Jill D. McLeigh

Community differences in the implementation of Strong Communities for Children

In 1993, the U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect recommended a neighborhood-based strategy to prevent child abuse and neglect. The Board further recommended the development of Prevention Zones to allow for testing of the effectiveness of community-wide child protection efforts in neighborhoods of differing population density, ethnic and cultural composition, and social and economic resources. Following the Boards recommendation, this article presents the results of a trial of the effectiveness of a neighborhood-based strategy in low- and high-resource communities. Using management, survey, and administrative data, the research showed that both community types experienced declines in founded cases of and injuries suggesting child maltreatment for children under age 5. Low-resource communities experienced greater levels of mobilization, as measured by community and institutional engagement, and a greater number of positive outcomes related to changes in the quality of life for families and community norms relative to child and family well-being. In particular, the low-resource communities experienced the largest increases in receiving help from neighbors, neighboring, perceived household safety for neighborhood children, and observed positive parenting. High-resource communities experienced greater increases in intermediate outcomes related to self-reported parenting practices. The findings suggest that, ultimately, community mobilization can occur and be an effective means of preventing child maltreatment across community types. It appears, however, that community mobilization may play a more significant role in low-resource communities.

Enhancing child safety and well-being through pediatric group well-child care and home visitation: the Well Baby Plus Program

The focus of this article is on an innovative strengths-based child protection effort initiated in Beaufort, South Carolina, that involved working with local systems and structures. Specifically, the program was a school-health partnership that sought to modify services provided to low-resource families to improve child outcomes. The primary components of the prevention program were home visiting and group well visits (GWVs). This article describes the program and the effects of the combined approach on health care utilization, child health status, and parental competence for families with low socioeconomic status. A matched pairs analysis of 102 families (51 intervention and 51 comparison families) was conducted. WB+ families were significantly more likely to attend all scheduled well-child visits (65% vs. 37%) and to be fully immunized (98% vs. 82%) than matched families who received traditional pediatric care. Intervention families had significantly greater recall of anticipatory guidance on safety (65% vs. 41%) and had greater satisfaction with care. Intervention infants were also noted to be statistically less likely to be overweight at 15 months of age (8% vs. 24%). The study demonstrated benefits on child health and parenting competence among families with low socioeconomic status. Implications for practice are discussed.

Children's safety in community context

In 1990, the U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect declared that the child protection system was in a state f national emergency. A blue-ribbon commission created by federal statute, the Board had been charged with assessing he nation’s progress in fulfilling the purposes of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act—a mandate that the Board nterpreted as tantamount to a directive to evaluate the nation’s progress in keeping its children safe. The investigation led he Board to the conclusion that the system’s focus on reporting and investigation distracted authorities from developing nd implementing effective efforts to prevent initial or further harm. Thus, the Board set out to devise a blueprint for a new national strategy focused on preventing child abuse and neglect. n 1993, the Board produced a landmark report, Neighbors Helping Neighbors: A New National Strategy for the Protection of hildren, in which the Board proposed a universal system of family support, grounded in the creation of caring communities. n the report, the Board contended that the principal goal of government involvement in child protection should be to acilitate comprehensive community efforts to promote children’s safe and healthy development. To provide the empirical basis for the new strategy, the Board commissioned several leading scholars to prepare backround papers that were published in the 1994 book, Protecting Children from Abuse and Neglect: Foundations for a New ational Strategy. In addition to providing the foundation for the Advisory Board’s report, these papers contributed substanially to the proposition that certain attributes of communities influence the prevalence of child maltreatment. The fact that ultiple conditions place children at risk for abuse or neglect (or stated positively, promote the safety and well-being of hildren) implies a focus in research and practice that goes beyond individual and family level factors to include communal nd societal conditions. Despite this knowledge, however, a community-focused public health approach to child protection is rarely predominant. ndeed, we rarely receive manuscripts that relate specifically and directly to improvement of children’s safety. In that context, he purpose of this special issue is to highlight advances in our understanding of community factors in children’s safety. We ope that this issue will stimulate more community-level research and analogous innovations in practice. The issue begins with a look at the deliberations of the U.S. Advisory Board a quarter-century ago, what was learned rom the experience, and how the field has developed since that time. In this section, The Board’s first executive director yron Metrikin-Gold provides a detailed overview of the Board’s formation, process, achievements, and failures. The article rovides an insightful perspective on the challenges involved in fostering culture change in order to enhance children’s afety and well-being. In the articles that follow, three of the researchers who contributed background papers to the Board provide overviews f advances in knowledge about social and economic factors related to risk of child maltreatment. Ross Thompson describes ecent research findings that have enabled better guidance about the development of effective strategies to increase support or high-need families through community efforts. Leroy Pelton emphasizes that research continues to show the importance of material hardship for the etiology of child buse and neglect. Accordingly, he proposes a universal social dividend and taxation system premised on a national common ealth. He also proposes a radical restructuring of the child welfare system so that its sole function would be to offer reventive assistance to parents who requested them. In tandem, Pelton calls for the narrowing of definitions of child abuse nd neglect, so that investigations would be left to the police, and foster care would be the responsibility of the family court. Yochay Nadan, James Spilsbury, and Jill Korbin describe progress made in research on sociocultural factors in child altreatment. The authors note increased attention to group differences subsumed under the terms culture, ethnicity, nd race. Further, they discuss differences in incidence and prevalence across international and cultural boundaries and in

