavioral services provided to families with extensive histories of CAN and examines the demographics of two groups of families. Project 12-Ways provides in-home ecobehavioral treatment to families referred by the state protective service agency. Impact data were collected and compared from families served by Project 12-Ways and families served by the stale protective service agency and other community programs. These data focused on the rates of CAN, placement of children outside of the parental home, and permanent termination of parental rights. Comparisons were made on pretreatment, treatment, and post-treatment rates. It was determined that both samples experienced significant decrements in CAN. While the two samples were equivalent in rates of CAN, data were presented showing differences in severity and priority of CAN which suggest that ecobehavioral services can be successful in reducing CAN. Thus, a heuristic model is available for evaluating CAN, including the manner in which the data were collected, the range of independent variables included, and the considerable span of the families' lives covered in the evaluation. These results suggest some modification of the way in which follow-up data are collected and used to change policy and practice.