Young Children in Rural Areas: Implementing the Children Act

SUMMARY. This article is based on the results of the first stage of a study of the Children Act (day care and preschool education), and looks at how the Children Act 1989 has been put into practice with respect to services for children under eight, in rural local authorities in England and Wales. It considers the duties given by the Act to local authorities from a rural perspective, including providing a range of services for children in need, reviewing the services that are available for all young children, and setting standards for day care services provided by the voluntary and private sectors. It concludes that although the Act has helped to focus attention on the needs of children in rural areas, there is a danger that nothing will be done to meet them because of the principle of targeting resources on children who are most in need. Rural isolation was rarely specified as an indicator of need, and other criteria often had an urban bias which may work against the development of services in rural areas. The article also argues that there is a particular need to develop new models of service delivery and ways of providing training and support to early years workers which are appropriate for rural areas.     

Mental health needs assessment of children and adolescents

Needs assessment is essential input for program planning. Little data are, however, available about the various approaches and whether strategies for needs assessment are viable. It was found by an inexpensive methodology that opinions about the importance of various services, opinions about the potential acceptance of services, services provided, and the total need for services are interrelated. A hybrid approach that utilized data from teachers and the people that provide mental health services was also a practical means to obtain information about the unmet needs of children and adolescents in the country. Data supported the value of this technique for the assessment of the unmet needs of children and adolescents. Thus, an inexpensive methodology can provide useful information from multiple perspectives.     

Relationship Separation and Help-seeking: Reporting on an Agency Study

Relationship separation affects many Australians with around 20,000 divorces involving children formalised per year. For profit, government and nongovernment organisations all offer services for separated couples and families. Despite promotion of specialist services such as mediation and child-centred services, which seek to assist families to navigate what is a complex interaction between public and legislative structures, there is little known about the potentially broader array of supports and information people use following separation. Better understanding of help-seeking behaviours for separating couples enables more effective targeted policy and service delivery. Individuals with children accessing a nongovernment-funded program for support during separation (n?=?134) were asked to complete a survey that was designed to track their help-seeking behaviour. We found that help-seeking for legal services was more common than seeking help for self-care, but that both were important for many people in the sample. Friendship networks, and medical and health professionals were the most common sources of information and support. We argue that social work has a role in promoting and supporting parents who are separating to access a broader range of informal support networks and professional services.     

Children with severe learning disabilities: needs,services and costs

This study looks at how services are used by children with severe learning disabilities living at home and explores the associated total and component costs. Multivariate and bivariate analyses are employed and the results interpreted alongside information on parents' perceptions of their children's needs for healthcare. There is some evidence to suggest costs were associated with greater needs but there is also evidence of under‐provision of formal care supports, particularly mental health services. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Clinical social work and the family court: A new role in child sexual abuse cases

Clinical social workers encounter difficult treatment issues when working with children where there is a suspicion of child sexual abuse, or where there has been an indicated child protective services case but no family court action. This article outlines a new role for the clinical social worker to play in relationship to the family court system. The author argues that the involvement of the clinician in an assessment process developed to aid the court can aid in the protection of children and set the stage for effective intervention and treatment.Director, Center for Training and Research in Child Abuse and Family Violence.     

At home or away? An exploration of policy and practice in the placement of disabled children at residential schools

Despite increasing policy commitment by government to the inclusion of children with special educational needs in mainstream services, significant numbers of disabled children continue to be placed away from their family home and community in residential schools. Reliable statistical information on them is elusive and there has been a dearth of research on how placement decisions are made and what the experience of such placements for disabled children and their families is like. This article reports on the policies and practice of 21 education and social service authorities in England in this area, the patterns of residential placements and the apparent reasons for them. It also highlights points of concern in relation to the protection and promotion of the welfare of disabled children in residential schools, and the apparent lack of clarity on the part of local authorities with regard to their duties in this area. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Child protection systems within the Danish,Finnish and Norwegian welfare states—time for a child centric approach?

This article explores the relationship between the child protection systems and the Nordic welfare state in Denmark, Finland and Norway. Despite an ideological focus on prevention and provision of a fair amount of universal services and in-home child protection services for families and children, there is, nevertheless, a relatively high number of children in the child protection system, even children placed out of their home. The outcome of child protection seems to be relatively poor. One of the problems in the present child protection systems is related to questionable service provision within the system. Other problems are about the normative foundation for the system, for example, family orientation and the least intrusive principle. Such principles are closely related to the logic of universal services, and may as such ignore the diversity of needs, rights, risks and ages of children needing protection and related services. Consequently, many principles of the present child protection systems are – and will remain – challenged by a child-centric orientation, in which valuing children's needs, rights and voice in situ are central.     

