Community-Based Child Placement Services:

No abstract available for this article.     

Measuring the Effectiveness of Routine Child Protection Services: The Results From an Evidence Based Strategy

Most of what is known about the effectiveness of child welfare is found in studies of specific programs. Little is known about the effectiveness of the routine services provided in child protection systems. Family and Children's Services of Renfrew County is a Canadian child welfare agency that decided to expand its mission beyond protecting children to include enabling child development. This article discusses its effort to improve outcomes for children receiving a child protection service at home: the key elements examined are the selection of outcomes, the implementation of a child development strategy, and the collection and analysis of outcome data. Many of the findings are encouraging. The outcomes described rely on parents, social workers, and children and youth as sources of information. The triangulation resulting from combining a number of sources and instruments for the collection of the outcome data supports the credibility of the findings. Through the evidence based strategy that was adopted knowledge was acquired about what is possible in attaining better developmental outcomes in the course of child protection intervention.     

Ecological Foundations of Practice in Child & Youth Services

No abstract available for this article.     

Doing Harm While Doing Good: The Child Protection Paradox

Every Australian citizen expects state and territory governments to protect children from child abuse and neglect. Protecting children from harm is seen as good. This however is not a simple matter. The ultimate act in protecting children is to remove them from parental care. This causes trauma for the child and pain and distress for parents no matter how inadequately they may have been caring for their children. In that respect removing a child from parental care does harm to parents and children. This article explores the paradox of doing harm while doing good. The article has an Australian focus but the authors think that this issue affects child protection services in many countries.     

Child Protection Intervention in Domestic Violence: An Illustrative Case Narrative

This is a case study, written from the point of view of child protection caseworkers, about their work with one family. They draw on practices originating in solution-focused and brief therapy, response-based theory, and relationship-based practice. The goal is to implement practices that (a) hold the perpetrator accountable rather than the victim, (b) attempt to avoid putting the mother in a position of having to choose between partner and children, (c) capitalize on child protection's unusual mandate in order to provide support for the mother, and (d) position the professional as a supportive ally of the mother and children instead of relying on the investigative stance. The case is an instance of how these goals and principles are operationalized. Examples of their choices include holding the perpetrator accountable instead of the mother, (a) focusing on what the mother is already doing to protect the children rather than what she is not doing, (b) placing the Ministry of Children and Family Development between the perpetrator and the victim, (c) avoiding forcing the mother to choose between her children and her partner, and (d) attending to the qualities of the relationship with the mother.     

International Law as Remedy: When the State Breaches Child Protection Statutes

While legislative frameworks prescribe the legal obligations of the parents to protect and nurture their children, there is no equivalent legal framework requiring and sanctioning the conduct of agents of the state who act in loco parentis. In consequence some children continue to be “at risk” and may even be in greater danger once the state has intervened. This is a problem that is not confined to one or two countries, but a matter of global concern that touches most developed and developing nations alike. In this article I ask what remedies are available for addressing this perennial problem and suggest that one option is to use the existing human rights framework embodied in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCROC) which specifies the rights of children. I outline the reporting UN mechanisms and provide an example of how evidence and argument can be used as part of that reporting process with a view towards securing some of accountability.     

“My Kids,They Safe.”: Lived Experiences of Parents Receiving Child Neglect Allegations

Abstract

This study aims to explore parents’ lived experiences of receiving child neglect allegations and how they make sense of these experiences. The sample consists of parents who participated in a family preservation program following allegations of child neglect. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). The findings suggest that parents resist neglect allegations, both by denial and minimization, partly due to their lack of clear understanding of what constitutes child neglect. Further, parents in this study tended to be reactive to meanings ascribed to the label of child neglect rather than the allegations per se. They seemed to experience internal conflict between their positive evaluations of their own parenting and what their neglect allegations might imply about their parenting. Parents also experienced emotional distress, such as concern about social stigma and fear of losing their parental rights, as they tried to make sense of their current situations. Suggested implications for practice include exploring parents’ subjective understanding of their allegations and considering their unique familial and sociocultural contexts from the outset of their involvement with child protective services (CPS) in order to build a collaborative working alliance.     

青年志愿者的行动领域与管理路径——以上海为例

在分析上海市青年志愿者行动现状的基础上,我们对上海市青年志愿者行动进行了反恩,提出青年志愿者行动要处理好政府与社会、大型志愿活动与日常志愿服务、低端服务和高端服务、激励和监督之间的关系。     

One Small Step at a Time: Implementing Continuous Quality Improvement in Child and Youth Mental Health Services

Continuous quality improvement (CQI) is increasingly being adopted by health care, including child and youth mental health services. As part of the commitment to ongoing quality improvement, child and youth mental health teams in the Fraser region in British Columbia undertook CQI projects over a one year period (2007–2008). The projects covered a range of domains and service features and staff gained experience in developing projects. Patience, management support and ongoing dialogue were key elements in the implementation of CQI. Three projects are highlighted to illustrate how teams developed their own unique projects and the outcomes.     

