Community Readiness for Child Maltreatment Prevention: The Challenge of a Brief Assessment.

In this paper, we address the assessment of community readiness (CR) for the prevention of child maltreatment in the context of a community survey. A mail survey was administered to 222 service providers and 54 supervisors and managers from 35 different organizations serving children and their families in four Canadian communities. Eleven items from the short version of the Readiness Assessment for the Prevention of Child Maltreatment (RAP-CM) were used, in combination with questions assessing knowledge of family support programs offered in the community and a measure of inter-agency collaboration. Findings show that a consistent and valid indicator of "Lack of knowledge of the environment" can be derived from the RAP-CM items and used for screening key informants. Overall, CR appears mixed in the communities studied, the weakest dimensions of which are the will to address the problem and the dynamism of informal social resources. Leadership emerges as a major gap that needs to be addressed.

Adjustment of children using supervised access services: Longitudinal outcomes, multiple perspectives, and correlates.

Supervised access services (SAS) allow parents who represent a risk for their children or for the other parent to maintain contact with or exchange custody of their children in the presence of a third person. Even though these services have been designed in the children's best interest, few studies have, until now, documented the evolution in the parents' and children's adjustment or in the quality of the relationships between the family members throughout the services. To better understand this evolution, a longitudinal study comprising 3 time measures was conducted with 96 parents who were beginning the services. Although the results revealed that the children's evolution was stable all throughout the service trajectory, further analyses showed that the school-age children, and more particularly the boys, experienced a high level of difficulty. Furthermore, the study showed that the parents' evaluation of their children's adjustment differed according to whether or not the parent had to see the child in a supervised context. Finally, we observed that the evolution of the children's adjustment was correlated with the parents' psychological distress, the quality of the parent-child relationship, and conflict between the parents, all processes that did not have a tendency to improve throughout the service trajectory. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

[The quality of sibling relation who have experienced family transitions and those who have not]. / La qualité des relations fraternelles chez des jeunes ayant connu ou non une transition familiale.

In this study, similarities and differences in sibling relationships between children who have experienced family transitions and those who have not are examined. Comparisons are made between children who live in intact families, those whose parents have separated, and those who live in substitute care regarding the quality of their relationships with one of their siblings. More specifically, 4 dimensions describing the quality of sibling relationships are compared: Warmth/Closeness, Conflict, Relative Status/Power, and Rivalry (Furman & Buhrmester, 1985). The sample is made up of 3 groups of children (N = 158) aged between 8 and 12 years old: children living in intact families (n = 101), children who have experienced parental separation (n = 35), and children living in substitute care (n = 22). Results indicate differences on dimensions of Warmth/Closeness, Conflict, and Relative Status/Power. Different patterns of responses between the children who have experienced family transitions and those who have not are observed for the dimensions of Conflict and Power. The significant difference observed between the groups for the dimension of Warmth appears difficult to explain. Discussion of these results emphasizes the importance of the relationship between brothers and sisters experiencing family transition.

Links between parental psychological violence, other family disturbances, and children's adjustment.

In a sample of 143 parent-child dyads from two-parent and separated families, this investigation documented the links between parental psychological violence and separation or divorce, severity of parental conflict, triangulation of the child in this conflict, and polarized parent-child alliances. The unique and combined contributions of all these variables to children's behavior problems were also assessed. Participants were parents, mostly mothers, and their 10-12-year-old child. They were recruited through schools, community organizations, and newspapers. Questionnaires were administered at home. Findings suggest that separated families undergo more relational disturbances than two-parent families (more severe conflicts, more triangulation, stronger parent-child alliances), but the amount of parental psychological violence was similar in both groups. Psychological violence was associated with the severity of parental conflict, especially in two-parent families. Triangulation of the child in parental conflict was another correlate of psychological violence. Once all variables were controlled for, psychological violence remained the only significant correlate of children's externalized behavior problems. These findings raise the importance of preventing psychological violence toward children, especially in families plagued with severe parental conflicts.

Processes that contribute to resilience among youth in foster care.

The objective of this qualitative research is to better understand the processes that contribute to resilience among adolescents in foster care. Twelve boys and girls (X=15.9 years), identified as resilient, participated in this study. The mean duration of the teenagers' placement is 7.3 years. The results point to three types of turning points: action, relation and reflection. Four processes, directly or indirectly linked to the turning point, have also been identified: increase in perceived self-efficacy, distancing oneself from the risks, new opportunities, and the multiplication of benefits.