Transitional Victimisation: Collaborators’ Offspring as Children at Risk

Using transition theory from political science, this paper analyses how the lives of children of Norwegians punished for collaboration with the German occupant were adversely influenced by transitional justice after the return to democracy in 1945. The paper highlights how the complexity and hectic character of such regime changes are associated with a high risk for unintended social outcomes, a risk that has received little attention in the study of transition processes. Findings indicate that in order to avoid harmful consequences for children, careful and long‐term thinking is essential when new democracies select a transitional justice strategy.     

Home Visiting Family Therapy for Children at Risk

Home visiting has a long history in the areas of health and welfare (Baldock, 1990: 121). Early intervention through home visiting programs has been found effective in preventing abuse and neglect in many countries including the USA (Olds, 1992), Ireland (Johnson, 1993) and Europe (Cox, 1993). The success of these programs lay in their effectiveness in reducing social isolation, improving parenting skills and enhancing self esteem. This paper reports on the role of family therapy in home-based early intervention for families with newborn infants.     

Assessing Child Abuse Through Interviews of Children and Parents of Children at Risk

SUMMARY. Interviewing children and parents has been the subject of much controversy in recent years, with particular concern about techniques used. In this paper, the author takes a fundamental look at the philosophies and psychological assumptions which underlay much current interviewing practice. He identifies this as being primarily based on a cognitive neutral stance from the interviewer. These assumptions are questioned, particularly in relation to working with people from different cultures where different assumptions prevail. The article ends with some recommendations for improving interviewing approaches.     

Recruiting Arab Fathers in a Center for Children at Risk in Israel

Arab society in Israel is positioned between the traditional, collective values of Arab culture and the more prevalent Western individualistic values of the Israeli society at large. This poses a challenge for the welfare services in Israel, especially in the case of Arab clients, who tend to receive and interpret the social workers' messages as contradictory to their cultural norms. Therefore, recruiting Arab fathers for treatment is a particularly difficult task. The article focuses on creating a culturally sensitive process for recruiting Arab fathers for treatment in a center dealing with Arab families at risk in Israel.     

Problematic Eating and Food-related Behaviours and Excessive Weight Gain: Why Children in Out-of-home Care Are at Risk

Emerging evidence suggests that abuse and neglect in childhood may play a role in subsequent development of obesity. One population group particularly at risk is children and young people living in out-of-home care (OOHC). Given this population is already a vulnerable group, identifying potential mechanisms by which childhood abuse and neglect increases risk for obesity is essential. A possible explanation is that problematic eating and food-related behaviours (i.e., emotional eating, compulsive eating, overeating, binge eating, stealing or hoarding food) might mediate the association between adverse childhood experiences and obesity. Hence, the overall goal of this paper was to provide a narrative review of eating and food-related difficulties for children in care and their possible association with unhealthy and excessive weight gain. This review revealed a shortage of existing empirical papers and signalled particular need for further examination of the mediating effects of problematic eating.     

Children at risk: rationales for risk assessments and interventions

In this study, we examine and compare the rationales that social workers and laypersons give for their judgments, assessments and decisions in cases of alleged child abuse and neglect. We have used Toulmin's framework to explore the structure of the arguments/rationales of social workers and laypersons. We analyzed separately basic and complementary level arguments. We used Rosen's work to analyze the content of the backing provided by respondents for their claims.We presented two groups of respondents—52 social workers and 50 laypersons—with a case vignette that was a referral of a child and family made by a family physician. Respondents were asked to read the case, provide their assessment of risk to the child, recommend an intervention, and give written and detailed rationales for their assessment and recommended intervention.The findings indicate that social workers and laypersons differ in the structure and in the content of their rationales. Social workers formulated significantly more complete arguments, both basic and complementary levels of arguments, than laypersons. The content of the backing for the judgments was also significantly different: Social workers used more theory, experience and policy than the laypersons who used more general knowledge and values.In the discussion, we address the training implications of the fact that social workers pay very little attention to rebuttal of arguments, and do not refer to research evidence as a basis for the arguments they make. We recommend that more research focus on arguments and rationales given by professionals in this area.     

THE IRRUPTION OF TRANCE IN CONTEMPORARY YORUBA THEATRE: THEATRE,WITCHCRAFT, AND SOCIAL FRAGMENTATION IN LAGOS,NIGERIA

The golden age of Yoruba folk opera, Yoruba travelling theatre, and Yoruba theatre is over and the brightly coloured trucks carrying the companies that cruised the Nigerian Federation up to the middle of the 1980s have certainly long since been dismantled. Although many actors, musicians, and directors have indeed moved from theatre to the flourishing home-video industry, a community of actors continues to present live performances that can be categorized as “neotraditional.” This genre of Yoruba theatre is undergoing a crisis in the context of an unrelenting economic recession in Nigeria that began in the early 1980s. This situation has released tensions that lead to a real and sadly all-too-justifiable sense of insecurity and to proliferating accounts of witchcraft attacks. The outcome has been a rise in violence manifested in the unleashing of the powers of witchcraft and enflaming relations between small rival groups hitherto unified under the sway of a salaried and—at least until the beginning of the 1980s—optimistic middle class. Yoruba neotraditional theatre that represents deities on stage that belong to “an invisible world” is playing with fire and, by conjuring up the powers of witchcraft, has in turn itself been bewitched.     