Play services for disabled children: mothers' satisfaction

A study of six play services for disabled school children used mixed methods to investigate the perspectives of mothers and children. This paper reports the range of mothers' satisfaction as expressed in semistructured interviews. There was a high level of satisfaction. Play services were seen as alleviating difficulties by providing an element of respite, and as providing child-centred benefits such as play, companionship and varied experiences. Grounds for dissatisfaction included insufficient availability of services, lack of information about them, insufficient attention towards children from staff, and activities which were not age appropriate.     

Early childhood services: evolution or revolution?

This paper considers what progress has been made towards the development of a coherent national policy on services for young children under eight and their families. Since the election of a ‘new’ Labour government in 1997, services for children and families have been higher on the public agenda than at any time in living memory. Much has been achieved, through additional funding, expansion of services, and a more coordinated approach to service provision. But there is still a severe shortage of day care places for children under three, too few appropriately trained staff, a heavy reliance on short term funding, and no agreement on the overall policy on and purpose of early childhood services. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Contribution of Voluntary Organizations to the Care of Children with Life-limiting Incurable Disorders and their Families

A national postal survey of voluntay organizations providing for children with life-limiting incurable disorders (n = 147) is described. The majority of organizations originated from the motivation of parents or care workers in response to deficiencies in service provision from other agencies. A wide variety of services were available from the organizations with over half providing an information service, emotional support and counselling, patient and family support and a telephone helpline. The provision of some services, for example respite care, was, hoverer, associated with the size of annual budgets. Publicity, referral and funding arrangements are also discussed. The role of voluntary organizations as partners in care with statutory agencies is discussed in the light of instability of funding arrangements and the use of health and social work staff as the main source of information about voluntary services to parents. Areas of further research in this field are suggested.     

"Reasonable efforts": toward implementation in permanency planning

The "reasonable efforts" criterion for provision of services to the families of children in foster care and to the families of children at risk of entering foster care is designed to provide for external, and presumably more objective, monitoring by a court of the quantity and quality of these services. A standard of "reasonable effort" applicable to all cases in the two populations of concern is both impractical and probably unethical. Legally there must be a case-by-case determination of "reasonable efforts" that will weigh the unique elements of each case. It is hoped that the working guideline proposed here will provide a basis in child welfare practice for minimizing potentially great variations in court decisions. The guideline begins with a list of problems, verified via an adversarial review, as to why the child(ren) entered foster care or is at risk of doing so, followed by the establishment of the relevance of proffered services to those problems, followed by documentation of a sustained effort to facilitate the use of those services.     

Who is advocating for children under six? Uncovering unmet needs in child advocacy centers

Evidence suggests that children under the age of 6 years are affected by trauma, yet there are few studies available to determine how well their needs are addressed in the mental health system. Child Advocacy Centers (CACs) offer a promising avenue for expanding the system of care for very young children exposed to sexual and/or physical abuse. This study used a mixed-methods approach to examine the type and extent of CAC services for very young children in one state. Quantitative results revealed that the youngest children were less likely to be referred for counseling and less likely to already be engaged in counseling when an investigation is initiated. Qualitative results from interviews with CAC advocates suggest that advocates have variable perceptions regarding the effects of trauma on young children, and they do not consistently receive training in the mental health needs of traumatized children under 6. Our results confirm the need for an expanded system of service delivery for the youngest and most vulnerable child maltreatment victims.     

‘If I was a different ethnicity,would she treat me the same?’: Latino parents’ experiences obtaining autism services

This article reports on an ethnographic study with 12 Latino families of children on the autism spectrum related to obtaining autism services in Los Angeles County. Using critical discourse analysis of interviews, observations, and records, we consider the experiences of the Latino families in relation to: a discursively constructed ‘autism parent’ subject position that mandates ‘fighting’ service systems to ‘win’ autism services for children, originating from White middle-class parents’ socioeconomic resources and social capital; a neoliberal social services climate that assumes scarcity of available resources and prioritizes austerity in their authorization; and a media and institutional ‘cultural deficit’ discourse that attributes disparities in autism services for Latino children to their parents’ presumed culturally-based ‘passivity.’ We argue that parental discourse about fighting, or not fighting, for autism services is engendered by a tension between a parental logic of care, and the logic of competition of the economic market.     

