Displaying 1 - 10 of 10
Abstract
Despite growing recognition of the links between poverty and child maltreatment, little is known about the specific practices and strategies utilized to directly respond to families’ poverty. One such practice is the provision of material assistance, which is widespread in child protection settings but has received negligible scholarly attention. The article aims to describe and conceptualize this underresearched practice and to explore the challenges workers face when implementing it. The study described here included 20 in-depth interviews conducted with social workers working…
Abstract
SafeCare® is a home‐based intervention programme targeting parents of children up to 5 years old and is designed to reduce and even prevent child abuse and neglect. Here, we present an evaluation of a pilot trial of SafeCare® in Israel, examining family's outcomes. We examined parents' behavioural changes resulting from the three main modules of SafeCare®: the Health, Safety, and Parent‐Child/Infant Interaction. We also studied the unplanned effects of SafeCare® by examining maternal depressive symptoms. Participants were 46 mothers with children identified as being at risk of…
Introduction
Policymakers, researchers, and practitioners worldwide have long dedicated resources toward addressing child maltreatment. Most of these resources, however, have been directed toward investigation and response. Although prevention has received increasing attention during the last several years, efforts have typically focused on families deemed to be at imminent risk of causing harm to their children or on preventing revictimization. Further, such efforts have targeted individual- or family-level factors, despite a growing body of research suggesting that maltreatment results…
Abstract
Children and adolescents in residential-care facilities often have lower academic achievements that their counterparts who are raised at home. Traditionally, residential programs do not prioritize academic achievements, especially at the high-school level, a situation detrimental to their chances to enter institutes of higher education. The Israel Ministry of Education decided to implement a policy change to affect the overall ecology of youth villages (Israeli residential schools), aimed at emphasizing high school academic achievements as a key to future success. This attitudinal…
Abstract
The goal of this study was to examine the contribution of natural mentoring to the improvement of life skills among youth in care in core areas of education, employment, and avoidance of risk behaviours while controlling for personal characteristics and placement history. The sample includes 174 adolescents in residential care in Israel. Results showed that mentoring duration and mentoring functions including mentor as “role model,” “parental figure,” and “independence promoter” significantly contributed to the prediction of the three life skills above and beyond control variables…
Social support networks of care leavers: Mediating between childhood adversity and adult functioning
Abstract
Care leavers' social support networks have often been theorized as having a salient role in explaining youths' functional outcomes and the way these relate to their adverse pasts. The goals of the present study are to examine the association between childhood adversity and adult functioning among youth aging out-of-care, and to explore how attributes of their social support networks mediate this association.
The sample consisted of 345 Israeli care leavers (ages 18 to 25), formerly placed in residential or foster care. Standardized self-report questionnaires were…
ABSTRACT
Background: Being a foster parent is stressful. It becomes even more stressful when foster parents face major threats to their own families and to the foster children in their care, such as during war situations. This study focuses on foster parents' reactions to the war with Gaza in southern Israel that took place in 2014. The first goal of this study was to describe posttraumatic symptoms (PTS) and problems in functioning among foster parents following their exposure to the war. The second goal was to identify background and social support predictors of PTS and functioning…
Abstract
The Mothers Unit is a reunification and treatment programme in a welfare emergency centre in Israel. The unit is the only one in Israel offering joint residence for mothers at risk of abusing or neglecting their children. The unit provides an alternative to out-of-home care for young children suffering from maltreatment in order to enable them and their mothers to return to the community together at the end of the treatment. The current qualitative study examines the lived experiences of the women and their children from the subjective perspective of the women currently or…
Abstract
This paper addresses the challenges and benefits of involving biological parents in group homes in Israel and presents various means to encourage their involvement in care. Using family systems theories and the concept of co-parenting, it analyses the fragile and complex relationship caseworkers and foster parents have with biological parents. The paper presents four components that might play a role in encouraging parental involvement to benefit their children's adjustment. The components are demonstrated through case studies and include assessing the family profile; addressing…
This country care review includes the care related Concluding Observations adopted by the Committee on the Rights of the Child as part of its examination during the sixty-third session (27 May-14 June 2013) of Israel’s second to fourth periodic reports to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, as well as other care-related concluding observations, ratification dates, and links to the Universal Periodic Review and Hague Intercountry Adoption Country Profile.