Risk and Resilience Among African American Children of Incarcerated Parents

Abstract

The current literature indicates that children of incarcerated parents are negatively responding to parent-child separation and vulnerable to myriad adverse psychological, emotional, and behavioral outcomes. African American children are the most greatly impacted by this social issue as they account for over 50% of all children of incarcerated parents. Despite the risks, many of these youths appear to cope with parent-child separation. There is a paucity of literature that employs a risk and resilience conceptual model to explicate the variability in developmental trajectories. This article reviews the literature on risks and resilience among African American families. An interpersonal-ecological conceptual model that emphasizes the reciprocal interaction between the person and social context is employed. Moreover, African American resilient factors that potentially mediate the relationship between parental incarceration and environmental risks and developmental outcomes are discussed.     

Maternal and Paternal Drug Misuse and Outcomes for Children: Identifying Risk and Protective Factors

There are estimated to be 250 000–350 000 children of problem drug users in the UK. The Government's Every Child Matters Programme seeks to ensure that vulnerable children affected by parental drug misuse are enabled to achieve their full potential in life. This article critically reviews recent national and international research examining the impact of parental drug misuse on children; focusing on the extent to which within‐family risk and protective factors are related to parental gender. The article calls for greater research focus on paternal drug‐misusers parenting strategies and makes recommendations.     

Children of Adolescent Mothers: Cognitive and Behavioral Status at Age Six

The cognitive and behavioral status at age six years of 185 children of adolescent mothers (60.5% boys) were assessed using the mother (CBCL) and teacher (TRF) report forms of the Child Behavior Checklist and the Bracken Basic Concepts Scale. There was evidence for impairment in all areas of functioning. More than half of the sample exceeded the borderline clinical cutoff (T = 60) on either the CBCL or TRF Total Problem score, and nearly half the sample had Bracken scores that were more than 1 SD below the normative mean. Only 26.9% of the children were in the normal range on all three measures. These results are discussed in terms of implications for social work practice with children and adolescent mother families.     

Relocation,Parent Conflict,and Domestic Violence: Independent Risk Factors for Children of Divorce

SUMMARY

We performed several re-analyses of data presented in Braver, Ellman, and Fabricius (2003) to examine whether their findings that parental relocation after divorce was associated with negative long-term outcomes in their grown children could be due to pre-existing levels of parent conflict and domestic violence. Conflict and violence might have caused parents to relocate, and might have caused the negative outcomes. Evidence from analyses of covariance, controlling for levels of conflict and violence (as reported by the grown children), confirmed that relocation was associated with negative outcomes over and above the associations of conflict and violence with negative outcomes. These new findings support the original recommendation of Braver et al. that “courts should give greater weight to the child's separate interests in deciding such [relocation] cases” (p. 206). Additionally, there was little indication that moves reduced levels of conflict, but that finding is tentative.     

Poverty at a Racial Crossroads: Poverty Among Multiracial Children of Single Mothers

Although multiracial youth represent a growing segment of children in all American families, we have little information on their well‐being within single‐mother households. This article examines multiracial children's level of poverty within single‐mother families to identify the degree to which they may stand out from their monoracial peers. Using data from the 2006–2008 American Community Survey (3‐year estimates), we explore the level of racial disparities in child poverty between monoracial White children and monoracial and multiracial children of color. Fully adjusted multivariate logistic regression analyses (n = 359,588) reveal that nearly all children of color are more likely to be poor than White children. Yet many multiracial children appear to hold an in‐between status in which they experience lower rates of poverty than monoracial children of color. The high level of variation across groups suggests that the relationship between race and childhood poverty is more complicated than generally presumed.     

Health Risk Appraisal at the College Level

Abstract

This study attempted to determine if health risk appraisals with personalized conferences affected the “health age” of undergraduates at a large, midwestern university. One hundred thirteen (113) students enrolled in four undergraduate health education classes served as subjects. A nonequivalent control group design was employed with two of the classes consisting of students majoring in health-allied disciplines.

On the first and last day of class during the ten week course, all students completed a health risk appraisal questionnaire—“Health Evaluation Learning Program”—used to acquire past and present health history and present lifestyle practices. Data from the questionnaires were analyzed by a computer into a printout known as the “Health Risk Index.” All groups received their instruction from lectures. The control groups followed a popular college text and did not receive any feedback via the index or personalized conference. Each student in the experimental classes received a personalized conference with the instructor at which time their index was interpreted indicating the degree of future mortality risk. Students were informed that their health age reflected their risk compared to the risk of the average person of the same age, sex, and race. The principal hypothesis was based on the difference between one's actual age (chronological) and one's health age (risk). A 4-factor, 2-between, 1-within, repeated measures analysis of variance was used to determine the effect, if any, of the health risk appraisal with the conference on each group's health age and comparisons between/among groups.

Students in the experimental groups increased the difference between actual age and health age from pretest to posttest time significantly more than students in the control groups, with those not majoring in health-allied disciplines displaying the largest pretest to posttest difference (p<.05). Sex status did not significantly influence the age differential.