Children and youth on the front line Jo Boyden, Joanna de Berry / Jo Boyden, Joanna de Berry
2004., 20040615, 2004, 2005-03-15, Volume:
14
eBook
War leads not just to widespread death but also to extensive displacement, overwhelming fear, and economic devastation. It weakens social ties, threatens household survival and undermines the ...family's capacity to care for its most vulnerable members. Every year it kills and maims countless numbers of young people, undermines thousands of others psychologically and deprives many of the economic, educational, health and social opportunities which most of us consider essential for children's effective growth and well being. Based on detailed ethnographic description and on young people's own accounts, this volume provides insights into children's experiences as both survivors and perpetrators of violence. It focuses on girls who have been exposed to sexual exploitation and abuse, children who head households or are separated from their families, displaced children and young former combatants who are attempting to adjust to their changed circumstances following the cessation of conflict. In this sense, the volume bears witness to the grim effects of warfare and displacement on the young. Nevertheless, despite the abundant evidence of suffering, it maintains that children are not the passive victims of conflict but engage actively with the conditions of war, an outlook that challenges orthodox research perspectives that rely heavily on medicalized notions of 'victim' and 'trauma.'
Researchers have documented that child maltreatment is associated with adverse long-term consequences for mental health, including increased risk for depression. Attempts to conduct meta-analyses of ...the association between different forms of child maltreatment and depressive symptomatology in adulthood, however, have been limited by the wide range of definitions of child maltreatment in the literature.
We sought to meta-analyze a single, widely-used dimensional measure of child maltreatment, the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, with respect to depression diagnosis and symptom scores.
192 unique samples consisting of 68,830 individuals.
We explored the association between total scores and scores from specific forms of child maltreatment (i.e., emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional neglect, and physical neglect) and depression using a random-effects meta-analysis.
We found that higher child maltreatment scores were associated with a diagnosis of depression (g = 1.07; 95 % CI, 0.95–1.19) and with higher depression symptom scores (Z = .35; 95 % CI, .32–.38). Moreover, although each type of child maltreatment was positively associated with depression diagnosis and scores, there was variability in the size of the effects, with emotional abuse and emotional neglect demonstrating the strongest associations.
These analyses provide important evidence of the link between child maltreatment and depression, and highlight the particularly larger association with emotional maltreatment in childhood.
Objective:
Child maltreatment is linked with numerous adverse outcomes that can continue throughout the lifespan. However, variability of impairment has been noted following child maltreatment, ...making it seem that some people are more resilient. Our review includes a brief discussion of how resilience is measured in child maltreatment research; a summary of the evidence for protective factors associated with resilience based on those studies of highest quality; a discussion of how knowledge of protective factors can be applied to promote resilience among people exposed to child maltreatment; and finally, directions for future research.
Method:
The databases MEDLINE and PsycINFO were searched for relevant citations up to July 2010 to identify key studies and evidence syntheses.
Results:
Although comparability across studies is limited, family-level factors of stable family environment and supportive relationships appear to be consistently linked with resilience across studies. There was also evidence for some individual-level factors, such as personality traits, although proxies of intellect were not as strongly related to resilience following child maltreatment.
Conclusions:
Findings from resilience research needs to be applied to determine effective strategies and specific interventions to promote resilience and foster well-being among maltreated children.
In laboratory studies, praising children's effort encourages them to adopt incremental motivational frameworks—they believe ability is malleable, attribute success to hard work, enjoy challenges, and ...generate strategies for improvement. In contrast, praising children's inherent abilities encourages them to adopt fixed-ability frameworks. Does the praise parents spontaneously give children at home show the same effects? Although parents' early praise of inherent characteristics was not associated with children's later fixed-ability frameworks, parents' praise of children's effort at 14–38 months (N = 53) did predict incremental frameworks at 7–8 years, suggesting that causal mechanisms identified in experimental work may be operating in home environments.
Prior research documents spatial concentration in the incidence of child maltreatment reported to and confirmed by Child Protective Services (CPS), but without estimates of the prevalence of such ...reports, the extent of CPS contact in different communities is unknown.
To estimate the prevalence of CPS reports during early childhood and substantiated investigations during childhood for children living in different types of neighborhoods.
Children who experienced CPS reports and substantiated investigations in Connecticut.
This study uses synthetic cohort life tables to estimate the cumulative risk of CPS reports before age five and substantiated CPS investigations before age 18, by neighborhood poverty rate and neighborhood racial composition.
The analysis reveals substantial stratification in the prevalence of CPS contact by the demographic characteristics of children’s residential neighborhoods. For example, while 7% of children in low-poverty neighborhoods (under 10% poor) experience a substantiated CPS investigation at some point during childhood at 2014 and 2015 rates, this risk more than doubles to 17% for their peers in moderate-poverty neighborhoods (10–20% poor) and more than triples to 26% for their peers in high-poverty neighborhoods (over 20% poor). Similar trends emerge when examining CPS reports in early childhood as well as when comparing neighborhoods with different proportions of White residents.
CPS reports and substantiated investigations are a widespread and disproportionately experienced life event for children in poor neighborhoods and children in non-White neighborhoods.
