Child protective services during COVID-19 and doubly marginalized children: International perspectives.

Background: Alongside deficits in children's wellbeing, the COVID-19 pandemic has created an elevated risk for child maltreatment and challenges for child protective services worldwide. Therefore, some children might be doubly marginalized, as prior inequalities become exacerbated and new risk factors arise.

Objective: To provide initial insight into international researchers' identification of children who might have been overlooked or excluded from services during the pandemic.

"A rising tide floats all boats": The role of neighborhood collective efficacy in responding to child maltreatment.

Background: Nearly one-quarter of the approximately 400,000 reports to child protective services originating from non-mandated reporters come from neighbors. Understanding factors leading non-mandated reporters to contact authorities is important because if modifiable, they might serve as intervention targets to promote reporting of suspected maltreatment.

Objective: Investigate associations between neighbors' reported responses to scenarios involving children in need, child/teen misbehavior, and suspected maltreatment with individual and neighborhood characteristics, including neighborhood collective efficacy, fear of victimization, and fear of retaliation.

One year into COVID-19: What have we learned about child maltreatment reports and child protective service responses?

Background: A year has passed since COVID-19 began disrupting systems. Although children are not considered a risk population for the virus, there is accumulating knowledge regarding children's escalating risk for maltreatment during the pandemic.

Objective: The current study is part of a larger initiative using an international platform to examine child maltreatment (CM) reports and child protective service (CPS) responses in various countries.

Older Neighbors and The Neighborhood Context of Child Well-Being: Pathways to Enhancing Social Capital for Children.

Drawing on Coleman's concept of social capital, researchers have investigated how the quality of neighborhood social networks influences child development and well-being. The role of non-kin older neighbors in advancing child well-being through the enhancement of social capital, however, has been under-studied. Our objective was to delineate specific pathways through which non-kin older neighbors contribute to neighborhood quality for children and families and potentially advance child well-being.

The influence of neighborhood violent crime on child-rearing: Integrating neighborhood ecologies and stratified reproduction approaches.

While relationships between neighborhood violent crime and adverse child outcomes are well-established, less is known about how neighborhood violent crime influences child-rearing strategies. To address this gap, we blend neighborhood ecologies and stratified reproduction frameworks and examine interview data collected in 2014-2015 from 107 adult caregivers residing in three low and three elevated violent crime neighborhoods in Cleveland, Ohio. Our objective is to examine how perceptions of neighborhood violent crime and its relationship to self-reported child-rearing practices vary by level of neighborhood violence.

Child maltreatment in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic: A proposed global framework on research, policy and practice.

Background: Child protection is and will be drastically impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Comprehending this new reality and identifying research, practice and policy paths are urgent needs.

Objective: The current paper aims to suggest a framework for risk and protective factors that need to be considered in child protection in its various domains of research, policy, and practice during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Rural Child Maltreatment: A Scoping Literature Review.

Topic Of Review: The current study sought to review the state of existing knowledge on rural maltreatment.

Method Of Review: We conducted a scoping literature review to answer two research questions: (1) Is maltreatment higher in rural areas compared to urban areas? and 2) Are there unique correlates of maltreatment in rural areas?

Number Of Research Studies Meeting The Criteria For Review: This review included studies that compared child maltreatment in rural and urban areas in the United States (9) and predictors of maltreatment in rural areas (7).

Criteria For Inclusion: Studies that compared child maltreatment in rural and urban areas in the United States were included.

Community Change Programs for Children and Youth At-Risk: A Review of Lessons Learned.

The significant role of the community in the lives of children and youth at-risk has become increasingly clear to social work academics and professionals over the last three decades. Alongside the more traditional individual and family responses, community interventions have been designed to catalyze change in the environment of children and youth at-risk and supply holistic and sustainable responses to their needs. Ten such community intervention programs were identified from the United States, Australia, Canada, and Israel.

Why Does Child Maltreatment Occur? Caregiver Perspectives and Analyses of Neighborhood Structural Factors Across Twenty Years.

Research on caregivers' views of factors that contribute to child maltreatment and analyses of neighborhood structural factors offer opportunities for enhancing prevention and intervention efforts. This study compared explanations of the factors that contribute to child maltreatment in a neighborhood-based sample of adult caregivers at two-time points: 1995-1996 and 2014-2015 along with analyses of neighborhood structural conditions during the same period. The study sample consisted of two cross-sectional subsamples: 400 adult caregivers in 20 census tracts in Cleveland, Ohio from a 1995-1996 study, and 400 adult caregivers of the same 20 census tracts surveyed in 2014-2015.

Caregivers' Perceptions and Attitudes Toward Child Maltreatment: A Pilot Case Study in Tel Aviv, Israel, and Cleveland, USA.

The purpose of this pilot cross-national study was to uncover similarities and differences in three areas that might affect the development of community-based programs targeting child maltreatment: behaviors considered to be maltreatment, perceived contributors to maltreatment, and whether the government or neighbors can do anything about maltreatment. Data were obtained from two neighborhood-based, cross-sectional surveys of adult caregivers of minors: one in Cleveland, USA, the other in Tel Aviv, Israel. The sample consisted of a total of 120 caregivers, in each city 20 residing in a low-SES neighborhood, 20 in a medium-SES neighborhood, and 20 in an elevated-SES neighborhood.

How might neighborhood built environment influence child maltreatment? Caregiver perceptions.

Rationale: Child maltreatment remains a serious but potentially preventable public health concern in the United States. Although research has examined factors associated with child maltreatment at the neighborhood level, few studies have explicitly focused on the role of the neighborhood built environment in maltreatment.

