217,793 research outputs found
Knowledge Summary 22: Reaching Child Brides
No full textChild marriage affects 10 million girls under the age of 18 every year. The negative health
and social impact of child marriage include higher rates of maternal and infant mortality,
sexually transmitted infection, social separation, and domestic abuse compared with older
married women. The UN defines Child Marriage as a Human Rights violation and is working to
end this practice globally, however many girls still fall victim each year. While the importance
of ending the practice of child marriage cannot be overlooked, targeted interventions are also
needed to mitigate the negative health and development impacts. Health services can serve
as an entry point for health and social interventions to decrease the risks associated with
pregnancy and improve reproductive and child health. Health services can also facilitate
opportunities for multi-sectoral connections such as formal and informal education and
income generation to mitigate the negative impact of child marriage
Understanding child neglect
No full textChild neglect is one of the most common forms of maltreatment. Neglect is a topic that encompasses complex issues, many of which are also emerging research areas. This paper aims to provide a broad overview of these issues in relation to current thinking and to generate discussion points for practitioners, policy makers and researchers.
Key messages:
Poverty and child neglect are closely linked but not all children from poor families are neglected and children from more affluent families can be neglected.
Neglect is often portrayed as the “fault” of mothers, while failing to take into account the role of neglectful fathers. The gendered nature of “neglectful parenting” may be, in part, explained by links between single mothers and poverty.
A tertiary child protection response may not be the best way to respond to children who are being neglected—neglectful families are complex and have high needs so require multiple levels of support and resourcing. The National Framework for Protecting Australia’s Children aims to address these issues through the use of a public health model.
For many neglected children, access to resources and education to support families would minimise the effects of neglect—keeping them out of the statutory child protection system.
There is no quick, easy, “one size fits all” response to child neglect—the response must be based on careful assessment of needs and take into account the diverse nature of neglect and the compounding impact of multiple and complex needs.
Where it is necessary to provide a child protection response to neglect, an effective response is likely to be long term, resource intensive, and complex
PARENTAL INFLUENCES ON CHILD WEIGHT LOSS: PERCEPTION, WILLINGNESS TO CHANGE, AND BARRIERS
No full textParents are a primary contributor to the development of obesegenic behavior in youth. However, many parents do not perceive their child’s weight to be a problem, are not ready to make changes, and may be overwhelmed by obstacles to behavior change. PURPOSE: To examine relationships between parent perception of child weight, parental readiness to change weight control behaviors, and parental barriers to changing weight control behaviors. METHODS: Forty-eight parents of overweight (≤85th-95th percentile) and obese (≥95th percentile) 6-12 year old children were recruited to complete questionnaires on perception of their child’s weight, their stage of readiness to change behaviors for their child’s weight, barriers to engaging the child in weight control behaviors, and descriptive characteristics. Child height and weight were objectively measured and used to determine BMI percentile for age. RESULTS: Seventy-seven percent of parents misclassified their child’s weight status and 54.2% perceived their child as normal weight. Parental perception was significantly associated with parent stage of readiness to change (r=0.358, p=0.012). There was no relationship between parent perception of child weight, and parent stage of readiness to change to the parental barriers to changing behavior. Older parents (p=0.045), and married parents (p=0.025) were more likely to perceive their child had a weight problem. CONCLUSIONS: Increasing a parent’s awareness of their child’s weight status may benefit progression through the stages of behavior change. Furthermore, older parents and parents who are married may be more conscious of weight related issues in the family
Supporting Refugee Children in Pennsylvania Public Schools
No full textThis study documented the lived experiences of professionals with significant background working with child refugees, in an attempt to understand how practitioners view the information, resources, and other supports required to assure child refugees’ successful physical, cognitive, social, and emotional development. An extensive review of the published research on child refugees in the Unitd States described specific international treaties, federal statutes, and state codes, addressed developmental disruptions as refugee children experience them, and explored the school experience of specific refugee cultural groups, yet revealed few reports of practitioners’ perspectives.