Abstract Objectives To describe increased child abuse and neglect (CAN) reporting and the characteristics of the reports in the context of the development of a system of intervention for one of the ...hospital-based child protection centers in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia aligned with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) Article 19. Methods A retroprospective collection of data on all children evaluated by the Suspected Child Abuse and Neglect (SCAN) team in King Abdulaziz Medical City for the National Guard from 2000 to 2008. The cases were further divided into 3 subgroups corresponding to the years 2000–2004, 2005–2006, and 2007–2008 parallel to the stages of development of the national child protection system. Results During the study period, there were a total of 188 referrals to the SCAN team. Of these 133 (70.7%) were further investigated as CAN cases. The total number of referred cases increased 10-fold from 6.4 cases per year in the first period to 61.5 cases per year in the third period. The mean age was 5 years, evenly represented by males and females. Physical abuse was the most common form of abuse in the first (2000–2004) period at 61% and second (2005–2006) period at 76%, which changed to neglect (41.6%) as the most common form of maltreatment in the third (2007–2008) period. Parents were the perpetrators in 48.9% of cases throughout the 3 periods. Overall fatality rates were 4.4%, 14.3%, and 7.9% in the first, second, and third periods respectively. Conclusion Recognition of CAN is expanding in Saudi Arabia. This is due to the successful adoption of a system of intervention consisting of child protection centers in the medical facilities, in conjunction with mandatory reporting and data collection strategies. In addition, the changes in public attitudes towards a better understanding of CAN enhanced further recognition and reporting of neglect and milder forms of abuse. We believe that the number of reported CAN cases in Saudi Arabia will continue to rise, hence adequate multi-sectoral services for the abuse victims require further development and improvements throughout the country.
Longitudinal research has demonstrated that responsive parental behaviors reliably predict subsequent language gains in children with autism spectrum disorder. To investigate the underlying causal ...mechanisms, we conducted a randomized clinical trial of an experimental intervention (Focused Playtime Intervention, FPI) that aims to enhance responsive parental communication (
N
= 70). Results showed a significant treatment effect of FPI on responsive parental behaviors. Findings also revealed a conditional effect of FPI on children’s expressive language outcomes at 12-month follow up, suggesting that children with baseline language skills below 12 months (
n
= 24) are most likely to benefit from FPI. Parents of children with more advanced language skills may require intervention strategies that go beyond FPI’s focus on responsive communication.
Despite the substantial body of literature on racial disparities in child welfare involvement in the Unites States, there is relatively little research on such differences for Canadian children and ...families. This study begins to address this gap by examining decision-making among workers investigating Black and White families investigated for child protection concerns in Ontario, Canada. Using provincially representative data, the study assessed whether Black children were more likely than White children to be investigated by child welfare, if there was disparate decision-making by race throughout the investigation, and how the characteristics of Black and White children contribute to the decision to transfer to ongoing services. The results indicate that Black children were more likely to be investigated than White children, but there was little evidence to suggest that workers in Ontario child welfare agencies made the decision to substantiate, transfer to ongoing services, or place the child in out-of-home care based on race alone. Black and White children differed significantly with respect to child characteristics, characteristics of the investigation, caregiver risk factors, and socioeconomic circumstances. When adjusting for these characteristics, Black families had 33% greater odds (OR=1.33; 95% CI: 1.26, 1.40; p=<0.001) of being transferred to ongoing services compared to White families. Among Black families, the assessed quality of the parent-child relationship and severe economic hardship were the most significant and substantial contributors to the decision to provide child welfare services. Implications for practice, policy, and research are discussed.
Parenting behaviors play a critical role in the child's behavioral development, particularly for children with neurological deficits. This study examined the relationship of parental warm ...responsiveness and negativity to changes in behavior following traumatic brain injury (TBI) in young children relative to an age-matched cohort of children with orthopedic injuries (OI). It was hypothesized that responsive parenting would buffer the adverse effects of TBI on child behavior, whereas parental negativity would exacerbate these effects. Children, ages 3-7 years, hospitalized for TBI (
n
= 80) or OI (
n
= 113), were seen acutely and again 6 months later. Parent-child dyads were videotaped during free play. Parents completed behavior ratings (Child Behavior Checklist;
T. M. Achenbach & L. A. Rescorla, 2001
) at both visits, with baseline ratings reflecting preinjury behavior. Hypotheses were tested using multiple regression, with preinjury behavior ratings, race, income, child IQ, family functioning, and acute parental distress serving as covariates. Parental responsiveness and negativity had stronger associations with emerging externalizing behaviors and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms among children with severe TBI. Findings suggest that parenting quality may facilitate or impede behavioral recovery following early TBI. Interventions that increase positive parenting may partially ameliorate emerging behavior problems.
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Path analysis within a structural equation modeling framework was employed to examine the relationships between two types of parent stress and children’s externalizing and internalizing behaviors ...over a 4-year period, in a sample of 184 mothers of young children with autism spectrum disorder. Parent stress was measured with the Parenting Stress Index-Short Form and child behavior was measured with Child Behavior Checklist/1.5–5. Across all time points, parent general distress predicted both types of child behaviors, but not vice versa. In addition, there was modest evidence of a bidirectional relationship between parenting distress and both types of child behaviors from 12 months post-diagnosis to age 6. Results are compared to previous work in this area, with implications for early intervention.
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