Objective: We begin to address these gaps by investigating caregivers' own perceptions of mechanisms by which neighborhood built environments may affect child maltreatment.

Understanding trends in neighborhood child maltreatment rates: A three-wave panel study 1990-2010.

This study examines how changes in the social and economic structure of neighborhoods relate to changes in child maltreatment report rates over an extended period. The panel study design allows us to partition the changes in child maltreatment report rates into a portion associated with how the levels of socio-economic risk factors have changed over time, and a portion related to how the relative importance of those factors in explaining maltreatment report rates has changed over time. Through the application of fixed effects panel models, the analysis is also able to control for unmeasured time-invariant characteristics of neighborhoods that may be a source of bias in cross-sectional studies.

Two sides of the same neighborhood? Multilevel analysis of residents' and child-welfare workers' perspectives on neighborhood social disorder and collective efficacy.

Neighborhood processes have been shown to influence child maltreatment rates, and accordingly neighborhood-based strategies have been suggested as helpful in intervening in and preventing child maltreatment. Although child-welfare workers are at the forefront of child maltreatment work, little is known about the extent to which their perspectives on neighborhood processes related to child maltreatment align with those of neighborhood residents. The current study examined the views of neighborhood residents (n = 400) and neighborhood-based child-welfare workers (n = 260) on 2 neighborhood process measures: social disorder and collective efficacy.

Change and consistency in descriptions of child maltreatment: A comparison of caregivers' perspectives 20 years apart.

Although approximately one-fifth of child maltreatment reports originate with family members, friends, neighbors, or community members, their efforts to identify and report child maltreatment are still not well understood. Nor is it well understood how these individuals' perceptions of what constitutes maltreatment may change over time. This study examined descriptions of behavior perceived as maltreatment by caregivers of minors in Cleveland, Ohio, USA neighborhoods.

Creating Culturally Competent and Responsive Mental Health Services: A Case Study Among the Amish Population of Geauga County, Ohio.

Providing effective mental health services requires knowledge about and cultural competence across a wide array of beliefs and practices. This study provides an example of a successful project to improve public mental health service delivery in an Amish community. County boards of mental health in a rural area of Northeast Ohio contacted researchers in 1998 to provide assistance in reaching the Amish community because of a concern that mental health services were not being utilized by the Amish population.

Culture and context in understanding child maltreatment: Contributions of intersectionality and neighborhood-based research.

In the early 1990s, the U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect commissioned a series of reviews that appeared as the edited volume, Protecting Children from Abuse and Neglect (Melton & Barry, 1994).

How neighborhoods influence child maltreatment: a review of the literature and alternative pathways.

Objective: To review the literature on the relationships between neighborhoods and child maltreatment and identify future directions for research in this area.

Method: A search of electronic databases and a survey of experts yielded a list of 25 studies on the influence of geographically defined neighborhoods on child maltreatment. These studies were then critically reviewed by an interdisciplinary research team.

Building community capacity for violence prevention.

The capacity of communities to prevent violence is examined from three perspectives: youth violence, child maltreatment, and intimate partner violence. The analysis suggests that community social control and collective efficacy are significant protective factors for all three types of violence, but these need to be further distinguished for their relationships to private, parochial, and state controls. It is argued that strong interpersonal ties are not the only contributor to collective efficacy and violence prevention.

Culture and child maltreatment: cultural competence and beyond.

Objective: The objective of this article is to comment on current issues in the relationship between culture and child maltreatment.

Method: A review of the literature on culture and child maltreatment is the basis of the article.

Results And Conclusion: While attention has been directed to the relationship between culture and maltreatment for more than 20 years, there is a need for further development in this area.

Mapping residents' perceptions of neighborhood boundaries: a methodological note.

Neighborhood influences on children and youth are the subjects of increasing numbers of studies, but there is concern that these investigations may be biased, because they typically rely on census-based units as proxies for neighborhoods. This pilot study tested several methods of defining neighborhood units based on maps drawn by residents, and compared the results with census definitions of neighborhoods. When residents' maps were used to create neighborhood boundary definitions, the resulting units covered different space and produced different social indicator values than did census-defined units.

Neighborhood views on the definition and etiology of child maltreatment.

Objective: The purpose of this study, as part of a larger study on neighborhoods and child maltreatment, was to determine how parents residing in neighborhoods with differing profiles of risk for child maltreatment reports defined child abuse and neglect and viewed its etiology.

Method: Parents (n = 400) were systematically selected from neighborhoods (n=20) with different profiles of risk for child maltreatment report rates. As part of a larger interview, parents were asked to generate lists of behaviors that they would define as child abuse and neglect and to rate 13 etiological factors on a 10 point scale as to their contribution to the occurrence of child maltreatment.

Neighborhoods and child maltreatment: a multi-level study.

Objective: To better understand how neighborhood and individual factors are related to child maltreatment.

Method: Using an ecological framework, a multi-level model (Hierarchical Linear Modeling) was used to analyze neighborhood structural conditions and individual risk factors for child abuse and neglect. Parents (n = 400) of children under the age of 18 were systematically selected from 20 randomly selected census-defined block groups with different risk profiles for child maltreatment report rates.

Impoverishment and child maltreatment in African American and European American neighborhoods.

Although it is well documented that child maltreatment exerts a deleterious impact on child adaptation, much less is known about the precise etiological pathways that eventuate in child abuse and neglect. This paper reports on a multimethod ecological study of the relationship between neighborhood structural factors and child maltreatment reports in African American and European American census tracts. The study had two major components.