scholarly journals Improving child protection: a systematic review of training and procedural interventions

2006 ◽  
Vol 91 (9) ◽  
pp. 740-743 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y H Carter
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 205
Author(s):  
Anne M. E. Bijlsma ◽  
Claudia E. van der Put ◽  
Geertjan Overbeek ◽  
Geert Jan J. M. Stams ◽  
Mark Assink

Personalization is an important strategy for enhancing the effectiveness of treatment that is aimed at reducing the risk of child maltreatment. In recent years, a growing body of research has appeared on how child protection can benefit from the principles of the Risk-Need-Responsivity model, but no attention has yet been paid to the implementation of the responsivity principle in child protection. Put simply, this principle states that treatment must be tailored to individual characteristics of clients to optimize its effectiveness. This study was the first to address how the responsivity principle can be of value in child protection. First, a systematic review of responsivity factors in forensic care was performed. Second, the relevance of applying each factor in child protection was examined through interviews with clinical professionals working in the field, who also provided suggestions on how treatment can be tailored to each of these factors. This resulted in an overview of seven responsivity factors all related to caregiver characteristics: problem denial, motivation to cooperate with treatment, psychological problems, cognitive abilities, cultural background, practical barriers such as financial problems and social support, and barriers to specific treatment types such as group therapy. Implications and recommendations for strengthening clinical practice are discussed.


2021 ◽  
pp. 104973152098484 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karmen Toros

This article explores child welfare workers’ experiences of children’s participation in decision making in the child protection system. The systematic review follows the principles of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses statement and includes 12 peer-reviewed articles published in academic journals from 2009 to 2019. Findings indicate that children’s participation in decision making is generally limited or nonexistent. The age of the child is an important determining factor concerning whether the child is given the opportunity to participate in decision making. Potential harm for children that may result from participation is considered when deciding on whether to include a child in the decision-making process.


2014 ◽  
Vol 99 (Suppl 1) ◽  
pp. A74-A75
Author(s):  
E. Abbas ◽  
A. Kearney ◽  
S. Gopal ◽  
N. Sukri ◽  
C. Kattakayam ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suruchi Sood ◽  
Sarah Stevens ◽  
Maho Okumura ◽  
Astha Ramaiya ◽  
Michael Hauer

Abstract Background: In many countries, stigma surrounds menstruation, which impacts several Sustainable Development Goals, including good health, quality education, gender equality, and water and sanitation. Despite its relationship with several development issues, menstrual health and hygiene management among adolescents has until recently been ignored by practitioners and researchers. This paper is a systematic review of existing literature and argues that menstrual health and hygiene management is a human rights issue, cross-cutting through development domains of health, education, nutrition, child protection, and water, sanitation, and hygiene. Methods: Four coders independently screened PubMed, Academic OneFile, and Google Scholar to obtain articles using iterations of the key terms: menstrual health; adolescents; health outcomes; education; nutrition; water, sanitation, and hygiene; and child protection. English language primary studies in peer-reviewed or grey literature articles published after 2000, that mentioned adolescents, health or hygiene, and menstruation or menstrual were included. A 9-item scale was used to rate selected full-text articles as strong, moderate, or weak. Synthesis of the results were narrative and examined the relationships between menstrual health and hygiene management and the cross-cutting domains.Results: In total, 28,745 articles were screened, with 84 articles included in the full-text review and quality assessment. Nine articles were coded as “strong” (10.8%), 46 (55.4%) as “moderate,” and 28 (33.7%) as “weak.” More than 60% of the articles examined the relationship between menstrual health and hygiene management and health (37.3%) or water, sanitation, and hygiene (25.3%). Only 11 manuscripts examined menstrual health and hygiene management as a cross-cutting issue impacting more than one development domain.Conclusions: Access to adequate facilities and menstrual health and hygiene management resources are the most common relationships documented within literature. However, there is little focus on menstrual health and hygiene management in the context of other development domains, highlighting the fact that poor menstrual health and hygiene management has not been studied as a human rights issue, negatively impacting millions of girls. Using a cross-cutting, human rights framework to address inadequate menstrual health and hygiene management is fundamental to promoting menstrual health and hygiene management with dignity among girls and women across the globe.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. David Batty ◽  
Mika Kivimäki ◽  
Philipp Frank

