“It's like he just goes off,BOOM!”: mothers and grandmothers make sense of child‐to‐parent violence

Child to parent violence (CPV) involves continual and cumulative abusive actions perpetrated by children and adolescents towards their parents or caregivers. This abuse produces short‐term distress and ongoing long‐term harmful consequences for parents and their families. Practitioners, researchers and policy‐makers are increasingly challenged to identify, conceptualize and respond to this form of family violence. A major challenge is that parents and caregivers under‐report this abuse so there is a lack of awareness and understanding of their psychological experiences in relation to CPV. This research adopts an interpretative phenomenological approach to explore the psychological experience of CPV. Interviews were conducted with six New Zealand mothers and two grandmothers who all experienced CPV. This abuse was experienced as an ‘emotional bloody roller coaster’ of unconditional love through to hatred; as ‘judgement’ – self‐blame and others' blame of their parenting skills; and the ‘absent father’ in their adolescents' lives was drawn on as an explanation for the abuse. Taken together, these psychological experiences identify the silencing of CPV is related to parents' conflicting emotions towards their children, their thoughts and feelings about themselves and how other people view them, and the impact of an absent father figure in their children's everyday lives.     

‘I want to be better than you:’ lived experiences of intergenerational child maltreatment prevention among teenage mothers in and beyond foster care

The growing body of research on teenage motherhood in foster care has largely focused on the risks involved for both mother and child, yet these mothers depict a much more complex picture of their own experience of becoming and being mothers. The current study employed interpretative phenomenological analysis to explore 18 in‐depth, qualitative interviews from six participants on the meaning and experience of motherhood among teenage mothers in foster care and in the years immediately after ageing out. This study focused on a particular dimension of motherhood: participants' efforts to break the cycle of child abuse and neglect with their own children. Two themes emerged as characteristic of these experiences: (i) treating children well/parenting differently and avoiding the system; and (ii) reducing isolation and enhancing support. Given the increased likelihood of the children of teen mothers – particularly those who have been maltreated – becoming involved with the child welfare system, study findings suggest possible strategies for disrupting cycles of intergenerational child welfare involvement generated by young mothers themselves. Practice implications for addressing possible substance abuse, mental health and relational and parenting needs are discussed.     

‘Do you want to do some arm wrestling?’: children's strategies when experiencing domestic violence and the meaning of age

The aim of this study is, by analysing children's and young people's discourses, to investigate their strategies in response to domestic violence episodes, in relation to their age. The empirical data come from individual interviews with children and young people (ages 8–20 years) who had experienced domestic violence and lived at refuges for abused women. The thematic analysis shows that the children describe a wide range of strategies before, during and after a violent episode, that all children act regardless of age and that strategies vary according not only to age but also to situation and context. The theoretical framework used is the sociology of childhood, and the analysis engages with theoretical concepts of age, agency and positioning.     

Peer violence in foster care: a review of the research evidence

Whilst a small amount of research has been undertaken on peer violence in residential settings, very little is known about peer violence in foster care. This paper reviews the published research since 1995 about the nature and extent of peer violence in foster care and interventions for preventing and managing these negative peer interactions. The evidence indicates that young people in foster care can be the instigators and recipients of peer violence, but the limited number of studies found means that conclusions cannot be drawn about the extent of the problem. There is some evidence about the impact of this type of violence on young people and fostering households. However, there remain gaps in the evidence about the full extent of all forms of exploitation and violence that are experienced and instigated by young people in foster care, the circumstances in which it takes place, the young people affected and its co‐occurrence with other difficulties. Critically, young people's views were largely absent from included studies, an important area that requires further research.     

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.     

Predicting the recipients of social work support,and its impact on emotional and behavioural problems in early childhood

This paper examines the recipients of social work support in the Millennium Cohort Study. Using panel analysis and fixed effects models, it investigates the factors that lead to the receipt of any type of social work support for individuals with young children and the effects of this support on changes in the prevalence of emotional and behavioural problems in these children. We find that divorce or separation, and episodes of homelessness are two important factors that lead to the receipt of social work support. Mothers with male children are also more likely to receive social work support. However, we find no clear evidence that social work support has any effect on changes in children's emotional and behavioural problems over time. The implications of these findings for social work research and for practice and policy are discussed.     

Less than human: a qualitative study into the experience of parents involved in the child protection system

This paper reports on the findings from a qualitative study into the experiences of parents who were involved in the English child protection system in 2013. Seventeen in‐depth interviews were conducted involving 19 parents and/or partners, and a framework approach was used to analyse the data. There were positive experiences of individual social workers and some positive experiences of the child protection system. However, the overwhelming theme of the parents' experiences was that the system was uncaring, inflexible and for some harmful to both themselves and their children. Despite being included in the child protection process, parents felt they were not afforded the same rights as a participant, as a decision‐maker or as a partner in seeking to improve the situation. The threat of consequences silenced parents who felt unable to speak out or challenge the things they disagreed with or coerced others into signing agreements they did not agree to. Such experiences related to a sense that they were being treated as ‘less than human’. These findings are considered within the context of recent reforms within the English child protection system.     

Racial/ethnic and socio‐economic biases in child maltreatment severity assessment in Spanish child protection services caseworkers

Evidence from several countries has shown the over‐representation of racial/ethnic minority groups in child protection services (CPS). The objective of the present study was to explore whether racial/ethnic and socio‐economic biases influence Spanish CPS caseworkers' judgements of the severity of child maltreatment. Moreover, the study attempted to explore the influence on these judgements of the use of structured instruments and professional experience. Two case vignettes of child maltreatment were presented to 405 CPS caseworkers and 169 students of social work and psychology. Family ethnic origin and income were manipulated in the vignettes. The findings showed no statistical evidence of biases related to family ethnic origin or socio‐economic status (SES) in Spanish CPS caseworkers' judgements of maltreatment severity. Biases related to family SES were found for students for the vignettes of physical abuse. CPS caseworkers and students who did not use a structured instrument to assess maltreatment severity tended to underestimate the severity for the vignettes of parental incapacity to control child/adolescent behaviour and to overestimate it for the vignettes of physical abuse. CPS caseworkers who used a structured instrument showed higher percentages of accuracy and inter‐rater agreement, supporting the relevance of structured tools in reducing potential caseworkers' biases.