The Pursuit of New Directions: Directions will offer challenging ideas for both North and South

e are pleased to introduce Directions, a new magazine-style section of Child Abuse & Neglect. Directions is a key component of our overall effort to create new opportunities and formats to spread socially significant ideas and scientifically important information about the prevention and treatment of child abuse and neglect. Several aspects of this new feature are illustrative of the approach that we are taking to the continuing development of an already influential journal. Most obviously, Directions is attractive. Research shows that professionals in fields related to child protection, like the general public, are most likely to read articles written in crisp prose and displayed in readable fonts with ample white space. We expect that readers will be drawn to these pages, amid a search for information about child maltreatment. In that regard, Directions will be accessible not only to both academicians and practitioners but also to both university students—future professionals—and other educated citizens around the world. Directions is also intended to be provocative. The child protection field has too infrequently been provoked by big ideas that stimulate the growth of more effective systems. Indeed, it has been too easy to read issues of this journal from cover to cover without being challenged. By contrast, Directions will consist of innovative, tightly argued essays on critical issues in the field. The viewpoints that authors express may not always be consistent with those of many readers of this journal, leaders of the International Society for Prevention whether they appear in the journal that arrives in the mail once a month or the image that comes instantaneously to a computer screen

The new normal? Addressing gun violence in America.

Despite the fact that children die every day from gun violence, school shootings upset us in ways that are difficult to comprehend. In our minds, schools serve as safe havens for children. When that image is shattered, the unpredictability and randomness of such heinous acts leave us wondering if anywhere is safe anymore. This issue of the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry includes a set of commentaries that seek to help us better understand responses to gun violence, challenge some of the typical policy responses to such events, and seek to offer constructive strategies for preventing gun violence. (PsycINFO Database Record Language: en

Young adults in conflict: confident but struggling, networked but disconnected.

This article discusses the conflict the cohort of adults known as the Millennials has been affected by. More specifically this article takes a look at how changes in the economy and society have influenced Millennials and what can be done to promote their well-being and that of future generations.

Where Have All the Children Gone? The Effects of the Justice System on America’s Children and Youth

W here Have All the Flowers Gone? Although written 50 years ago to protest American military action in Vietnam, this song raises questions that remain relevant today. Unfortunately, the questions ‘‘Where have all the young men gone?’’ and ‘‘Where have all the young girls gone?’’ much too often elicit answers related to the justice system. The numbers are stunning. According to the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), more than 2 million times each year, law enforcement officers arrest a suspect who is under age 18. The estimated total arrest rate of juveniles aged 10–17 increased steadily between the 1980s and mid-1990s, from roughly 7,500 arrests per 100,000 youth in 1980 to about 9,250 in 1994. By 2000, the arrest rate had declined to a rate below that which was present in 1980. Specifically, arrests for violent crimes decreased nearly 60% from 1994 to 2000. By 2008, the rate had fallen still further to about 6,300 arrests per 100,000 persons aged 10–17. Despite the marked decline in arrests that has occurred since the mid-1990s, the number of youth held in detention increased by more than 70% between 1994 and 2000. Currently, about 100,000 youth are in juvenile jails, prisons, boot camps, and other criminal justice facilities on any given night. At the extreme, nearly 2,500 individuals are serving sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole for crimes committed while they were juveniles. Of note, placement of offenders behind bars has been increasing not only for youth but also for adults. In 1990, 1.1 million people—1 in 161 adults—were in jail or prison in the United States. According to a report of the Pew Center on the States, 2.3 million people—1 in 100 adults— were in jail or prison in 2007. Unfortunately, the United States has the disgraceful distinction of being No. 1 in incarceration in both absolute and relative terms. Confinement of so many people comes with a mammoth price tag. In 2007, states spent more than

Advocating new directions

49 billion on corrections, up from

Child Rights and Well-Being in Latin America: A Role for Conditional Cash Transfers?

11 billion in 1987. According to the Justice Policy Institute (JPI), the average state spends almost

Addressing mental health challenges facing the "Next America": A call for culture change.

250 per day per youth on postadjudication residential facilities. The cost is many times greater than for multisystemic therapy and functional family therapy, both of which are evidence based and, according to JPI, yield up to