One of the more serious problems faced by child welfare services involves the management of children with serious behavioral and mental health problems. Aggressive and defiant foster children are more likely to have multiple foster care placements, require extraordinary social services resources, and have poor short- and long-term mental health…

Contributors to this collection put forth many contemporary theoretical ideas about violence in society. All agree that finding ways to prevent violence is critical and that living in peace means acceptance of diversity. The following chapters are included: (1) "Motivational Approach to Violent Behavior: A Cross-Cultural Perspective: (Sergei V.…

The Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980 (PL 96-272) provided major federal initiatives to reform the state child welfare system. The goals of the act were to keep families together by providing them with services and to find permanent adoptive homes for children who could not be reunited with their parents. This report examines the…

Emotional child abuse is virtually inevitable in the context of the traditional nuclear family and often has a more detrimental effect on children than other, more widely publicized forms of maltreatment. This paper documents clinical, statistical, and empirical evidence showing that "normative" child-rearing practices in our culture have…

This two-year project demonstrated a model for preventing the removal of children from their homes, with the aim of reducing both the number of children entering foster care and the number of families recycled through the child protective services system. The project was a joint effort by the Texas Department of Human Services (DHS) Region 11…

This article describes the Child Development and Parenting Program (CDP), a preventative child abuse program that assists single women who are pregnant or have preschool children to cope constructively with the problems of single parenting. The short-term goals of the program, i.e., providing education in child development and parenting skills and…

A study of child abuse and neglect complaints revealed factors affecting the filing of complaints, as well as problems with investigating complaints. Specifies the cause of the problems and offers recommendations for improvement. (Author/BB)

The National Association for Native American Children of Alcoholics (NANACOA) initiated a strategy in 1995 to evaluate their programs and prevention efforts. The design and methodology of the project incorporated a "naturalistic" approach to help preserve cultural integrity and respect multiple perspectives. Data were gathered from…

This study determined prevalence and outcome data on parents with disabilities and their children in statutory child-protection proceedings in New South Wales (Australia). Parents with disabilities (usually psychiatric or intellectual) featured in almost one-third of the cases. Court outcomes indicated a disproportionately large number of children…

Criticizes sexual abuse prevention training for preschool children, and analyzes the content of five curricula currently in use in California, North Dakota, and Washington. Recommends greater vigilance by adult caretakers and less reliance on children to identify molestation. (FMW)

We investigated perceiver bias in relation to children labeled as sexually abused. Building on recent research indicating that adults perceive children with such a label as having more behavioral problems and lower achievement, we replicated and expanded upon an earlier study. We tested undergraduate students (N = 699), who judged a six-year old…

Recent empirical research has shown that children with sexual behavior problems and adolescents who offend sexually are diverse populations consisting of several subtypes (Hall, Mathews, & Pearce, 2002; Pithers, Gray, Busconi, & Houchens, 1998; Worling, 2001). This article reviews the descriptive and empirical research related to identifying…

Although child maltreatment has often been described as leading to language deficits, the few well-controlled investigations of language acquisition in maltreated children have focused on language content rather than form, or have used qualitative rather than quantitative measures. This study examines syntactic complexity in 19 maltreated and 14…

This study investigates the variations in characteristics that exist among youths who sexually harm (YSH). Three conceptually distinct sets of background characteristics are hypothesized from the literature relating to whether the YSH was abused, delinquent or impaired. Forty-one characteristics were drawn from an extensive and detailed review of…

Drawing from past research on women's motives for intimate partner violence (IPV) perpetration, correlates of women's perpetration, and correlates of nonviolent conflict, we created a scale containing 125 possible motives, representing 14 broad domains (e.g., self-defense, retaliation). Participants were an ethnically diverse sample of women who…