Social Images of Children in Care, Their Families, and Residential Care Institutions

This article discusses the role of child protection and residential care institutions in mediating the tension between women’s productive and reproductive responsibilities in early state socialist Hungary. At a time when increasing numbers of women entered paid work in the framework of catch-up industrialization but the socialization of care work was inadequate, these institutions substituted for missing public child care services. Relying on not only policy documents but more than six hundred children’s case files, including Romani children’s files, from three different locations in Hungary as well as interviews with former children’s home residents and personnel, the article examines the regulatory framework in which child protection institutions and caseworkers operated. It points to the differentiated forms of pressure these institutions exercised on Romani and non-Romani mothers to enter paid work between the late 1940s and the early 1950s from the intersectional perspective of gender and ethnicity. Showing that prejudice against “Gypsies” as work-shy persisted in child protection work across the systemic divide of the late 1940s, the article contributes to scholarship on state socialism and Stalinism that emphasizes the role of historical continuities. At the same time, reflecting on parental invention in using child protection as a form of child care, the article also complicates a simplistic social control approach to residential care institutions in Stalinist Hungary.

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The Stress of Caring—Resilience and HPA-Axis Activity in Hair Samples of Youth Residential Caregivers

Frontiers in Psychiatry ◽

10.3389/fpsyt.2020.556486 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 11 ◽

Author(s):

David Bürgin ◽

Nina Kind ◽

Martin Schröder ◽

Vera Clemens ◽

Jörg M. Fegert ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Residential Care ◽

Hpa Axis ◽

Self Efficacy ◽

Multiple Stressors ◽

Self Care ◽

Positive Association ◽

Well Being ◽

Linear Regression Models ◽

Residential Care Institutions ◽

Hair Samples

Background: Professional caregivers in youth residential care institutions experience frequent verbal and physical aggression as well as multiple stressors as part of their everyday work, leading to high levels of burnout and staff turnover. Resilience might buffer against psychophysiological stress response and therefore be crucial for well-being in professional caregivers.Objectives: We aimed to investigate if measures related to resilience [sense of coherence (SoC), self-efficacy and self-care] and attachment security of caregivers were cross-sectionally associated with stress markers in hair samples [cortisol and dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA)].Method: Participants (n = 134; 64.2% women) reported on individual resilience measures and provided hair samples for cortisol and DHEA assays. Attachment was assessed in a subsample using the Adult Attachment Projective Picture System (AAP, n = 69). Linear regression models were fitted to estimate the association between resilience measures and the Cortisol:DHEA ratio, cortisol and DHEA, controlling for gender and age.Results: SoC was associated with a lower Cortisol:DHEA ratio (β = −0.36, p < 0.001), driven by a positive association between SoC and DHEA levels (β = 0.28, p = 0.002). Self-care was also associated with lower Cortisol:DHEA ratios (β = −0.24, p = 0.005), due to self-care being associated with higher DHEA (β = 0.21, p = 0.016). HPA-axis measures were not associated with self-efficacy nor with attachment patterns in a subsample.Conclusions: Our findings imply that youth residential care institutions might benefit from programs focusing on enhancing SoC and self-care practices. Fostering a meaningful, comprehensible and manageable professional climate in caregiving environments and implementing self-care in routine practices might enhance not only well-being but also physical health of professional caregivers and in this way buffer adverse health effects of chronic stressors.

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Measuring movement into residential care institutions in Haiti after Hurricane Matthew: A pilot study

PLoS ONE ◽

10.1371/journal.pone.0195515 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 13 (4) ◽

pp. e0195515 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Beth L. Rubenstein ◽

Matthew MacFarlane ◽

Celina Jensen ◽

Lindsay Stark

Keyword(s):

Pilot Study ◽

Residential Care ◽

Residential Care Institutions

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Samhällsvårdens Svarte Petter

Socialvetenskaplig tidskrift ◽

10.3384/svt.2019.26.1.2359 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 26 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Ulrika Levander ◽

Lina Sturfelt

Keyword(s):

