Design of a language stimulation program for children suffering abuse

This article proposes an intervention program, designed specifically for children in residential care who suffer institutionalized abuse, aimed at stimulating their use of language. The objective of the intervention procedure is to improve children's linguistic competence and their socio-affective development, as well as to enable parents to communicate and interact effectively with their children. Several studies have focused on the difficulties children suffering from abuse have with verbal expression and other areas of development. The research stresses the need to set up intervention programs that can improve the linguistic and social competence of children suffering from abuse. With such children, there is a fundamental need to develop a competence that will encourage their adaptive social skills, which are basic skills for interacting socially and which encourage the pragmatic language function, a skill needed for relating to adults and solving interpersonal problems.     

Perceived emotional intelligence and social competence in neglected adolescents

This research work analyses the emotional intelligence (EI) and the social cognitive attitudes and strategies in adolescents between 12 and 17 years of age in residential care. The aim of the work is to identify those aspects that hinder their socio-emotional competence, requiring a more urgent intervention. We explore the presence of significant differences between the variables under study according to gender and age range (12–14 and 15–17) and we analyse the relationship between the dimensions of their EI and their social competence. The results show a lack of EI in these adolescents, with all three dimensions being affected: emotional attention, clarity of feelings and emotional repair. As for social competence, it can be seen that the adolescents are characterised by a lack of confidence and firmness in their interactions. Worthy of note is the impulsive cognitive style, as are the rigidity of thought and the tendency towards social mistrust and suspicion. There are many difficulties concerning the strategies for resolving social problems. This research highlights the need to design training programmes for the residential care centres that will favour their socio-emotional development.     

‘Nothing works’ in secure residential youth care?

A debate about the effectiveness of secure residential youth care is currently going on. While some continue to support secure residential youth care, others conclude that ‘nothing works’ in secure residential youth care, and argue that non-residential treatment is superior to secure residential treatment. This article reviews recent research on this topic. The conclusion is that evidence for the effectiveness of non-residential treatment for youth with severe behavioural problems and/or criminal behaviour is sparse if considered as an alternative for secure residential youth care. Secure residential treatment shows a modest, but positive effect. We need to overhaul the myth that ‘nothing works’ in secure residential youth care, and focus on how to optimise the effects of secure residential youth care.     

The language and policy of care and parenting: Understanding the uncertainty about key players’ roles in foster care provision

Recent debates about the care provided to looked-after children have been characterised by uncertainty about the differing roles and responsibilities of foster carers, birth parents, and social workers. To explore the assumptions underlying these uncertainties, we drew upon Foucauldian Discourse Analysis and compared the discourses used by professionals (social workers in a group discussion about foster placement breakdown) with those used by policy-makers (in the Governmental green paper ‘Care Matters’). In both cases, a discourse based upon Attachment Theory was used to explain why placements succeed and fail, and to predict the repercussions of failure. However, there was a key difference in the way that professionals and policy-makers constructed the roles of key players in foster placements. The social workers constructed the birth parents as the parental figures for children in care, constructing themselves in a non-parental role. ‘Care Matters’ largely ignores the role of birth parents, and instead constructs social workers as parental figures. Neither source viewed foster carers as parental and ‘Care Matters’ positions this group as strictly professional. We discuss the incongruence of foster placements being understood through Attachment Theory, while foster carers are understood as non-parental figures, and also the repercussions of labelling a social worker as a parent, and the professionalization of the role of the foster carer.     

Consulting the Children: Interviews with Children Using Residential Respite Care Services

The Children Act, 1989, requires that services for children are provided in partnership with parents and that the wishes and feelings of the child and his/her parents are ascertained and given due consideration (sect. 22). As part of a research project assessing the quality of services to children with disabilities under the Children Act, the authors carried out evaluations of six residential respite care services. The services were used mainly by children with learning difficulties, some of whom had little or no speech. Staff at the schools attended by the children were asked to interview them, so that their views could be included in the evaluation reports. Interview schedules and aids to communication were devised to try and enable all the children to express their views. This article describes the initial schedules and the changes made in the light of experience during the research. The authors then summarise the children's responses and consider how the process of consultation could be improved in future.     