SummaryBackgroundRemoval from family of origin to placement in state care is a highly challenging and increasingly prevalent childhood experience. The purpose of this report was to synthesise published and unpublished prospective evidence on adult mortality in people with a history of state care in early life.MethodsFor this systematic review and meta-analysis, we searched PubMed and Embase from their inception to May 31st 2021, extracting standard estimates of association and variance from qualifying studies. We augmented these findings with analyses of unpublished individual-participant data from the 1958 and 1970 Birth Cohort Studies (total N = 21,936). Study-specific estimates were aggregated using random-effect meta-analysis. The Cochrane Risk of Bias Tool was used to assess study quality. This review is PROSPERO-registered (CRD42021254665).FindingsWe identified 209 potentially eligible published articles, of which 11 prospective cohort studies from the UK, Sweden, Finland, the USA, and Canada met the inclusion criteria (2 unpublished). In 2,273,998 individuals (10 studies), relative to those without a care history in childhood, those who were exposed had 2.5 times the risk of total mortality in adulthood (summary rate ratio; 95% confidence interval: 2.58; 1.96 to 3.39), study-specific estimates varying between 1.53 and 5.77 (I2=92%). Despite some attenuation, this association held following adjustment for other measures of early life adversity; extended into middle- and older-age; was stronger in higher quality studies; and was of equal magnitude according to sex and geographical region. There was a suggestion of sensitive periods of exposure to care, whereby individuals who entered public care for the first time in adolescence (3.54; 2.00 to 6.29) experienced greater rates of total mortality than those doing so earlier in the life course (1.69; 1.35 to 2.12). In five studies capturing 1,524,761 individuals (5 studies), children in care had more than three times the risk of competed suicide in adulthood (3.37; 2.64 to 4.30) with study-specific estimates ranging between 2.42 and 5.85 (I2=68%). The magnitude of this relationship was weaker after adjustment for multiple covariates; in men versus women; and in lower quality studies.InterpretationThe excess rates of total and suicide mortality in children exposed to state care suggest child protection systems and social policy following care graduation are insufficient to mitigate the effects of the adverse experiences of care itself and the social disadvantage that preceded it.FundingNone.Research in contextEvidence before this studyExposure to state care during childhood has emerging links with an array of unfavourable social, psychological, and behavioural characteristics in early adulthood. We searched PubMed and Embase from their inception to May 31st 2021 for studies examining whether care is also related to elevated rates of adult mortality. While we identified a series of relevant studies, there was no synthesis of this evidence. Few studies utilised a prospective design such that the assessment of care was made in childhood, so avoiding biases of distant retrospective recall. There was also a lack of clarity regarding: the role of confounding factors; the influence of the timing of care entry on mortality; whether the impact of care extended into middle-age and beyond; and, as has been hypothesised, if men with a care history have a greater vulnerability than women.Added value of this studyWe conducted a systematic review to synthesis evidence on adult mortality risk in children placed in state care. Drawing also on unpublished resources to complement the findings of published studies, a total of 10 studies consistently showed that exposure to state care in childhood was associated with more than a doubling in the risk of total mortality. This association, while attenuated, held following statistical adjustment for other early life risk factors, including other adversities; extended into later adulthood such that it did not exclusively occur immediately following graduation from care; was stronger in better designed studies; and was of equal magnitude in men and women. There was also a suggestion of sensitive periods of exposure to care, whereby individuals who entered public care for the first time in adolescence experienced greater rates of total mortality in adulthood than those doing so earlier in the life course. The magnitude of the association between childhood care and adult risk of completed suicide (5 studies) were somewhat higher than for total mortality. This relationship was not completely explained by control for other early life risk factors; and the magnitude was somewhat weaker in lower quality studies, and in men versus women. There were too few studies to explore the impact of care on other causes of mortality.Implications of all the available evidenceIn recent years there has been a secular rise in the prevalence of children in state care in western societies. This excess mortality risk in this group did not appear to be attributable to other measures of adversity, suggesting that, in the countries studied, child protection systems and social policy following care graduation are insufficient to mitigate the effects of the adverse experiences of care itself and the unfavourable events that preceded it.


