Child Maltreatment Intervention: Directions and Issues

This article begins with a brief review of various non-medical intervention procedures for child maltreatment. Psychological intervention is reviewed in more depth, with an emphasis placed on those treatments which have been empirically evaluated. Finally, the article discusses methodological and ethical issues concerning outcome research on maltreatment intervention.     

The Changing Focus of Child Maltreatment Research and Practice Within Psychology

Professions functionally define a field by the types of behaviors or circumstances to which they direct their attention and efforts. For psychology and mental health professionals concerned with child maltreatment, child sexual abuse has been the dominant interest over the past two decades and has been virtually synonymous with child maltreatment within psychology. This is discrepant from the broader scope of child maltreatment, as seen both in child welfare populations and in the general population. In child welfare, sexual abuse is an important but nonetheless relatively less frequent issue. Child neglect and physical abuse dominate child welfare caseloads, and historically always have. The disconnect between the interests of mental health professionals and child welfare appears to be waning, both in terms of dialogue within psychology and apportioning of research resources. This article examines what this emerging change may mean for practice and research in terms of the changing nature of populations involved, different types and locations of services, different roles and new multidisciplinary alliances.     

Ethnicity, Culture, and Child Maltreatment

Increasingly, child maltreatment research has begun to address ethnicity and culture in both empirical studies and theoretical articles. Despite the expansion of these efforts, cross-cultural research in child maltreatment has raised more questions than it has answered; and it has highlighted the elusiveness of culture-specific constructs to scientific study. Research to date has been hampered by several challenges including the failure to disentangle ethnicity and culture. In this article, we provide a review of research in this area and offer a critique and recommendations for enhancing the study of the role of culture and ethnicity in child maltreatment.     

Child Welfare in the United States: Policy, Practice and Innovations in Service Delivery

Child welfare in the United States is characterized by numerous and complex problems. By reviewing child welfare policy and trends in the United States, this article aims to stimulate discussion about innovative approaches that could allow child welfare professionals, both in the US and internationally, to better meet the needs of children and families.     

Social Work Practice for Social Development in Bangladesh: Issues and Challenges

Social work addresses social issues that constrain the betterment of a community. However, social work practice is struggling to deal effectively with the development challenges of Bangladesh. Based on a literature review and the experiences of the authors, this paper explores the emerging issues where social work practice is anticipated as a promising alternative for bringing sustainable social development in Bangladesh. Simultaneously, the paper discovers the limitation of social work practice in Bangladesh addressing these challenges.     

Promises and Possibilities: The Application of Research in the Area of Child Maltreatment to Policies and Practices

In this closing commentary, we discuss the policy implications of research concerning child maltreatment. We describe the links between the topics reviewed in this special issue and interventions for child victims as well as the state of research concerning consequences of maltreatment more broadly. We further discuss the implications of current research for policy and practice. We close by describing important directions not only for future research, but also for interventions to reduce adverse effects of maltreatment on children. Throughout our commentary, we highlight limitations in the application of empirical findings to actual child victims and we offer concrete suggestions for ways of improving this applicability.     

Two Value Positions in Recent Child Care Law and Practice

Summary This paper aims to explore two contrasting viewpoints on stateand agency intervention in child care, and the major pointsof divergence and similarity between these viewpoints. Materialis drawn from literature and from interviews conducted by theauthor with individuals prominent in the child care field.¹Simply put, one viewpoint emphasizes the prevention of the break-upof ‘natural’ or biological families and the restorationof biological ties where severed, while the other advocatesthe readier removal of children from natural families and theprovision of permanent, secure substitute families when naturalparenting is unsatisfactory. At attempt is made to place thesetwo positions in a wider intellectual context.     

A New Postnatal Home Care Worker: Challenges for Training,Implementation and Policy

The rise in paid care workers has not, until very recently, included carers specifically trained to provide domiciliary postnatal care. In 2002 a new occupation of domiciliary postnatal carers was introduced in the catchment area of a large metropolitan hospital in Adelaide, South Australia. The carers work with professional midwives to provide home based postnatal support to women discharged early from hospital following childbirth. Carers were trained in a short, six month program, and were recruited from long term unemployed young women from the same geographically disadvantaged catchment area as the hospital. In this paper, findings from the evaluation of the program are described and analysed. These include its implications for the postnatal care workers themselves and for the professionals involved in training and working with them. In addition, the implications for birthing women of a program using young, minimally trained carers are considered. Finally, the more general lessons for the training and ‘insertion’ of paid carers into domiciliary work with professionals are reflected on.     

An Exploratory Analysis of Seven Child Welfare Workers who Confused SIDS with Child Maltreatment Fatalities: A Brief Research Report

Abstract

Previous research shows that child welfare workers (CWWs) have low levels of knowledge of risk factors for child maltreatment fatalities. Further, these gaps in knowledge leave CWWs with misconceptions about causes of deaths and the characteristics of the perpetrators. This brief research report focuses on CWWs’ gaps in knowledge with regard to CMFs and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and explores the socio-demographic characteristics of seven workers who confused fatal child maltreatment and SIDS. These workers were experienced professionals—who were in their middle-age, mid-career, and well-educated—and had been trained in how to recognize risk factors for CMFs. Implications for training and collaboration with other professionals are discussed, as well as the need for research to evaluate training efficacy.     

The Influence of Performance Measurement on Child Welfare Policy and Practice

Correspondence to Clare Tilbury, School of Social Work and Applied Human Sciences, University of Queensland Q 4072, Australia. E-mail: c.tilbury{at}social.uq.edu.au Summary The increasing use of performance measurement in child welfarepromises to have significant consequences. Performance indicatorsare not neutral or merely technical—they represent viewpointsand values that may influence policy and practice. This three-partarticle examines how this may occur. The first part outlinesa theoretical approach to understanding the policy significanceof performance indicators. As they become part of the frameworkwithin which policy debates occur, indicators may frame policyissues, create boundaries around options for solutions, definestandards for evaluating results, and set the terms of publicdiscourse. The second part discusses the background to the developmentof performance measurement in child welfare in Britain, theUSA and Australia, locating it as integral to contemporary approachesto public sector management. The third part examines the performanceindicators used in these jurisdictions-aspects of performancemeasured, underlying assumptions about ‘good’ performance,and how they construct child welfare. Existing indicators narrowlyconstruct child welfare in terms of investigations and out-of-homecare, whereas the child welfare literature suggests a broaderapproach with more attention to family support. The articleargues that there is space to negotiate on the new managerialistterrain, developing an approach to performance measurement thatcontributes to better services and outcomes for children andfamilies.     

Investigating a Longitudinal Trajectory of Child Obesity and Its Association with Child Maltreatment in South Korea

This study investigated the association between child maltreatment and body mass index (BMI) using data from four waves (wave 2 in 2011 through 5 in 2014) of the Korean Children & Youth Panel Survey collected by the South Korean National Youth Policy Institute. We employed a latent growth curve modeling approach to estimate an unobserved latent trajectory and to test the longitudinal effects of child abuse and neglect on BMI. Our results indicate that child abuse is significantly associated with BMI and children who report higher levels of abuse tend to have higher rates of increase in their BMI. This study addresses a gap in the literature by demonstrating that a parent's maltreatment of their child has a long‐term effect on the rate of change in their BMI over time.