Fostering cultural development: Foster parents' perspectives

Given the increased number of children from racialized groups requiring foster care and the decreasing number of foster parents from racialized groups, transcultural foster placements are on the rise. Addressing racial and cultural diversities within the context of transcultural foster care placements is one of the most pressing dilemmas of contemporary child protection practice, in Canada. In this qualitative exploratory study, the perspectives of regular non-kinship foster parents in two Canadian provinces, who provide foster care to children and youth from racialized groups, were explored through open-ended semi-structured interviews. Participants consisted of nine foster parents, between the ages of 30 and over 60 years old, who were asked to share their experiences regarding transcultural foster care placements. The results of this study indicated foster parents were culturally receptive and ‘fostering cultural development’ in their homes as well as their respective communities.     

Communicative competence and the facilitating and perturbing factors in the socialisation of immigrant students

This work analyses the communicative competence and the factors that facilitate and perturb the socialisation of immigrant students in primary education. It provides greater knowledge concerning the relationship between the immigrant student's social and linguistic competence. It also analyses the presence of difficulties in the different language components (morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics). The sample is made up of a total of 326 immigrant students between 6 and 12 years of age, attending 10 different schools. The study demonstrates that immigrant students possess a low level of linguistic dominion. All the linguistic components analysed are affected, although greater difficulties are evident in morphology and syntax than in semantics and pragmatics. The relationship between linguistic competence and the factors that facilitate and perturb socialisation is underlined. This work concludes that there is a significant relation between semantics and pragmatics and several socialisation factors (leadership, aggressiveness–stubbornness and anxiety–shyness). The educational centres should be aware of the complicated learning process that immigrant students have to go through.     

Innovations in care for children separated from parents: Transitioning from residential to family models of service

Research suggests that children develop best in families, but millions currently reside in residential care centers. Many residential care centers have transitioned their programmes from a to a family care model. Using a mixed methods design, the current study examined (1) antecedents to transition, (2) key elements in the process and (3) outcomes of transitioning models of care. Participants included 39 non-government organizations that had fully or partially transitioned to family care. Programmes collectively served 12 325 children and 29 499 families in 22 countries annually. Data revealed programmes perceived the change in the model was better for the families and children served.     

Learning basic employability competence: a challenge for the active labour insertion of adolescents in residential care in their transition to adulthood

The teaching of basic employability competence from a very early age is of preventive value in the transition of young people in residential care to adulthood. The present research relates employability competence (finding and holding down a job and gaining promotion in the labour market) with positive career outcomes and employment opportunities. In this study, conceptual methods for understanding employability are analysed and some existing international studies of employability skills are reviewed, although all of these are deemed partial approaches to the needs of children and young people in residential care. Our proposal, the IARS (Infancia y Adolescencia en Riesgo Social [Children and Young People at Social Risk]) Employability Competence Framework, developed by means of a collaborative and integrated approach with experts, provides a complete picture of how employability competences are important for preparing young people in residential care not only for active labour insertion but also in terms of their comprehensive development. A selection of a cluster of eight employability competences (self-organisation, decision-making and problem-solving, teamwork, communication, perseverance, professional project development, flexibility and responsibility) and their components are presented, as well as its educational implications within children's homes.     

Anti-social youth? Disruptions in care and the role of ‘behavioral problems’

This paper explores the mechanisms behind the disturbingly high occurrence of placement disruption among young people in out-of-home care. Discussions have usually been framed in a vocabulary of risk and protection, with the bulk of research designed for singling out factors that correlate with stability and discontinuity in care arrangements. From this research tradition, we have learned that ‘behavioral problems’ are by far the strongest predictor for disruptions in care. By exploring the quality of care as experienced by young people themselves, this study suggests an alternative strategy. Findings suggest that disruptions occur as a result of complex social relations, as when young people struggle to fit in among other troubled youth in demanding residential settings. The paper concludes that labels such as ‘behavioral problems’ may have a reifying effect that individualizes the problem of care disruption while not being particularly helpful in explaining the phenomenon.     

Needed services for foster parents of sexually abused children

Foster parents with little preparation and short notices must often deal with severe emotional and behavioral difficulties of sexually abused children. This article reports on a survey of the services provided to foster parents who care for sexually abused children in a large city in the Northeast United States. Agency directors, social workers and foster parents were asked to respond to mailed questionnaires. The results indicated that foster parents consistently reported that they received less extensive educational and support services than were reported by social workers and directors of foster care agencies. All groups recommend further expansion of training programs for foster parents of sexually abused children.This paper was presented at the Temple University Chapter, Phi Delta Kappa, Philadelphia, PA, April 5, 1990.Ms. Egan is a Research Assistant; Ms. Cossett and Ms. Auletta were studients from Smith College School for Social Work.     