Adult images of childhood and research on client children

The point of departure in this article is a client study with children who had received services from child welfare, school counselling or child psychiatric clinics, compared to a cohort study targeting all children in the same community. It discusses whether parents' reservations towards letting their client children participate in the study indicates a fear of the researchers interfering in family life, and how the choice of research strategies influence the images constructed of client children and their families. A common finding in the two studies was that the children themselves provided the most positive information about their lives. It is argued that adult images of children as either vulnerable, and thus in need of protection, or competent, and thus with an ability to participate, influence access to, as well as construction of, client children's lives.     

Lessons learned from children who have experienced homelessness: what services need to know

Children who accompany their parents or guardians during a period of homelessness make up 37% (more than one in three) of all people accessing the Supported Accommodation Assistance Program (SAAP) services. This paper describes an Australian qualitative study that explored the experiences of children who accompanied their families during periods of homelessness. It focuses particularly on what children and young people say they want from the services that they come in contact with; particularly specialised homelessness services such as housing support services and refuges. Key themes that emerged from the research include: the need for services to engage with children as individuals in their own right, to listen to and acknowledge their stories, to have services that meet their individual needs, to act and respond when children feel unsafe and for workers who can provide support to children to talk to parents about what is going on. Children and young people wanted workers to know that they felt their parents were doing their best to keep them safe. They focused on what their parents could do and did do rather than what they were not able to provide. They called on the human service system to do the same.     

Knowledge and information about drugs in Australia

This article uses a national population survey conducted in 1988 to examine drug information needs within the Australian population. The analysis concentrates on three types of informational needs--knowledge and contact with drug services, the nature of the drug information sought, and the sources of drug information. The results show that almost half of the respondents in the survey considered that they had an adequate amount of information about drugs and there were generally high levels of factual knowledge about the drug and alcohol services available in the community. Knowledge of drug services was found to be unrelated to the need for information, although high levels of knowledge did correlate with a willingness to use a variety of medical, welfare, and social support services to obtain information. The data indicated that contact significantly correlated with both a desire for information and a willingness to consult a variety of services. Finally, users of all types of drugs reported higher levels of knowledge, with users of illicit drugs, in particular, expressing a greater desire for information about all types of drugs and an increased willingness to use a variety of welfare and social support agencies.     

Child Welfare Services in Russia

SUMMARY: This is an account of a visit to Moscow in May 1994 to assess the possibilities for collaboration in developing child welfare services in Russia. The authors argue that the present situation is a critical one for millions of children, and that there is an urgent need for practical and theoretical assistance from Britain.     

Parent Management Training, Relationships with Agency Staff, and Child Mental Health: Urban Foster Parents' Perspectives

Many foster parents are ill prepared to meet the behavioral needs of children placed in their homes. Research suggests they lack training in evidence-based behavioral interventions and feel unsupported by child welfare professionals. Given the complex needs of foster children and increased rates of placement disruption for foster children with behavior problems, implementation of effective interventions is essential. However, little is known about foster parents' receptivity to these types of interventions. In this qualitative study, we examine urban foster parents' perceptions of the specific elements of parent management training (PMT), an evidence-based treatment for disruptive behaviors that teaches parents to improve desired behaviors and decrease oppositional behaviors by rewarding positive behaviors (positive reinforcement) and responding to negative behaviors with mild, consistent punishments such as timeout or a privilege removal. We present data from four focus groups (N = 38). While the questions focused on parent's perceptions of PMT, responses often related to parent interactions with agency staff. Four strong themes emerged from the data. First, foster parents discussed a need for more support and training in how to address children's behaviors, but also had concerns that some PMT discipline techniques would be ineffective based on their past experiences with foster children. Second, they described how staff communication skills and allegations of child abuse could affect parents' motivation to continue fostering. Third, they expressed a need for more detailed information about children's histories and visits with biological families as the lack of information contributed to difficulty in meeting foster children's needs. They suggested that joint training of foster parents and staff in the intervention could improve their ability to work together to support the child's positive behaviors. Finally, parents reported little involvement in child mental health services and doubted the effectiveness of the mental health services their foster children received.