Broken circles to a different identity: an exploration of identity for children in out–of-home care in Queensland, Australia

Child protection manuals and literature emphasize that developing a sense of identity is one of the most important elements in achieving good outcomes for children in out-of-home care. Yet, the very issue of identity raises questions that many child protection workers are ill-equipped to answer. In practice, life story book work based on developmental theories has been utilized by child protection workers and foster carers as a response to a sense of 'lost identity' for children in out-of-home care. However, Indigenous and psychological concepts of identity may have little in common.
Current theories of identity development in children lack evidence from the children and young people themselves in informing these notions, which have been criticized as adult-centric. Developmental theories may also be problematic for children from non-Western cultural groups. This research was undertaken in a regional area of Queensland, Australia where the majority of children in the child protection system who are identified as Indigenous, come from two or more cultural backgrounds. The research presented in this paper firstly explores identity issues for children and young people in foster care from their own perspective using narrative art therapy. Secondly, the research views identity from the perspective of professionals working in child protection and out-of-home care.     

The Psychological Consequences of Abuse for the Child

The consequences of child abuse for the emotional health and development of the child have been largely disregarded in theory, in practice, and in research. The few studies which have investigated this aspect of the child abuse problem report detrimental psychological consequences. These research findings combined with more general psychological theory and research on personality development provide a basis for predicting the psychological consequences of abuse for children. Documentation of deficits in the emotional development of abused children has important policy and practice implications for intervention and treatment.     

Psychosocial and relationship-based theories for child and family social work: political philosophy, psychology and welfare practice

Psychosocial perspectives on children’s development are allied to theories that recognize the ‘self’ as essentially a social entity. The quality of relationships that children experience in their social environment have a profound effect on their socio-emotional development, personality formation and social competence. To this extent, psychosocial theories of children’s development and wellbeing can provide child and family social workers with a powerful framework within which to analyse, assess and practise. However, it is also recognized that the character of child welfare practices and policies are influenced by prevailing political climates. A simple dichotomy is described between political philosophies of the right and left; libertarianism and communitarianism; individual freedom and collective action. It is argued that the present swing to libertarian individualism has brought about major changes in the policy and practice of much child and family social work, including a preference for theories that emphasize people’s psychological independence, rationality and personal responsibility. In such a climate, child and family social work becomes more legalistic, orientated towards principles of justice rather than welfare, and towards rights and responsibilities rather than personal relationships and social competence. Psychosocial developmental theories, with their emphasis on the importance of social relationships and the emotional interconnectedness of people in community, fare less well under the rigours of psychological individualism and free-market economics. The paper concludes that if children’s psychosocial development and competence are a product of their social history, practices that psychologically ‘disembed’ people from their relationship environment are unable to consider children’s needs within a coherent, well-grounded theoretical framework. If child and family social work is premised on helping children develop social understanding and emotional wellbeing, theory and practice are best served by taking a psychosocial perspective.     

Child Welfare in England: Problems, Promises and Prospects

This paper discusses developments in child welfare services in England in recent years and, particularly, the role and contribution of research. It is shown that a more significant and coherent body of child welfare research has been developed, which has linked formally to the policy process. Research programmes in England have highlighted specific problems in three areas: first, moving away from a narrow focus on child protection to an approach that provides broader family support for children in need; second, the absence of policies relating to services for adolescents; and, lastly, problems in the delivery of residential care for young people. A major programme of reform has been introduced by the new Labour government, consistent with research messages. It is concluded that research has had an impact on the development of child welfare services in England, although influencing the structure of services, social work practice and outcomes for young people are highly complex issues.     

