scholarly journals Child Maltreatment and the Child Welfare System as Environmental Factors in the International Classification of Functioning

2022 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Kim ◽  
Corinne Moss ◽  
Jane Jungyoon Park ◽  
Christine Wekerle

The WHO defines child maltreatment as any form of neglect, exploitation, and physical, emotional, or sexual abuse, committed against children under the age of 18. Youth involved in the child welfare system report more maltreatment experiences and environmental turbulence (e.g., number of moves, caseworkers), placing them at greater risk for poorer physical and mental health. The International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF) provides a framework to describe health conditions and severity of disabilities for an individual and/or group in the context of environmental factors. The Maltreatment and Adolescent Pathways (MAP) study is a longitudinal study, assessing self-reports on variables (e.g., child maltreatment history, trauma symptoms, dating violence, and substance use) of youth in an urban child protection service system. This study focuses on 11 of the 24 MAP publications that pertain to health and functioning, which can be considered applicable to the ICF framework, following established linking rules. The purpose of this study is to analyze these MAP sub-studies, with maltreatment and involvement in the child welfare system as environmental factors that impact the functioning of child welfare-involved youth. Findings indicate significant relationships across environmental factors (i.e., child maltreatment histories, child welfare system involvement), health conditions (i.e., trauma symptomatology, psychological distress, intellectual disabilities), and functioning problems (i.e., substance use, adolescent dating violence, sexual risk-taking, coping motives, sleep problems). The interrelated nature of these factors in the MAP sub-studies suggests the value of the ICF model to a holistic health view of use to practitioners supporting system-involved youth, clarifying unattended environmental factors in guiding service provision for foster care and/or maltreated youth.

2020 ◽  
Vol 692 (1) ◽  
pp. 182-202
Author(s):  
Kristen S. Slack ◽  
Lawrence M. Berger

The majority of alleged abuse or neglect reports to the U.S. child welfare system are either screened out prior to an investigation (i.e., at the “hotline” stage) or investigated only to be closed with no finding of immediate child safety concerns. Yet while many of these children and families are at risk of subsequent incidents of child maltreatment or child welfare system involvement, they are not systematically offered services or benefits intended to reduce this risk at the point that child protective services (CPS) ends its involvement. This article provides an overview of the “front end” of the child welfare system, commonly referred to as CPS, highlighting which families are served and which are not. We then argue for a systematic and coordinated child maltreatment prevention infrastructure that incorporates elements of “community response” programs that several U.S. states have implemented in recent years. Such programs are focused on families that have been reported to, and sometimes investigated by, CPS, but no ongoing CPS case is opened. We further argue that such programs need to pay particular attention to economic issues that these families face.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah A. Font ◽  
Reeve Kennedy

Despite sufficient evidence to conclude that maltreatment exposure affects the risk of crime and delinquency, we conclude that the magnitude and specificity of effects of child maltreatment on crime and delinquency and the mechanisms through which those effects operate remain poorly identified. Key challenges include insufficient attention to the overlap of child maltreatment with various forms of family dysfunction and adversity and a lack of comprehensive measurement of the multiple, often comorbid, forms of child maltreatment. We then consider the potential impacts of the child welfare system on the maltreatment–crime link. Because the child welfare system typically provides voluntary, short-term services of unknown quality, it likely neither increases nor reduces risks of delinquency and crime for most children who are referred or investigated. For the comparatively small (although nominally large and important) subset of children experiencing foster care, impacts on delinquency and crime likely vary by the quality of environments within and after their time in care—issues that, to date, have received too little attention. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Criminology, Volume 5 is January 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.


2008 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 83-96
Author(s):  
Carolyn Seroka ◽  
Carole Zugazaga

Intervention with families and children when child maltreatment is suspected is one of the most critical practice areas of social work. This study examined the level of satisfaction for current child welfare stipend interns (n=106), the majority of whom were BSW students, and former stipend interns (n=59) after 1 year of employment within the Alabama state child welfare system. Overall, participants were satisfied with both internship and employment; however, job satisfaction for White child welfare employees was significantly higher than for Black employees. Sixty-two percent of the employees did not expect to remain employed with the agency over the next 5 years.


2019 ◽  
Vol 96 ◽  
pp. 386-395
Author(s):  
Natasha E. Latzman ◽  
Colby Lokey ◽  
Catherine A. Lesesne ◽  
Joanne Klevens ◽  
Karen Cheung ◽  
...  

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