Sociocultural issues in the evaluation of the needs of children in custody decision making. What do our current frameworks for evaluating parenting practices have to offer?

Development and validation of a parental competence questionnaire in the paediatric hospital emergency setting (ECP-U)

OBJECTIVE

To develop and validate a parental competence questionnaire for parents of children seeking care in hospital emergency departments.

METHODS

An instrumental study of the development of an assessment questionnaire was carried out in three phases: 1) review of relevant measures and item generation, 2) content validity evaluation, 3) psychometric evaluation. Exploratory factor analysis was performed to examine the factorial structure. Internal consistency was evaluated using ordinal alpha. Hypothesis testing was determined between the resulting factors, the Parental Stress Scale and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory.

RESULTS

The participants were 270 parents of children aged 0-14 years old from a referral hospital in Valencia (Spain). An 18-item questionnaire was developed, comprising five factors that explain 53.0% of the variance: 1) "emotional management and expression", 2) "passive social support", 3) "parental agency", 4) "basic needs and care" and 5) "active social support". The internal consistency for the different factors was modest (>0.70). A negative correlation between the Parental Stress Scale and the parental competence questionnaire was found for most of the factors.

CONCLUSIONS

This questionnaire on parental competence in the hospital emergency department (ECP-U) is a useful and simple self-report instrument for assessing the parental competence of parents with children in the emergency department.

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

The resulting questionnaire is of practical value to both healthcare professionals and researchers in this field. It can be administered quickly in clinical practice and used to identify parents' levels of parental competence and refer those with difficulties to appropriate support services.

Predictors of psychological recommendations in child protection evaluation

Child protection matters from an important social and legal challenge, in which psychologists may be called upon to address a series of questions relevant for judicial decision-making. In an explorative manner, the current study investigates variables that influence psychological evaluators' recommendations in child protection cases. The data is based on a quantitative content review of 103 psychological evaluation reports, conducted at an institute of forensic psychology in Germany. Using bivariate and logistic regression analyses, the following predictors were analyzed in this study: Child-related factors, familial risk factors, and general custody criteria. The outcome measure was the evaluator's recommendation regarding long-term placement of the child and long-term custody arrangements. Evaluators were more likely to recommend permanent foster placement if the child showed insecure or disorganized attachment patterns, especially when combined with developmental delays, or if the child was temporarily in institutional or foster placement at the time of evaluation. The results support the conclusion that the most important factors for psychological expert recommendations refer to the "harm of the child" criterion in terms of developmental and psychological maladaptation.

Challenges to parenting in a new culture: Implications for child and family welfare

Increasing numbers of families arriving through Australia's humanitarian settlement scheme are coming into contact with Australian child protection systems. A large number of these families come from African and Middle Eastern countries and have common experiences of trauma, dislocation, loss and many are victims of genocide, war, and torture. Pre-migration experiences together with the considerable challenges of settling into a new country can significantly affect family well-being and parenting practices. It is therefore important that child and family welfare service planners are well informed about how best to support refugee families using culturally competent family intervention and community development practices. This paper draws on the findings of a research project designed to examine why recently arrived families from refugee backgrounds are presenting in the South Australian child protection system and to identify culturally appropriate strategies for intervention. The paper presents findings from the project that relate to (1) refugee parents', community members' and child protection practitioners' perspectives on the challenges to being a refugee parent in Australia and (2) strategies and resources relevant to prevention and early intervention in refugee families before statutory child protection intervention becomes necessary.

Establishing the boundaries and building bridges: a literature review on ecological theory: implications for research into the refugee parenting experience

Currently an ecological model for conceptualizing and capturing the refugee parenting experience is lacking. After an extensive review of the literature related to the usages of Bronfenbrenner's ecological model of child development, a gap was found in knowledge and research centred on describing the environment of pre-resettlement (i.e. pre-flight, flight, migration, camp) contexts and their impact on refugee parents and carer experiences. The culture of the refugee parenting experience may be characterized by disruptions in and alterations to family structure and organization; values and norms; and gender roles. This paper begins by examining the definition and usages of existing ecological frameworks in the 20th and 21st century. Particular attention is drawn to the gaps in the existing literature and an ecological model is offered. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for practice. The outcomes of this paper suggest the need for practitioners, policymakers and researchers to engage and develop culturally competent, relevant and appropriate interventions (i.e. reconciling differing beliefs and behaviours concerning child-rearing practices; affirming positive parenting practices of these families during engagement protocols and processes; adopting a strengths-based orientation) in the area of child protection whilst at the same time safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children within pre- and post-resettlement contexts.

Infant mental health, child maltreatment, and the law: A jurisprudent therapy analysis

Scholarly and clinical discussions of the legal issues facing infant mental health professionals typically focus on the seemingly intractable differences in philosophies, goals, and approaches inherent in the law and the mental health professions. We argue that forensically informed approaches to practice with very young children can potentially enhance many mental health and child welfare outcomes. This article describes the relatively new conceptual frameworks known as "therapeutic jurisprudence" and "jurisprudent therapy." Using these conceptual frameworks, we analyze representative problems that are typical in infant mental health practice with maltreated children through case examples drawn from their evaluations of children and families in the child protection and legal systems. Demonstrations of how such dilemmas can be approached with enhanced analytic decision-making and practice approaches are presented. We argue that applying such jurisprudent therapy approaches opens up fresh perspectives for evidence-based practices that facilitate creative, rigorous, and intellectually stimulating clinical work.

Parenting schemas and the process of change

Parents' childrearing behaviors are guided by schemas of the caregiving role, their functioning in that role, what children need in general, and what their own children are like in particular. Sometimes, however, parenting schemas can be maladaptive because they are too rigid or simple, involve inappropriate content, or are dominated by negative affect. In this article, we describe parenting schemas and provide an overview of empirical work documenting the characteristics of maladaptive parenting schemas. We review how intervention practices common to multiple therapeutic approaches (cognitive-behavior therapy, family therapy, parent training, attachment-based interventions, and psychoanalytic parent-infant psychotherapy) attempt to modify schemas to promote more optimal functioning among parents. We highlight how research in cognitive science may explain, in part, treatment effectiveness.