The complexities of cultural support planning for Indigenous children in and leaving out‐of‐home care: the views of service providers in Victoria,Australia

Indigenous children and young people are over‐represented at all stages of the Australian child protection system. Policy and legislative initiatives exist in the state of Victoria, Australia aiming to support the connection between Indigenous children and young people in state care and their culture and community. This exploratory research involved focus group consultations with seven child and family welfare agencies to investigate the impacts, barriers, benefits and limitations of cultural support planning for Indigenous young people in, and leaving care in, Victoria. Findings indicated that cultural planning was of value when it could be completed. However, various shortcomings of current systems were identified including limited resourcing of Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations to generate plans and provide direct and secondary consultation services to implement plans, difficulty gathering information for plans and some Indigenous young people expressing disinterest in connecting to their culture and community. Complexities in the relationships between the Indigenous and non‐Indigenous agencies that aimed to support Indigenous young people in care were also acknowledged. Participants identified a number of strategies to improve outcomes, such as facilitating better relationships between agencies, promoting opportunities for ongoing cultural training for staff in mainstream agencies and improving the resourcing of Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations to deliver planning and to support cultural connections.     

Weighing it up: family maintenance discourses in NGO child protection decision‐making in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Examining the concepts underpinning the reasoning processes of social worker's decision‐making provides important insights into how social work practice is undertaken. This paper examines one of the major discourses used by social workers in decision reasoning in a non‐governmental organization child protection context in Aotearoa/New Zealand: family maintenance. This study found that family maintenance as a concept was strongly privileged by social workers. This resulted in attempts to preserve families and created a hierarchy of preferred decision outcomes. A preference for family maintenance was supported by legal, moral, psychological and Māori cultural concepts. This pattern of constructs underpinned the ‘weighing up of harms’ when considering removal, and generally reflected a child welfare orientation. In addition to this, it was found that ‘family’ was broadly defined, and could include people who had a relationship with the children, or Māori definitions of extended family, in addition to legal ones.     

Psychological Distress Among Single,Employed, Black Mothers and Their Perceptions of Their Young Children

This study investigated the relationship of psychological distress to mothers' perceptions of their 3- and 4-year-old children using data gathered from a sample of 111 single employed black mothers with low income. Findings revealed that parenting a boy child was associated with higher levels of depressive symptomatology, which, in turn, was associated with more negative perceptions of children, especially boys. However, higher educational attainment appears to mitigate the effects of psychological distress on young black children, regardless of sex of child and the extent of the mother's involvement in the paid labor force. Implications for policy and future research are discussed.     

Understanding looked‐after childhoods

The absence of a sociological discourse about children in the past meant that child and family social work has largely relied on psychological interpretations of children and their behaviour. However, since the 1990s, the sociology of childhood has been developed in the UK. The aim of this paper is to explore the relevance of the sociology of childhood in understanding looked‐after childhoods and in informing contemporary social work practice with looked‐after children and young people. The central argument of this paper is that, in order to fulfil professional responsibilities and to implement current and forthcoming UK social policies for looked‐after children, social work needs to employ broad understandings of children, young people and looked‐after childhoods. The paper goes on to discuss the ways in which a social work approach drawing on the sociology of childhood can offer such a conceptualization.     

‘If kids don't feel safe they don't do anything’: young people's views on seeking and receiving help from Children's Social Care Services in England

This paper presents findings from qualitative interviews with 24 young people (11–17 years) who have been referred to Children's Social Care Services in England. The paper explores young people's experiences of help seeking and their experiences of receiving help for maltreatment through statutory agencies. A central finding is the importance of relationships for young people when seeking and receiving help. It is through trusting relationships with professionals that young people are most likely to disclose maltreatment and/or engage with services. The paper concludes that young people's expectations and needs are not always met by the current safeguarding system and that the system needs to become more child‐centred if it is to address the concerns maltreated young people have consistently voiced through research.     

Can Psychology Help Save the World? A Model for Conservation Psychology

Conservation psychology is defined as psychological research oriented toward understanding why people help or hurt the natural environment and promoting environmentally sustainable practices ( Saunders, 2003 ). Despite a growing body of research, the field is largely unfamiliar to many psychologists and to those working in the environmental field. Here we make a case for the importance of conservation psychology and describe a model for the social psychology of conservation behavior that focuses on situational context, existing schemas, and personal motives. We hope this model will be useful for policymakers and will prompt new psychological research on the topic of conservation.     

