Non‐take up of the supplemental child benefit for children with a disability in Belgium: A mixed‐method approach

Families with disabled children run a great risk of being poor. Although policies providing poor families with financial benefits should be effective in reducing poverty, the actual effectiveness is often jeopardized by the issue of non‐take up (NTU). Yet, NTU of benefits aimed at disabled children is for the most part uncharted territory. In this article, we fill this gap using a mixed‐methods approach to (a) estimate the magnitude and characteristics of NTU in the Belgian “supplemental child benefit” by drawing on a large‐scale administrative dataset on childhood disabilities and (b) explore the determinants of NTU by means of semistructured interviews with experts and parents. We estimate an NTU rate of at least 10%, a substantial figure given that the benefit is not income tested. This mainly concerns children with “less visible disabilities” (autism spectrum disorder and other intellectual and psychological disorders) and results from insufficient information provision about the benefit's existence and eligibility criteria; process costs, for instance, the complexity of the procedure; and the way the scale to assess a child's disability is constructed.     

Maternal and paternal reactions to child sadness predict children's psychosocial outcomes: A family‐centered approach

Parents' reactions to children's emotions shape their psychosocial outcomes. Extant research on emotion socialization primarily uses variable‐centered approaches. This study explores family patterns of maternal and paternal responses to children's sadness in relation to psychosocial outcomes in middle childhood. Fifty‐one families with 8‐ to 12‐year‐old children participated. Mothers and fathers reported their reactions to children's sadness and children's social competence and psychological adjustment. Cluster analyses revealed three family patterns: Supportive (high supportive and low non‐supportive reactions from both parents), Not Supportive (low supportive reactions from both parents), and Father Dominant (high paternal supportive and non‐supportive reactions, low maternal supportive and non‐supportive reactions). Supportive families had children with higher social competence and more internalizing symptoms whereas Father Dominant families had children with lower social competence and fewer internalizing symptoms. Not Supportive families had children with average social competence and fewer internalizing symptoms. Findings are discussed in relation to the “divergence model” which proposes that a diverse range of parental responses to children's sadness, rather than a uniformly supportive approach, may facilitate children's psychosocial adjustment.     

Using the RE‐AIM framework to identify and describe best practice models in family‐based intervention development: A systematic review

The family unit carries with it a responsibility of possibly being the most important predictor of positive child development. The aim of this systematic review is to identify and describe best practice models or processes in family‐based intervention development. The following databases were included in the review: PsychArticles, Academic Search Complete, ERIC, SocIndex, Sage, Sabinet, and Pubmed. Peer‐reviewed, English language, qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods in nature conducted within the last 10 years. Interventions were required to include families as part of the programme as well as describe the model or process used in intervention development. Two self‐developed data extraction tables were developed for this review. The articles included for review were heterogeneous in terms of the outcomes, and so a narrative synthesis was used. After yielding an initial search of 400 studies, 28 articles were finally included for extraction and analysis with varying levels of intervention strength. Interventions are further described in terms of reach, effectiveness, adoption, implementation, and maintenance dimensions. A feasible intervention appears to be one that is flexible, engages processes to recruit those who are most at‐risk and is facilitated by someone known to or from the same community as the participants, can retain its participants, and can be evaluated with the same participants at a minimum of 6 months later.