The remote work of child protection professionals during COVID-19: A scoping review and thematic analysis.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic created new challenges and barriers for the work of child protection professionals (CPPs) and intensified existing hardships for families and children, increasing the risk of child maltreatment. As new restrictions and precautions were implemented by governments worldwide to stop the virus from spreading, CPPs had to adapt to a new reality of working remotely. However, limited research has investigated how remote work impacted CPPs and child protection work and how CPPs handled this alternative work style. OBJECTIVE: This review aims to address gaps in the research to reveal the creative and effective approaches CPPs developed to overcome the challenges presented by COVID-19, defined as the 'positive legacy' of CPPs, particularly in adapting to remote work challenges. METHOD: This review was conducted using a scoping review, followed by two rounds of thematic analysis. The scoping review was conducted in six languages: Hebrew, Arabic, French, Portuguese, Spanish, and English. RESULTS: The first round of thematic analysis found 18 articles relevant to this review. The second round extracted two main themes: 1) the challenges of remote work and 2) overcoming the challenges of no contact. CONCLUSIONS: The findings of this review may be used to inform future strategies for child protection during a pandemic. They also provide an opportunity to rethink the relationship child protection work has with technology to systematically reform current and future protection policies and practices, including outside of a pandemic.

Child protective services and out-of-home Care for Children during COVID-19: A scoping review and thematic analysis.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic challenged child protection and posed new risks for child maltreatment (CM). Moreover, governmental efforts worldwide prioritized mitigating the spread of the virus over ensuring the welfare and protection of families and children. This neglect caused hardship for many vulnerable children, including those in out-of-home care (OOHC), and challenged the functionality of child protective services (CPS). However, only limited research has investigated the impact of COVID-19 on OOHC and CPS and explored how CPS overcame the challenges of helping children in OOHC. OBJECTIVE: This review aims to address this gap in the research to unveil the 'positive legacy' left by CPS in their work with children in OOHC during COVID-19. METHOD: This review utilized three stages of analysis, including a scoping review followed by two rounds of thematic analysis. The scoping review was carried out in six languages: English, Hebrew, Arabic, French, Portuguese, and Spanish. The first round of thematic analysis found eight relevant articles for this review. The second round of thematic analysis found three themes related to this paper's aim in the context of COVID-19. RESULTS: Three main themes were identified: 1) decision-making and OOHC, 2) difficulties in procedures related to OOHC placement, and 3) handling challenges of OOHC. CONCLUSIONS: The discussion emphasizes the crucial role of preserving children's rights, hearing their voices and needs, and considering their safety and well-being when planning policies and practices to protect them. It also emphasizes society's responsibility to acknowledge contextual factors in child protection.

"I was alone. No one offered me a real intervention": Israeli child protection services as experienced by adults who underwent child sexual abuse.

BACKGROUND: Many children worldwide come into contact with child protection social workers (CPSW) following child sexual abuse (CSA). Surprisingly, little is known concerning how they experience and perceive these encounters. OBJECTIVE: The current study was designed to examine the way adults who underwent CSA experienced and perceived child protection services (CPS) in Israel as conveyed in their written testimonies. METHOD: The current sample included 83 written testimonies sent to the Israeli Independent Public Inquiry on CSA, analyzed using inductive thematic analysis. RESULTS: The participants' testimonies uncovered two main themes: 1) experiences with CPSW interventions, including being disregarded, abandoned and disbelieved; and 2) constructions of the CPSW practice as poor, maladapted and abusive. Some participants described their active efforts to change the system from within. CONCLUSIONS: The participants' testimonies, which reflected the negative manifestations of neoliberal policy in the CPS, will be broached in the discussion section, alongside two other significant concepts: child participation and a context-informed perspective of child risk and protection. The ramifications for policy and practice will be expanded while acknowledging the complex role of social workers in CPS.

What do adults who experienced child sexual abuse want to convey about therapy?