独生子女心理健康研究综述

中国的独生子女心理健康研究经历了三十年,表现在心理异常、智力发展、人格发展、人际关系、情绪控制等方面取得一些成果,争议并存。目前的研究在角度和方法都有一些成就,但是在关注除了大学生群体之外的青少年独生子女群体、父母对独生子女心理健康的关注度和独生子女父母心理对孩子的影响方面仍然可以有所突破。     

An Aboriginal community's perceptions and experiences of child neglect in a rural town

Very little is known about how Aboriginal parents experiencing vulnerabilities and communities perceive child neglect, despite Aboriginal families being highly overrepresented in the child protection system. This research investigates the perceptions and experiences of child neglect from Aboriginal parents and human services workers in a rural community. Research methods consisted of community forums and interviews with parents and workers. One community forum developed interview guides and vignettes, and the second discussed and interpreted findings. Between the two forums, in‐depth interviews were conducted with 18 Aboriginal parents and nine Aboriginal and non‐Aboriginal workers. Overall Aboriginal parents perceived child neglect in a similar way to Aboriginal and non‐Aboriginal workers. Violence and substance abuse were main risk factors for child neglect, and intergenerational trauma, racism and discrimination, and feeling powerless were prevalent in the community. The paper concludes that there are little differences in the way Aboriginal and non‐Aboriginal people understand child neglect. Instead it is the difficult circumstances experienced by Aboriginal families that keep parents from actualising their parenting expectations. The implications of these findings when working with Aboriginal families and communities are also discussed.     

The ‘virtuous’ cycle of parental empowerment: Partnering with parents to safeguard young people from exploitation

When young people are sexually exploited, parents and professionals alike can feel uncertain about how to balance the need to protect the child's rights to agency and autonomy while also reducing the risk of harm. Despite the shared interest in keeping young people safe, there remains a substantial gap in the research literature about how practitioners engage parents to increase capacity to safeguard their children, particularly within the context of a child protection system ill-equipped to address forms of extrafamilial harm such as child sexual exploitation. This paper aims to contribute to understanding how professionals effectively engage parents by drawing upon evidence from research evaluations of two programmes in rural/urban North and urban South locations in England, both providing specialist support to parents/carers of sexually exploited children and young people. Through interrogating elements of effective support work evidenced across both programmes, a set of emerging key themes are presented, proposing that parent support and engagement can create a ‘virtuous’ cycle, whereby families are strengthened and are better able to protect their children from sexual exploitation and other forms of extrafamilial harm.     

Children and Socio-Cultural Divisions in Northern Ireland

This article focuses on young children and those in middle childhood. It explores the strengths and weaknesses of competing explanations and methodologies employed in research on the developing child's awareness and understanding of intergroup relations in Northern Ireland. The review highlights the ethical and methodological constraints involved in research into a sensitive topic and the strengths of a social psychological analysis that takes account of both the cognitive development of the child and their cultural setting .     

Chronic Child Abuse: The Characteristics and Careers of Children Caught in the Child Protection System

The introduction of the Quality Protects initiative in Englandand the focus on performance management has challenged socialservices departments to examine the systems, processes and outcomesfor children who have their name on a child protection register.Research indicates that approximately one-quarter of the situationsin which children are registered could be described as chronic—thatis, they remain on the child protection register for significantperiods of time, experience more than one period of registrationor suffer a further incident of significant harm whilst subjectto a child protection plan. In this article, the findings froma research study conducted into this group of vulnerable childrenare reported, focusing on the characteristics of the childrenand their families, and their careers in the child protectionsystem. The paper concludes with observations about the weakconceptualization of performance management and the need torecognize the complexity of the factors that influence children’scareers in the child protection system.     