2020 ◽  
Vol 110 ◽  
pp. 104679 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beth E. Molnar ◽  
Samantha A. Meeker ◽  
Katherine Manners ◽  
Lisa Tieszen ◽  
Karen Kalergis ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Pérez-Hernando ◽  
Nuria Fuentes-Peláez

There has recently been increased interest in the potential for formal and informal networks to aid interventions with biologic families in helping them achieve reunification in the context of the child protection system. When group support is provided to families, the creation of a network of social support seems to be a consequence. The article analyzes the conceptualization of social support in order to create social support networks and the benefits on the intervention with families in the framework of the child protection system through a systematic review. From a wide search 4348 documents, finally 14 articles were included in the reviews. Results show that social support is considered a process by which social resources are provided from formal (professional services and programs associated with those services in any off the protection, health of educational systems) and informal (extended family, friends, neighbors and acquaintances) networks, allowing the families to confront daily moments as well as in crisis situations. This social support is related to emotional, psychological, physical, instrumental, material and information support that allow families to face their difficulties. Formal and informal networks of child protection systems contribute to social support, resilience, consolidation of learning and the assistance of families to social intervention programs.


2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 176-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hamed Seddighi ◽  
Ibrahim Salmani ◽  
Mohhamad Hossein Javadi ◽  
Saeideh Seddighi

Violence against children affects a significant portion of youth around the world. Emergencies and natural disasters escalate the risk due to weakened child protection systems and disruption of preventative mechanisms. In this systematic review, 692 related papers were searched in various databases in the initial search. After review, 11 papers were finally selected for full review. These papers were selected based on publication date, relevance to emergencies, their geographical area type of violence, age of subjects, and their gender. Most families affected by natural disasters, especially those in lower socioeconomic status, face greater social and economic pressures. The families that are more vulnerable to loss of food and shelter commit violence against children more frequently. On the other hand, while the rate of violence increases in emergencies, the reported rate of violence is less than the actual rate due to lack of required infrastructure and reporting mechanisms. The emergency housing increased risk of some types of child abuse. The history of exposure to violence, parental substance abuse, poverty, and child labor were predictors of increased violence against children in emergency situations. Sexual violence against girls after conflicts and physical violence against boys after emergencies are common forms of violence. Poverty as another predictor exposes children to more violence due to limited family economic resources and support. Given the identified predictors of violence, humanitarian organizations can come closer to providing appropriate plans to reduce the risk during and postdisaster.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell Viner ◽  
Simon Russell ◽  
Rosella Saulle ◽  
Helen Croker ◽  
Claire Stansfeld ◽  
...  

AbstractBackgroundThe well-documented links between education and health mean that school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic are likely to be associated with significant health harms to children and young people (CYP). A systematic review of the evidence is needed to inform policy decisions around school closures and re-openings during the pandemic.MethodsWe undertook a high-quality systematic review of observational quantitative studies (published or preprint) of the impacts of school closures (for any reason) on the health, wellbeing and educational outcomes of CYP, excluding impacts of closure on transmission of infection (PROSPERO CRD42020181658). We used a machine learning approach for screening articles, with decisions on inclusion and data extraction performed independently by 2 researchers. Quality was assessed for study type. A narrative synthesis of results was undertaken as data did not allow meta-analysis.Results16,817 records were screened, of which 151 were reviewed in full-text and 72 studies were included from 20 countries. 33% were cohort studies using historical control periods; 19% pre-post studies; and 46% cross-sectional studies which assessed change by comparison with population reference data. 63% were high-quality, 25% medium-quality and 13% low-quality. Cause of closure in all studies was the first COVID-19 pandemic wave with the exception of 5 influenza studies and 1 teacher strike.27 studies concerning mental health identified considerable impacts across emotional, behavioural and restlessness/inattention problems; 18-60% of CYP scored above risk thresholds for distress, particularly anxiety and depressive symptoms. Two studies reported non-significant rises in suicide rates. Self-harm and psychiatric attendances were markedly reduced, indicating a rise in unmet mental health need. Child protection referrals fell 27-39%, with a halving of the expected number of referrals originating in schools.19 studies concerning health service use showed marked reductions in emergency department (ED) presentations and hospital admissions, with evidence of delayed presentations and potential widening of inequalities in vaccination coverage. Data suggested marked rises in screen-time and social media use and reductions in physical activity however data on sleep and diet were inconclusive. Available data suggested likely higher harms in CYP from more deprived populations.ConclusionsSchool closures as part of broader social distancing measures are associated with considerable harms to CYP health and wellbeing. Available data are short-term and longer-term harms are likely to be magnified by further school closures. Data are urgently needed on longer-term impacts using strong research designs, particularly amongst vulnerable groups. These findings are important for policy-makers seeking to balance the risks of transmission through school-aged children with the harms of closing schools.


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