BACKGROUND: Child sexual abuse (CSA) studies have significantly advanced the understanding of its prevalence and adverse consequences. Tremendous efforts worldwide have been devoted to CSA interventions. However, surprisingly, there is a lack of research dedicated to learning about experiences with therapy among adults who experienced CSA. OBJECTIVE: This study was designed to address this gap by exploring the perspectives and experiences with therapy among adults who experienced CSA. METHODS: Thirty-nine written testimonies comprised the current sample. All of the testimonies were provided to the Israeli Independent Public Inquiry into CSA by adults who experienced CSA and received therapy at one point in their lives. A qualitative inductive thematic analysis guided the exploration of the testimonies. RESULTS: The testimonies provided an important glance into significant characteristics of therapy, such as the timing and reasons leading to therapy, and perceptions regarding what constitutes appropriate therapy. Although beneficial and rehabilitating therapy experiences were mentioned by some of the participants, the majority of the testimonies focused on experiences related to the obstacles and challenges to accessing and engaging in therapy faced by those who experienced CSA. CONCLUSIONS: The testimonies not only addressed essential aspects of therapy, but also highlighted the importance of thoroughly comprehending the broad context of a person's life that leads them to seek therapy. The discussion points to grave social and policy lacunas that prevent people who experienced CSA from receiving therapy that is accessible, timely, subsidized, stigma-free and multifaceted.

Dispute intensity, parent-child relationships and child functioning: Analysis of social workers' reports on families with high-intensity parental disputes.

BACKGROUND: High Intensity Parental Dispute (HIPD) is a universal phenomenon that has grave ramifications on the dyadic and familial cells, which are receiving considerable attention in the research, public and professional discourses. However, a significant gap exists between the intensive involvement of systems in this phenomenon, and their ability to characterize and measure cardinal concepts defining it. OBJECTIVE: The goal of the present study is to examine how indicators that are recognized in literature on HIPD are manifested in the practice of social workers involved in this sphere. More specifically, three dimensions included in evaluations on families involved in HIPD will be examined: dispute intensity, parent-child relationships, and child functioning. METHOD: The sample included 199 written reports by social workers on families deemed by the court to be involved in HIPD. First, encoding systems for each dimension were developed using deductive content analysis. Second, the frequency of the indicators was examined and qualitatively different subgroups within each dimension were identified using Latent Class Analysis (LCA) or Latent Profile Analysis (LPA). RESULTS: The findings uncovered two significantly different groups for couples involved in HIPD and revealed the common profiles for parent-child relationships and for child functioning. CONCLUSIONS: The findings illustrate that there is no single characterization that can accurately describe different dimensions in the lives of families with HIPD, rather that subgroups with different behaviors should be expected to emerge. Thus, the findings emphasize the importance of using systematic measurements for identification and evaluation that could assist in fine tuning interventions and optimized resource allocation.

The global impact of COVID-19 on child protection professionals: A scoping review and thematic analysis.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic triggered new risks for child maltreatment (CM) and exacerbated existing challenges for families and children, elevating the importance of child protection professionals (CPPs) while also adding barriers to their work. During the pandemic, many CPPs experienced increased workloads, a disrupted work environment, and personal pandemic-related hardships. However, the scope of how COVID-19 impacted CPPs globally, as well as their adopted coping strategies, have not been well explored. OBJECTIVE: This study addresses these gaps in the research by conducting an international scoping review to explore and analyze these topics. METHOD: The scoping review was performed in six languages: English, Hebrew, Arabic, French, Spanish, and Portuguese, across 16 databases. Sixteen manuscripts were included in the final thematic analysis of this review. RESULTS: Two main themes were identified: 1) the impact of COVID-19 on CPPs, and 2) the coping and adaptation strategies employed by CPPs during COVID-19. This review revealed and emphasized the importance of CPPs' resilience during COVID-19, underpinned by the theoretical framework of the social ecology of resilience. CONCLUSIONS: This study highlights the responsibility of social ecologies and organizational structures to create readiness for a rapid response in times of crisis as well as valuable evidence to inform how CPPs, children, and families may be better supported in the event of a future crisis.

"I was the only one talking about the abuse": Experiences and perceptions of survivors who underwent child sexual abuse as boys.

OBJECTIVE: Empirical literature on child sexual abuse (CSA) has traditionally focused on the CSA of girls. Much less is known about the CSA of boys, specifically about the survivors' experiences. The current study was designed to examine the experiences and perceptions of male adult survivors who underwent CSA as boys. METHOD: Fifty-one written narratives were collected from survivors who experienced CSA as boys as part of the Israeli Independent Public Inquiry into CSA. A qualitative inductive thematic analysis guided the data analysis. RESULTS: The findings highlighted CSA survivors' experiences of not understanding and confusion about the abuse while highlighting the context in which the abuse took place. The findings also emphasized the exploitation of power and the survivors' difficulty identifying being sexually abused during physical fights or public events. Moreover, the survivors referred to their surroundings' failure to notice the abuse and their struggle to establish their identity and overcome the abuse consequences, their loneliness and pain. CONCLUSION: The present findings advance the literature on the CSA of boys by examining narratives written by male CSA survivors. They highlight the potentially destructive role of the heteronormative and conventional masculinity discourse for male CSA survivors, which often enabled the continuation of abuse and challenges that survivors continued to face throughout their lives. The findings also stress society's crucial role in CSA prevention and treatment and the need for public education to challenge societal perceptions regarding the CSA of boys.