The Influence of Ethnicity and Adverse Life Experiences During Adolescence on Young Adult Socioeconomic Attainment: The Moderating Role of Education

Previous research has documented that adverse life experiences during adolescence, particularly for ethnic minorities, have a long-term influence on income and asset attainment and that this relationship is largely mediated by educational achievement. We extend prior research by investigating three research questions. First, we investigate the extent to which community disadvantage, family factors and race/ethnicity each exert an independent influence on young adult socioeconomic attainment. Second, we examine whether youths’ educational attainment mediates these independent influences on socioeconomic attainment. Third, we test whether educational attainment ameliorates the negative influences of disadvantaged community and family conditions and race/ethnicity on socioeconomic attainment. We address these questions using multilevel modeling with longitudinal, prospective data from Waves 1 and 4 of National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which has a nationally representative sample of adolescents (N?=?13, 450; 53?% females). Regarding our first research question, our results indicated that African Americans, youth from disadvantaged communities, lower SES families achieve significantly lower levels of earnings, assets, and job quality during young adulthood. Second, we found that young adults’ educational level only partially mediate the influences of family and race/ethnicity influences on young adults’ socioeconomic attainment. Third, we found that young adults’ educational level buffered the influence of early socioeconomic adversities and accentuated the positive influences of family resources. Findings highlight the importance of social context as well as educational opportunities during childhood and adolescence for economic stability in early adulthood.     

Developmental Growth Trajectories of Self-Esteem in Adolescence: Associations with Child Neglect and Drug Use and Abuse in Young Adulthood

Neglectful rearing is linked with young adults’ substance use and abuse, though the developmental mechanisms that underlie this association are unclear. The present study examines links between self-esteem growth during adolescence, childhood supervisory versus physical neglect severity, and substance use and abuse in young adulthood. A sample of youth was obtained from the Add Health study (N = 8738; 55.4 %-Female; 20 %-African American, 14.7 %-Hispanic). Growth mixture modeling analyses supported declining, ascending, and stable high self-esteem trajectories. The declining and ascending trajectories reported greater neglect and alcohol abuse (but not use) as well as cannabis use and abuse. The findings suggest that compromised development of self-esteem underlies associations between neglect and substance use and abuse. Preventive interventions may benefit from targeting self-esteem among neglected youth.     

全面二孩政策背景下婴幼儿照料对女性工资收入的影响研究

照料孩子往往使职业女性遭受"生育工资惩罚",全面二孩政策是否会加重这种"惩罚"?研究基于广东省的问卷数据,得出如下结论:在孩子0—3岁时母亲的照料时间付出会对其工资产生负向影响;相比于一孩母亲,照料孩子的时间付出对二孩母亲工资的负向影响更强;对婴幼儿照料的支持有助于提高母亲的工资;综合考量规模优势、幼儿早教、健康卫生等因素,托幼机构照料是几种照料方式中最优的。为降低母亲照料孩子的代价并提高全面二孩政策的实施效果,研究建议:政府应大力发展低龄幼儿托育机构,建立托育服务基本保障体系,并出台政策支持不同社会主体提供多层次的托育服务,以满足家庭不断增长的托育需求。     

The Impact of Multiple Types of Child Maltreatment on Subsequent Risk Behaviors Among Women During the Transition from Adolescence to Young Adulthood

The purpose of this study was to investigate how different types of child maltreatment, independently and collectively, impact a wide range of risk behaviors that fall into three domains: sexual risk behaviors, delinquency, and suicidality. Cumulative classification and Expanded Hierarchical Type (EHT) classification approaches were used to categorize various types of maltreatment. Data were derived from Wave III of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). Our sample consisted of White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian females ages 18 to 27 (n = 7,576). Experiencing different kinds of maltreatment during childhood led to an extensive range of risk behaviors within the three identified domains. Women experiencing sexual abuse plus other maltreatment types had the poorest outcomes in all three domains. These findings illustrate that it may no longer be appropriate to assume that all types of maltreatment are equivalent in their potential contribution to negative developmental sequelae.     

Investigating Allegations of Child Maltreatment:

This article discusses the common strengths and limitations of the major types of risk assessment systems currently implemented in the United States with respect to their effectiveness in assisting child protective services workers in investigating allegations of child maltreatment, documenting current child and family conditions, and predicting the occurrence or re-occurrence of child maltreatment.     

The Voice of Young People

No abstract available for this article.     

The Preparation of Child Care Workers:

This paper is based on ethnographic research conducted at an urban school that maintains a day care program. It focuses particularly upon the gulf between the students and the professionals (i.e., day care center staff), analyzing its implications and suggesting ways to solve the problem. To do this it utilizes four anthropological perspectives on the moral ordering of society. The paper examines the wider cultural sources of the training problem and then provides suggestions for its amelioration within programs for the training of child care workers.