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

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.

What Counts as Evidence in Child Welfare Research?

In this commentary, we respond to Barth, R. P., Berrick, J. D., Garcia, A. R., Drake, B., Jonson-Reid, M., Gyouroko, J. R., and Greeson, J. K. P. (2021). Research to consider while effectively re-designing child welfare services. Research on Social Work Practice. https://doi.org/10.1177/10497315211050000 and critique their premise that Western-based research with population-level administrative data is the best and only valid evidence on which to base child welfare policy and practice changes. We offer an alternative viewpoint on what forms of evidence should be brought to bear as we consider re-envisioning the child welfare system, highlighting the importance of lived experience and the need to consider the evidence regarding all marginalized racial and ethnic groups. We argue that evidence should represent the perspectives of those with lived experience and that collaborative child welfare research can strengthen the validity of analyses and interpretations. We hold that Barth et al. ask and answer the wrong questions. We press for deeper critical reflection, a more nuanced intersectional lens, and urgent action to address structural and institutional racism in the child welfare system.

Are the Average Effects of Foster Care Placement Really Close to Zero?

In their provocative article, Barth and colleagues interrogate existing research on a series of claims about the child welfare system. In this reply, we focus on just one of their conclusions: that foster care placement does little, on average, to cause the poor outcomes of children who are ever placed in care. Our argument proceeds in three stages. In the first, we dispute the claim that the average effects of foster care placement on children are “settled” in any scientific sense. In the second, we note that the lack of agreement about what constitutes the appropriate counterfactual makes the idea of average effects of foster care placement in this area problematic. In the third, we problematize the idea that near-zero average effects equate to unimportant effects by showing how different types of effect heterogeneity may lead us to think differently about how the system is working.

Implications of irregular transnational adoptions within international standards: A review of intercountry adoption systems and Guatemalan birthmother perspectives

With growing global emergencies, child abduction became a concern in countries of origin and reception of transnationally adopted children. Improved regulations and standards to prevent child trafficking exhibit failures to ensure the best interest of children and the principle of subsidiarity. The article reviews relevant literature documents the Guatemalan birthmothers’ experiences and documented child theft, deception by trafficking networks, fraudulent adoptions, and familial coercion. Human rights and child welfare system implications drawn may be relevant to irregular transnational adoptions elsewhere.

Comportamientos sexuales de riesgo en adolescentes del sistema de protección: una revisión sistemática

La salud sexual de los/as adolescentes y jóvenes suele mirarse desde una lente que se enfoca en los problemas. En el caso de los adolescentes que están en el sistema de protección infantil este análisis centrado en los riesgos es mayor si cabe, dado que experimentan tasas más altas de resultados negativos de salud sexual. La presente revisión tiene el objetivo de examinar la literatura relacionada con los comportamientos sexuales de riesgo de los adolescentes y jóvenes que se encuentran en el sistema de protección. Para ello, se han consultado varias bases de datos (Web of Science, Scopus y PUBMED), restringiendo la búsqueda a las palabras clave “sexual behavior” o “sexual risk” y “child welfare system” o “foster youth”, y el rango de publicación entre 2011 y 2021. De las 1496 publicaciones identificadas inicialmente, se eliminaron aquellas duplicadas y/o que no cumplían los criterios de inclusión, quedándonos con un total de 22 artículos. La mitad de las publicaciones que analizaban los comportamientos predictivos de conductas sexuales de riesgo se centraban en las experiencias de abuso sexual en la infancia. Por otro lado, el 22,7% de los artículos analizados informaban de un uso deficitario del preservativo entre los jóvenes en hogares de acogida, mientras que el 18,2% afirmaban que este colectivo presenta una mayor prevalencia de ITS y el 31,8% reportan que las tasas de embarazo son más altas entre las chicas de esta población. Asimismo, el 18,2% de los estudios analizados encontraron indicios de una posible relación entre la participación en el sistema de bienestar infantil y en actividades de sexo transaccional. Así, aunque la investigación sobre este tema sigue siendo escasa, esta revisión pone de manifiesto el riesgo de desarrollar patrones poco saludables de sexualidad entre los jóvenes del sistema de protección.