"Stop Waking the Dead": Internet Child Sexual Abuse and Perspectives on Its Disclosure.

The phenomenon of Internet child sexual abuse (ICSA) has been receiving growing attention over the last decade, and studies have promoted knowledge with respect to the phenomenon's epidemiology, as well as to characteristics of the victims, perpetrators, and dynamics in these cases. The current retrospective study sought to delve into the disclosure component in cases of ICSA. The sample comprised 52 cases of adolescents who arrived at a child advocacy center (CAC) following ICSA. Analysis of these cases was targeted to capture the multifaceted nature of disclosure using those perspectives that could be documented by the CAC staff-of the practitioners, the adolescents, and their parents. Beyond the descriptive results regarding the victims and the nature of the abuse, the case analyses illustrate the disclosure process as experienced by the various parties involved, highlighting the challenging nature of this aspect of the phenomenon. For the parents, the disclosure experience can perhaps be best epitomized by the expression that was heard repeatedly-"Stop waking the dead"-an expression that indicated their wish to bring the subject to a close. The difficulty in disclosing such incidents was also illustrated by the fact that 20 children in the current sample were reluctant to collaborate during the CAC process. In fact, according to these data, most of the incidents were revealed following a police investigation rather than by a disclosure initiated by the children themselves. Focusing on this specific aspect of ICSA-that is, disclosure-enables a new perspective on it and stresses the need to further study it in such cases. A better understanding of the disclosure experience as it pertains to the individuals involved in cases of ICSA may improve and help modify future prevention and intervention efforts in the field.

"Please, Help Me!": Children's Perceptions of Parental Dispute as Shared in Forensic Interviews Following Alleged Maltreatment.

Over the last few decades, the phenomenon of child maltreatment (CM) has been recognized as a major social problem by professionals, policymakers, and researchers. Relatedly, high-intensity parental dispute (HIPD) has been increasingly recognized, particularly in terms of its detrimental effect on the family unit and on child welfare in particular. Few studies, however, have considered these two phenomena jointly. The present study examines experiences and perceptions of children situated at their intersection. The sample comprised forensic interviews with 42 children referred to the Israeli Service of Child Forensic Interviews following alleged maltreatment. The results of a thematic analysis pointed to the centrality of children's exposure to HIPD in the context of the CM allegations for which they were referred to and about which they were asked during the interview. In addition, the analysis identified various displays of potential deficiencies in parent-child relationship in the context of HIPD and two main profiles for the disclosure of the CM allegations. The discussion stresses the exposure of the children to HIPD as a possible risk context that should receive further attention by scholars and practitioners. Moreover, it highlights the multifaceted nature of the children's experiences, which generate enormous challenges for practitioners in both clinical and forensic contexts, as well as the importance of an integrated approach that considers the HIPD context while not ignoring the CM allegations.

Durante las últimas décadas, los profesionales, los encargados de formular las políticas y los investigadores han reconocido el fenómeno del maltrato infantil como un problema social grave. Asimismo, se han reconocido cada vez más las disputas parentales de alta intensidad (DPAI), particularmente en cuanto a su efecto nocivo en el grupo familiar y en el bienestar de los niños en particular. Sin embargo, pocos estudios han considerado estos dos fenómenos en conjunto. El presente estudio analiza las experiencias y las percepciones de los niños ubicados en su intersección. La muestra estuvo comprendida por entrevistas forenses con 42 niños derivados al Servicio Israelí de Entrevistas Forenses a Menores después de supuestos maltratos. Los resultados de un análisis temático señalaron la centralidad de la exposición de los menores a las DPAI en el contexto de las acusaciones de maltrato infantil por las cuales se los derivó y sobre las cuales se les preguntó durante la entrevista. Además, el análisis identificó varias demostraciones de posibles deficiencias en la relación entre padres e hijos en el contexto de las DPAI, y dos perfiles principales para la revelación de las acusaciones de maltrato infantil. El debate acentúa la exposición de los niños a las DPAI como posible contexto de riesgo que debería recibir mayor atención por parte de académicos y profesionales. Además, destaca la índole multifacética de las experiencias de los niños, que generan enormes desafíos para los profesionales en contextos clínicos y forenses, así como la importancia de un enfoque integrado que considere el contexto de las DPAI sin ignorar las acusaciones de maltrato infantil.