Jennifer Baggerly

Counseling Children After Natural Disasters: Guidance for Family Therapists

After natural disasters, most children exhibit typical symptoms, which can be mitigated when parents and teachers provide emotional support and facilitate adaptive coping strategies. However, some children may experience clinical symptoms, which require professional counseling. This article guides family therapists in (a) identifying childrens typical and clinical symptoms after a natural disaster, (b) training parents and teachers in basic interventions, and (c) implementing developmentally appropriate clinical interventions that integrate play. A multimodal, three-phase approach of Cognitive Behavior Therapy, Play Therapy, and Family Play Therapy is described.

Disaster mental health training in Florida and the response to the 2004 hurricanes.

The need for mental health interventions in disasters has long been recognized. The Florida Center for Public Health Preparedness (FCPHP) has been providing disaster mental health training to employees of the Florida Department of Health and others since 2001. One of the training programs was Bioterrorism Trauma Intervention Specialist Training (BTIST), offered between May 2003 and January 2004. The FCPHP has also developed three distance learning courses, including one that provides advice to responders who are experiencing compassion fatigue. The BTIST curriculum prepares participants to provide mental health interventions during and following disasters. The four hurricanes that struck Florida in a 7-week period in 2004 created a great demand for mental health services. The FCPHP supported the Florida Department of Health response effort by providing a roster of BTIST trainees and hundreds of copies of the compassion fatigue audio CD. The FCPHP conducted a Web-based survey of the BTIST participants after the hurricanes. A large majority of respondents reported that the training had given them greater knowledge of disaster mental health, provided many disaster mental health skills, and the skills had been valuable in their professional and personal lives. Most of those who had actively responded to the hurricanes indicated that the training had given them confidence for their response and that they had used the acquired skills in their response efforts.

Building Resilience to Trauma: Creating a Safe and Supportive Early Childhood Classroom

Abstract On Monday morning, a collective shock was felt throughout the school as news spread of a students death. John, a playful 5-year-old, had died in a car accident. One child in the class had witnessed the accident, but others had also heard of the tragedy from their parents or television news reports. Even children who were not classmates of the deceased student were affected by the emotionally charged environment as the caregivers around them became distracted and often overwhelmed by the compelling events that resulted in the childs death. Few of the early childhood teachers had specific training or experience in responding to traumatic events, and many struggled to address the emotions associated with the loss. Fear, shock, and anger filled many hearts on this dark day and in the ensuing weeks. The event attacked the sense of safety and security among the teachers and students. The day of this tragedy, the day after, and the following weeks and months all brought new transformations of the childrens responses to such trauma and new opportunities for recovery.

Behavioral Adjustment of Adopted Chinese Girls in Single-Mother, Lesbian-Couple, and Heterosexual-Couple Households

This study compared the behavioral adjustment of girls from families headed by single mothers and lesbian couples with their peers from married heterosexual households. The sample included 93 Chinese girls adopted by the three types of families (31 girls in each type of family). The girls in the three types of families were matched on age at adoption, age at assessment, and number of adoptive siblings. The Child Behavior Checklist was used to measure their behavior adjustment (i.e., internalizing problems, externalizing problems, and overall behavioral problems). General linear modeling revealed that children from the three types of families were not statistically different in behavioral adjustment except in the preschool-aged groups internalizing problems and the school-aged groups externalizing problems, wherein children in single-mother households scored lower than their peers from lesbian-couple households. Psychological and social-political implications are discussed.

A Survey of Counselor Education Comprehensive Exam Types and Procedures: Recommendations for Clinical Supervisors and Counseling Faculty

Clinical supervisors and faculty within counseling programs have ethical, legal, and professional obligations to ensure students possess comprehensive knowledge of core counseling components. This survey research study examined the types of comprehensive exams used by counselor education programs as well as their remediation and dismissal procedures when students do not pass comprehensive exams. Results show statistically significant differences with programs accredited by the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP) requiring multiple-choice exams. Recommendations for clinical supervisors and counseling faculty are discussed.

Beyond adoption status: Post-adoptive parental involvement and children’s reading and math performance from kindergarten to first grade.

In this study, we went beyond adoption status to examine the associations between postadoption parental involvement and children’s reading and math performance from kindergarten to first grade. Secondary data on a sample of adopted children and nonadopted children were drawn from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Kindergarten Class of 1998 to 1999 (ECLS-K). Weighted data on the children’s reading performance were available for 13,900 children (181 were adopted); weighted data on the children’s math performance were available for 14,128 children (184 were adopted). Descriptive data showed no group difference in reading scores at all 3 Waves but adopted children scored lower than nonadopted children in math at Wave 2 (Spring of kindergarten) and Wave 3 (Spring of first grade). However, controlling for 6 covariates, latent growth modeling showed that adoption status was unrelated to Wave 1 reading and math scores or subsequent growth rate. Rather, parents’ beliefs on skills needed to succeed in kindergarten were a significant predictor of reading and math performance at Wave 1 and subsequent growth rates, and parents’ educational expectation was a significant predictor of growth rate in reading and math. Our findings highlight the importance of parental involvement in adopted children’s learning.

Book Review: Rebuilding Attachments With Traumatized Children: Healing From Losses, Violence, Abuse, and Neglect

Zealand-based reviewer. This raises one issue of concern, namely, that the book is almost solely based on research emanating from North America, with comparatively little inclusion or reference to feminist criminological research from the United Kingdom or other areas of the world. Unfortunately, this makes the inclusion of one Australian-based article seem akin to tokenism, an impression I am sure the editors did not intend. This criticism likewise is not intended to detract from the overall caliber of this selection. In general, the articles selected are good and well written, and their inclusion in such an edition will surely guarantee them a wider readership than journal publication alone. The authors stress in their introduction the importance of recognizing the linkages between girls and crime and women and crime. This observation draws attention to the way in which the separation of juvenile delinquency and associated studies from adult offending can obscure such links. One of the major contributions of this book is in emphasizing such connections, in relation to both female victimization and female offending. Although the editors provide introductions to each of the major sections, these are typically only one page or less, and the book’s merits could have been strengthened by greater effort on their part to provide and analyze linkages. A further limitation of this book, which may have been inevitable given its attempt to cover such a wide area, is that there are major gaps and imbalances. The first section on “Gender and Criminological Theorizing,” for instance, contains two pieces devoted to strain theory alongside two broader overviews, leaving other major theoretical developments vying for space. Later in the volume, an interesting piece by Leslie Acoca briefly draws attention to the victimization of girls within the home, streets, and juvenile justice system, but there is little material devoted to examining the victimization of adult women and how this may be linked to their offending. Despite these limitations, there is much to recommend Girls, Women, and Crime. It provides a useful companion text to the earlier volume edited by the same authors, The Female Offender, Second Edition (2004), and the articles selected would be accessible to researchers from a range of disciplines, including criminology, law, and women’s studies, as well as to students and criminal justice practitioners. Overall, there is much benefit to be found in this collection, which provides yet another strong affirmation of the fact that, in criminology as in life, gender matters.