Partnering with parents to prevent childhood sexual abuse

Although research demonstrates that child‐focused sexual abuse prevention programmes can teach children personal safety knowledge and skills, childhood sexual abuse (CSA) prevention programmes that involve parents have a number of distinct advantages. The more knowledge parents have about CSA, the greater likelihood they can create safer environments for their children and thus prevent the occurrence of sexual exploitation. Research has demonstrated that parents lack crucial information about CSA and can benefit from even brief educational efforts. This paper will identify potential barriers to participation and offer practical suggestions for enhancing both recruitment and retention rates. Recommendations for parent education programmes are offered, including improving parents' confidence and skills in educating their children about CSA, providing them with parent‐friendly materials to use and developing Internet applications. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The education of children and adolescents in out-of-home care: a problem or an opportunity? Results of a longitudinal study

The education of children in care is an issue that often falls into a no man’s land in which responsibility always seems to be attributed to the other ‘department’. Furthermore, all too often, teachers, educators and foster parents find themselves working with these children with no support, as if they were isolated cases. The aim of this study is to get to know the school situation of children in different types of out-of-home care: residential, kinship and non-kinship care. Systematic data on the school situation of 11–16-year-olds (on class attendance, school behaviour, academic results and guidance towards post-compulsory education) were gathered over a period of 5 consecutive school years. A 3-year longitudinal study on the same items (N?=?391) was made and time-series data were gathered for 5 years (N?=?1841). Results show that the in-care population is at a clear disadvantage and inequality of opportunities compared to the general population in relation to their educational pathways and outcomes; the most disadvantaged being the population in residential care. Recommendations are included, posing the challenge that what has to date been considered a ‘problem’ should become an opportunity for these children.     

Family Involvement in the Residential Treatment of Children: A Systemic Perspective

When children are placed in residential treatment, a number of underlying messages are often conveyed: the child is the problem, the child's parents are the problem, and the treatment centre has the answers. Consequently children may feel rejected and parents may feel blamed. These views reflect lineal perspectives which have not been adequately addressed in the literature on residential treatment. The aim of residential treatment is to change the child's behaviour in ways which parents are unable to achieve at home. This paper proposes that the child who is placed in residential care may be caught between the parents and the treatment setting: if the child positively responds to treatment, parents could easily feel inadequate or incompetent, a dynamic which is obviously counter productive to successful treatment. The paper argues from Milan and other systemic views, that family and treatment systems be taken into consideration in planning treatment strategies.     

Parental involvement in children's residential treatment: From preplacement to aftercare

Policy reforms and empirical evidence supporting family focused care for children have increased parental involvement in children's residential treatment. Reasons for encouraging family involvement in children's out-of-home care and factors that inhibit parents from participating in children's residential care are outlined. Methods used by treatment facilities to encourage family participation in children's preplacement, treatment, and aftercare stages of placement are reviewed. Important questions nd research necessary to increase parental involvement in children's residential treatment are identified.     

Identifying the needs of parents with learning disabilities: A review

Despite the success of some programmes in raising the parental competency of parents who have learning disabilities, many services are still providing only minimal support to such families, often following crisis intervention. Recent legislative changes within the UK have meant that statutory services are now required to adopt a preventative approach to children and families in need. A review of the literature reveals that children of learning-disabled parents are particularly vulnerable to abuse/neglect and removal from their natural family. This article addresses the difficulties that many clinicians currently experience in the early identification of parents who have learning disabilities. It also emphasizes the need for a systematic approach in the assessment of these parents prior to the implementation of parental teaching programmes.     

After the ‘Organic Industrial Complex’: An ontological expedition through commercial organic agriculture in New Zealand