Accordingly, this investigation sought the views of ten school and community professionals who engage with child refugees in a medium-sized, suburban school district to determine 1) What advice would they offer to those who will serve refugee children in public schools? 2) How useful do they find background information on legal mandates and the refugee child’s experience prior to resettlement, and when is this information most beneficial? 3) How do they experience a child refugee’s developmental disruptions, and how do they prioritize work on these disruptions?
A one hour semi-structured interview addressed knowledge, skills, and practices that professionals found to be successful when working with a refugee population, along with barriers that they encountered. A three-part, twenty-six item follow-up survey asked participants to provide background information on their experiences, rate their knowledge of federal and state legal mandates and refugee cultural experiences (e.g., home country context, refugee camp conditions), and identify any developmental disruptions a refugee child presented in their setting.
Participants reported successes and barriers that were largely role specific. Several themes, however, arose across all interviews. These themes included: 1) addressing students’ language needs, 2) engaging community resources, 3) addressing school needs related to cultural context education, 4) building relational trust, 5) identifying and addressing bullying, and 6) collaborating in pursuit of common professional goals. In addition, interviewees identified motivation and transformation as personal experiences in their work with child refugees.
Findings lead to three implications, including development of comprehensive and specific state policy, recommendations for professional standards of practice, and revision to pre-service teacher and school leader curricula
The monitoring of the rights of the child: a child rights-based approach
No full textPhDDue to the lacunae between legal obligations to human rights and the actual situation,
monitoring is an essential component of the international and national human rights system.
Monitoring illuminates the situation of human rights commitments and ensures the relevancy
of instruments. The thesis explores monitoring in relation to the rights of the child and
submits that a child rights-based approach is essential. Monitoring should not only consider
the status and nature of child rights, but a child rights-based approach should also guide
efforts so that they improve as well as reflect and respect children's rights.
The study defines monitoring and describes a child rights-based approach. As a subject of
legal investigation, the thesis then addresses several questions. How do international and
national monitoring efforts respect child rights? How have the supervision of international
conference agreements supported child rights? Furthermore, how do different countries
monitor? National activities are examined through case studies of two Commonwealth
countries: Canada and South Africa. Then, analysis is presented about how actors interpret
and execute monitoring and the significance of different approaches. Lastly, the rationale,
challenges and existing support of a child rights-based approach are discussed. In sum, a
child rights-based approach is not generally utilised and the implications of child rights upon
the monitoring process are not yet realised. Most monitors, whether international, regional
or domestic, inadequately consider the demands of child rights upon the process of
ascertaining the situation of children's rights. Proposed guidelines are appended to support
a child rights-based approach to monitoring
Culturally Sensitive Approaches to Research on Child Development and Family Practices in First Peoples Communities
No full textThis paper focuses on highlighting some of the concerns that need to be addressed in conducting psychological research with First Peoples children and families. The extensive literature on healthy child development and family practices in Caucasian families is contrasted with the limited perspective on First Peoples families. We suggest that this is, in part, due to an unnecessary focus on problem behaviours of children from First Peoples communities. We contend that it is imperative for developmental psychologists to adopt a new perspective, by acknowledging the strengths and competencies of First Peoples families, and using more culturally-sensitive approaches to working with First Peoples
Facebook Has a Child Predation Problem
No full textDescribes the proliferation of groups aimed at child sexual grooming on Facebook, contrasting the slowness and failures of the safety/reporting system with the speed and accuracy of Facebook's recommendation algorithms, which spread the groups
Child labor : cause, consequence, and cure, with remarks on International Labor Standards