Preliminary support for the use of narrative exposure therapy in a child protection context: Collective case-study narratives

The present paper attempts to provide preliminary support for the use of narrative exposure therapy (NET) in a child protection context. The prevalence of violence, abuse and neglect (VAN) within New South Wales is outlined as well as the current perspectives in trauma definition and symptomology, and the prevalence of trauma symptomology among birthparents and young people within child protection services. NET is introduced including its theoretical background, methodology, applications and research. Four applications of NET within a child protection context are presented, including lifelines and narrative excerpts. Specific themes presented included experiences of physical abuse, domestic and family violence, parental drug use, suicidal ideation and child removal. Statistical analysis including reliable change, clinical and statistical significance of pre- and post-PCL-5 outcomes measures are presented to infer preliminary support for NET within a child protection context. Limitations and future considerations for future research are discussed.     

Family support and the Scottish children's hearings system

ABSTRACT Evidence from a study of 1155 children referred to the children's hearings system in Scotland in 1995 found many of the children could be characterized as ‘children in need’. As found in other child care research, limited voluntary help was available to them, the majority received ‘no action’ and a substantial group a compulsory supervision requirement. The critical need for the strategic development of family support services in child welfare policy in Scotland for children referred to the hearings system is argued. The potential misuse of compulsory measures of supervision as a key to accessing resources is examined.     

The science of attracting foster carers

Across the world the number of children needing a foster home is increasing; however, the number of individuals willing to foster a child is decreasing. It is therefore critical to gain insight into the barriers preventing people from fostering a child. Using data from a 2009 survey of 756 Australians, combinations of barriers are investigated by conducting a posteriori segmentation analysis within the market of potential foster carers. Four segments are identified and profiled to determined significant differences in terms of psychological and socio‐demographic characteristics. Findings, including the fact that almost one‐third of respondents indicated that they had not considered foster caring before because no one had ever asked them to, have practical implications. Improved marketing strategies tailored to the characteristics of each segment are required to harvest the full potential of individuals willing to foster a child and thus contribute to solving one of the most difficult social challenges facing developed nations.     

Intensive family preservation services: an examination of critical service components

A treatment programme for child victims of sexual abuse within the family has been evaluated in terms of psychological and behavioural outcomes for the young people two years after beginning therapy. The Canadian programme was based on principles established by Giarretto in his Child Sexual Abuse Treatment Program (CSATP). Screening by child protection workers selected potential candidates. However, because of limited resources, referral of less than half of the originally screened families was made, even though they were judged suitable for participation. This made available an untreated comparison group ( n  = 30), similar in many ways to the treated families ( n  = 27). After two years the treated adolescents had largely recovered levels of self-esteem obtained in normative samples, and depressive affect had diminished markedly, as had problem behaviours. By contrast, the untreated adolescents had retained low levels of self-esteem, and high levels of depression. Negative behaviours (delinquency, running away from home, acts of deliberate self-harm) had deteriorated after two years. This was linked both to further within-family abuse (in a fifth), followed by a drift in some into street life. Despite its apparent success, the CSATP could not be continued because of lack of funding, and problems in maintaining a community development model for supporting a humanistic programme.     

Post-Divorce Family Relationships as Mediating Factors in the Consequences of Divorce for Children

In this study, the psychological structure of the family after divorce is seen as mediating the impact of divorce upon children. Divorce affects primary bonds with parents, presents challenges to conceptions of social reality, and creates stress which interferes with normal development. The effects of divorce upon child behavior (peer relations, stress, aggression, work effectiveness at school) were examined through two contrasting research strategies: 1) a comparison of the behavior of children in divorced and intact families, and 2) analysis of the association between family processes and child outcomes in intact and divorced families. Family processes examined were: (a) the affective relationships between the father and mother, (b) the affective relationships between the child and each parent separately, and (c) for divorced families, the amount of contact between child and non-custodial parent. For divorced and intact groups combined, the relationships among family members appeared to be more potent influences on child behavior than was marital status. The negative effects of divorce were greatly mitigated when positive relationships with both parents were maintained. The child's relationship with the non-custodial parent (father) was as important as the continuing relationship with the mother. Implications for research and for public policy are discussed.