Mental Health ◽

Residential Care ◽

Mental Healthcare ◽

Preventive Actions ◽

Child Psychiatric ◽

History Of ◽

Mental Health Interventions ◽

Public Responsibility ◽

Open Question ◽

Children In Care

Drawing the short straw. Contemporary and historical categorizations of children in foster and residential care with mental health disordersAbout 67 per cent of children placed in residential care in Sweden suffer from mental health disorders. Although the problem has been recognized for decades, the group’s access to sufficient mental healthcare is still lagging. In this article we examine contemporary and historical categorizations of mental health issues among children in foster and residential care. The study examines Swedish commission reports, government bills, and Children’s Acts published between 1902 and 2016 where the issue is discussed. Hereby, ”the history of the present”, and its implications for the targeted group, is analysed and problematized. Our findings show that continuous talk of preventive actions in the name of the all-embracing welfare state repeatedly has downplayed the group’s access to mental health interventions. Ever since the establishment of the child psychiatric field in the 1940s, a discursive battle about the public responsibility for the group is also raging. In the 1970s, coordination is articulated as the grand solution, but the problem still persists. Neither the contemporary child rights perspective nor the latest law regulations of forced coordination for children in care have changed the group’s underprivileged position. Whether the legal turn will finally lead to recognition of the group’s right to adequate mental health care remains an open question.

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‘I’m not getting out of bed!’ The criminalisation of young people in residential care

Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology ◽

10.1177/0004865818778739 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 52 (1) ◽

pp. 76-93 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Alison Gerard ◽

Andrew McGrath ◽

Emma Colvin ◽

Kath McFarlane

Keyword(s):

Criminal Justice ◽

Young People ◽

Criminal Justice System ◽

Residential Care ◽

Police Officers ◽

Justice System ◽

Service Providers ◽

Care Service ◽

Management Tool ◽

Children In Care

Evidence from both Australian and international jurisdictions show that children in residential care are over-represented in the criminal justice system. In the current study, we interviewed 46 professionals who had contact with young people in residential care settings in New South Wales, Australia. Our sample included police officers, residential care service providers, legal aid lawyers and juvenile justice workers, about their perceptions of the link between residential care and contact with the criminal justice system. Factors identified by the participants included the care environment itself, use of police as a behavioural management tool, deficient staff training and inadequate policies and funding to address the over-representation. These factors, combined with the legacy of Australia’s colonial past, were a particularly potent source of criminalisation for Aboriginal children in care.

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Indigenous Children and Young People in Residential Care: A Systematic Scoping Review

Trauma Violence & Abuse ◽

10.1177/1524838019881707 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 152483801988170

Author(s):

Kathomi Gatwiri ◽

Lynne McPherson ◽

Natalie Parmenter ◽

Nadine Cameron ◽

Darlene Rotumah

Keyword(s):

Young People ◽

Residential Care ◽

Scoping Review ◽

Well Being ◽

Children And Young People ◽

Residential Care Facilities ◽

Indigenous Children ◽

Trauma Informed ◽

Colonial Histories ◽

Children In Care

In Australia and internationally, Indigenous children are seriously overrepresented in the child welfare system. This article provides an overview of literature investigating the needs of Indigenous children in residential care facilities. The provision of culturally safe and trauma-informed therapeutic care to Indigenous children and young people in residential care recognizes that the trauma and violence that they have experienced is exacerbated by their Indigeneity due to the colonial histories presenting. Utilizing a systematic scoping review methodology, the study returned a total of 637 peer-reviewed articles that were identified and reviewed for inclusion. The process of exclusion resulted in the inclusion of eight peer-reviewed studies and 51 reports and discussion papers sourced from gray literature. Findings from this study, though dearth, indicate that trauma-informed and culturally safe interventions play a significant role in Indigenous children’s health and well-being while in care. Their experiences of abuse and neglect transcend individual trauma and include intergenerational pain and suffering resulting from long-lasting impacts of colonization, displacement from culture and country, genocidal policies, racism, and the overall systemic disadvantage. As such, a therapeutic response, embedded within Indigenous cultural frameworks and knowledges of trauma, is not only important but absolutely necessary and aims to acknowledge the intersectionality between the needs of Indigenous children in care and the complex systemic disadvantage impacting them.

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