No full textAt least 120 million of the world's children aged 5 to 14 worked full-time in 1995, most of them under hazardous, unhygienic conditions, for more than 10 hours a day. This is an old problem worldwide but particularly so in Third World countries in recent decades. What has changed, with globalization, is our awareness of these child laborers. (The International Labor Organization distinguishes between"child work,"which could include light household chores and could have some learning value, and"child labor,"a pejorative phrase.) By bringing together the main theoretical ideas, the author hopes to encourage both more theoretical research and empirical work with a better theoretical foundation. Among other things, the author observes that: a) The problem is most serious in Africa, where the child-labor participation rate is 26.2 percent. The rate is 12.8 percent in Asia. But since 1950, the trend is a decline in that participation rate worldwide. For most Latin American countries, the decline is notable but less marked than in Asia. In large parts of Africa, including Ethiopia, the problem has been extremely persistent, but even there the trend is downward. b) Child labor has not always been considered evil, and there is no consensus on why it began to decline. In some (not all) countries legislative acts declared it illegal, in some there were rules about compulsory education, and increasing prosperity generally made families less likely to experience poverty if their children weren't working. c) Mandating compulsory education is regarded as more effective than outlawing child labor, because attendance at school is easier to monitor, but some experts believe economic progress is the answer to the problem. The justification for many interventions is that the state is more concerned about the well-being of children than parents are; the author believes such an assumption to be wrong when child labor occurs as a mass phenomenon rather than as isolated abuse. The author argues that, in some economies, the market for labor may exhibit multiple equilibria, with one equilibrium having low adult wage and a high incidence of child labor and another equilibrium exhibiting high adult wage and no child labor. The model is used to provide a framework for analyzing the role of international labor standards.Labor Standards,Children and Youth,Street Children,Labor Policies,Environmental Economics&Policies,Street Children,Children and Youth,Youth and Governance,Labor Standards,Educational Policy and Planning
Family structure and child maltreatment: Do some family types place children at greater risk?
No full textReviewing current research on family structures, this paper aims to assist practitioners and policy-makers who work with children and families to make evidence-informed decisions.
This paper reviews the research on whether some family structures expose children to a higher risk of child maltreatment than others. It aims to assist practitioners and policy-makers who work with children and families to make evidence-informed decisions.
Key messages
The research on whether particular family structures place children at higher risk of maltreatment has produced complex and often ambiguous results.
While most of the available research suggests that children in sole-mother families and step families tend to be at higher risk of maltreatment than those in married families, not all findings are consistent.
In general, much of the perceived relationship between family structure and child maltreatment can be explained by factors such as poverty, substance misuse and domestic violence.
There is no single cause of child maltreatment. Rather, maltreatment reflects the effects of multiple, dynamic, interrelated and, often, cumulative risk factors.
Sole-mother families, sole-father families, and step or blended families are overrepresented in Australia\u27s child protection systems. However, there are a number of limitations to the Australian child protection data, which must be noted when interpreting this finding.
Although family structure is an easily identifiable risk factor for child maltreatment, its influence can easily be - and is often - exaggerated. It is important that practitioners and policy-makers look further and identify other risk factors that may be more conducive to intervention.
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Child maltreatment: The Lebanese children's experiences
No full textBackground This study examined the prevalence, risk factors and consequences associated with child maltreatment in the home. Methods The sample was 1028 (556 boys; 472 girls) Lebanese children aged 8-17 years (M=11.89; SD=1.67). Children were administered an interview questionnaire that included the International Child Abuse Screening Tool, the Trauma Symptom Checklist and the Family Functioning in Adolescence Questionnaire. Results Approximately 30percent of the children reported at least one incident of witnessing violence, 65percent reported at least one incident of psychological abuse and 54percent reported at least one incident of physical abuse over a 1-year period. The results showed an overlap between children's reports of witnessing violence in their homes and physical and psychological abuse that were associated with adolescents' trauma symptoms. Family-related variables significantly predicted three forms of child maltreatment. Conclusion These results highlight the importance of examining children's multiple experiences of violence in their homes in research designs, prevention efforts and policy mandates. 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