This article uses the evolving understandings of commercial organic agriculture within two research programmes in New Zealand to address three problematic claims and associated framings that have underpinned analysis of the political economy of commercial organic agriculture. These three framings are: 1) that recent commercial developments in organic agriculture have become organised around a grand binary of large-scale, corporate, industrialised organic agriculture that is inhabited by pragmatic newcomers to the industry, against a small-scale, local, authentic remnant of the original organic social movement. This grand binary is most popularly recognisable in the claim by author Michael Pollan of the existence of an ‘Organic Industrial Complex’ that is slowly subsuming authentic organic agriculture. This relates to claim 2) that commercialisation creates inevitable pressures by which organic agriculture becomes ‘conventionalised’. Finally, claim 3) positions organic agriculture alone as the only option for enabling improved environmental outcomes in agriculture. The Greening Food and ARGOS research programmes in New Zealand have studied the emergence of commercial forms of organic and other ‘sustainable’ agriculture in the period since 1995. A series of key engagements are highlighted in the unfolding history of these two programmes which demonstrate moments of transition in understandings of commercial organic, particularly in relation to situations of engagements between the research team and wider actors in the organic sector. These key engagements establish a clear sense in which the three major framings around the political economy of organic commercialisation could not explain the unfolding dynamics of the New Zealand organic sector. Rather, engagement with diverse actors enabled a whole new set of theoretical questions that opened up new areas of politics, contestation and elaboration of commercial forms of organic agriculture – particularly around shifts in power to the retail end of the agri-food chain, around new forms of agri-food governance, and around the politics of new audit systems. Within these shifts, the ontology of some of the researchers within these projects underwent parallel transformation. These transformative influences operated in two simultaneous directions. While the engaged research strategy of the two programmes clearly discomforted the researchers’ underlying assumptions for framing the major trajectories of commercial organic development, the presence of the two research programmes also had an important enactive power in the sector by both rendering ‘thinkable’ particular trajectories and economic experiments and also by reinforcing a ‘metric-centric’ tendency in the evolution of global environmental audit systems. Seen in this light, these engagements open up new questions about the research programmes themselves in terms of the emerging politics of what Philip Lowe describes as a more ‘enactive’ rural sociology and help direct attention to an emerging ‘ontological turn’ in the practice and politics of research.     

Interviewing parents of children in care: Perspectives, discourses and accountability

The ‘parental perspective’ in child care work is a matter of concern and is actively solicited by practitioners, managers, policymakers and researchers for differing reasons. This paper argues that the search for such a stable “parental perspective” should be abandoned and suggest that research should embrace a social constructionist turn by concentrating on how parents' views are negotiated conversationally in discourse. Using data drawn from research interviews with parents of children in care and employing conversation and discourse analytic methods, the paper demonstrates how there are critical issues of accountability, blame, and testing at stake in the interview encounter, as interviewer and interviewee jointly produce a moral version of the client, the institution, the case and its attributes. The implications of this argument are delineated.     

What happens during and after school: Conditions faced by working parents living in poverty and their school-aged children

Past research has not looked directly at how parental working conditions are affecting the lives of school-age children living in or near poverty. This study examines the effects that the working conditions faced by low-income parents have on the care their school-age children receive and on parental involvement in their children's education and development. In-depth, semistructured interviews were conducted with 74 families with school-age children, including 44 families living at or below 150% of the federal poverty level and 30 families living above 150% of poverty. Teachers at every public afterschool program in the city were interviewed. One out of two low-income working parents faced barriers to becoming involved in their children's education. Two out of five faced barriers to participating in school meetings, school trips, or school events. Many parents had difficulty finding any time to spend with their children, let alone time to assist them with their schoolwork. The difficulties they faced are described in detail. Implications for educational and labor policy are discussed.     

Roll-out neoliberalism and hybrid practices of regulation in Australian agri-environmental governance

In the last 15 years, agri-environmental programmes in Australia have been underpinned by a neoliberal regime of governing which seeks to foster participation and ‘bottom-up’ change at the regional level at the same time as encouraging farmers to become entrepreneurial and improve their productivity and environmental performance without government interference. However, while experiencing a degree of success in terms of farmer involvement, considerable tensions are evident in such programmes. Drawing on an ‘analytics of governmentality’, this paper argues that while current agri-environmental programmes enable authorities to combine often competing and contradictory imperatives under the rubric of single political problems—what has been termed hybrid forms of governing—it also contributes to the continuing failure of these programmes to achieve their desired effects. As a consequence, neoliberal forms of governing tend to be characterised by experimentation with a range of governmental technologies in order to make programmes workable in practice. We explore two different types of technologies—standards schemes and direct government regulation—that have emerged in recent years, and how these have sought to address the limitations evident in ‘participatory’ programmes. The paper concludes by arguing that while these initiatives seek to encourage farmer compliance in seemingly divergent ways, their capacity to be workable, and have broader effects, in practice will depend upon their capacity to manage the competing imperatives of environmental degradation, capital accumulation and private property rights.