This study reports on the Little Hoover Commission's investigation of California's mechanisms for caring for abused and neglected children. Fourteen major findings and corresponding recommendations for addressing findings are presented. The report begins with a brief executive summary, introduction, and background information. The first section…

Due to the intimate contact they have with children, teachers are in a position to intervene when child abuse appears to occur. Preservice teacher education programs should train teachers to recognize abused children and to interact with them and their parents. (Authors/CJ)

Review of charts for 141 children who had undergone both a screening interview by an emergency department physician and an investigative interview for child sexual abuse evaluation found that perpetrator identification obtained during emergency department screening interviews usually agreed with information obtained at the subsequent investigative…

Family preservation services to decrease the use of foster care and to preserve maltreating families at high risk of child placement are examined, in the context of studies of the helping alliance and its relationship to treatment outcome. (DB)

Twenty-seven parents with sexually abused children evaluated the effectiveness of a parent support group. Results indicated significant decreases in some of the children's dysfunctional behaviors, increased parental perception of coping skills and confidence as parents, but no change in parents' stress levels. (Author/JDD)

This study investigated to what extent abuse-related symptoms and family functioning are related to intra- or extrafamilial sexual abuse. One hundred adolescents (12 to 18 years old) were recruited shortly after disclosure of the abuse. Information from the participants was obtained through self-report questionnaires and a semistructured…

This study examines the prevalence of trauma, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and dissociative symptoms in adolescents. The sample consisted of 76 females and 76 males, between the ages of 12 and 18, referred to the Child Guidance Clinic of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia for a psychological evaluation. Two sets of analyses…

Drug courts have been recognized and empirically supported as an effective means of reducing recidivism and use of substances for both juveniles and adults. The paper reports the results of an outcome evaluation of a juvenile drug court in the Upper Cumberland area of Middle Tennessee. As with previous studies, the program showed impressive…

Emotional maltreatment tends to be overshadowed in research and in practice by other forms of maltreatment that present more obvious and explicit evidence and appear to require a more urgent response. This article aims to explore a growing body of research pointing to: (a) ways in which emotional maltreatment may adversely impact upon a child's…

This study compared retrospective reports of childhood sexual and physical abuse as assessed by two measures: the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ), which uses a Likert-type scaling approach, and the Computer Assisted Maltreatment Inventory (CAMI), which employs a behaviorally specific means of assessment. Participants included 1,195…

This report summarizes a 3-year review of reports of child abuse and neglect in New York State's mental hygiene facilities. The study determined that greater efforts are required to ensure protection of those children who were "repeat" alleged victims and who, as a group, were involved in 400 of the 850 reports to the State Central…

This paper describes an ongoing project on the nature and effects of family structure and family interaction. The research presented involves the study of normal families, emphasizing the effects of system-level variables on the development of children within the family. A theoretical model is provided which focuses on the individuation process,…

The prominence of child abuse cases in child welfare agencies has focused attention on abusing parents who react to initial professional contact with hostility. To evaluate a structured treatment method for child abusing parents, two treatment methods were studied. A new method, which focused on the parent's handling of hostility, was compared to…

An attitude change campaign using an interpersonal and mass media strategy for agenda-setting could be used to elicit community understanding of child-abusing parents from a therapeutic rather than a punitive perspective, thereby improving the handling of this social problem. An outline of such a campaign would include phases of surveying the…

The report examines the operation of Florida's child protective service system based on analysis of 2,889 representative cases of child abuse or neglect received by the State of Florida Child Abuse Registry from 1970 thru midsummer of 1977. Associations were investigated between antecedent variables (child's sex, race and age, and family structure…