Diagnosing child sex abuse: A research challenge.

Child sex abuse increasingly is recognised as a societal problem that can no longer be ignored. In this paper definitions, prevalence, trends, assessment, and available diagnostic procedures are described and critically evaluated. It is argued that the lack of reliable diagnostic procedures remains one of the main difficulties in dealing effectively with the detrimental effects of CSA on the child or adult. The research challenge to find effective alternative procedures is outlined.

Exploring the Views of Police Officers on the Use of Video Taped Evidence in Child Abuse Cases in Northern Ireland

This paper sets out to explore the views and attitudes of police officers in the Greater Belfast area, concerning the process and use of video taped interviews with child witnesses, subsequently used as court evidence in child abuse cases. The information was collected by means of a postal questionnaire, completed by police officers who had all experienced joint interviews with social workers of child witnesses. With the increased use of video evidence as an alternative to the distressing experience of a child appearing in court to give evidence, the research findings and conclusions provide clear messages about future developments both nationally and internationally.

Neurobiological model of visuo-spatial cognition in young Williams Syndrome children: measures of dorsal-stream and frontal function

We examine hypotheses for the neural basis of the profile of visual cognition in young children with Williams syndrome (WS). These are: (a) that it is a consequence of anomalies in sensory visual processing; (b) that it is a deficit of the dorsal relative to the ventral cortical stream; (c) that it reflects deficit of frontal function, in particular of fronto-parietal interaction; (d) that it is related to impaired function in the right hemisphere relative to the left. The tests reported here are particularly relevant to (b) and (c). They form part of a more extensive programme of investigating visual, visuospatial, and cognitive function in large group of children with WS children, aged 8 months to 15 years. To compare performance across tests, avoiding floor and ceiling effects, we have measured performance in children with WS in terms of the ‘age equivalence’ for typically developing children. In this paper the relation between dorsal and ventral function was tested by motion and form coherence thresholds respectively. We confirm the presence of a subgroup of children with WS who perform particularly poorly on the motion (dorsal) task. However, such performance is also characteristic of normally developingchildren up to 5 years: thus the WS performance may reflect an overall persisting immaturity of visuospatial processing which is particularly evident in the dorsal stream. Looking at the performance on the global coherence tasks of the entire WS group, we find that there is also a subgroup who have both high form and motion coherence thresholds, relative to the performance of children of the same chronological age and verbal age on the BPVS, suggesting a more general global processing deficit. Frontal function was tested by a counterpointing task, ability to retrieve a ball from a ‘detour box’, and the Stroop-like ‘day-night’ task, all of which require inhibition of a familiar response. When considered in relation to overall development as indexed by vocabulary, the day-night task shows little specific impairment, the detour box shows a significant delay relative to controls, and the counterpointing task shows a marked and persistent deficit in many children. We conclude that frontal control processes show most impairment in WS when they are associated with spatially directed responses, reflecting a deficit of fronto-parietal processing. However, children with WS may successfully reduce the effect of this impairment by verbally mediated strategies. On all these tasks we find a range of difficulties across individual children and a small subset of WS who show very good performance, equivalent to chronological age norms of typically developing children. Neurobiological models of visuo-spatial cognition in children with WS p.4 Overall, we conclude that children with WS have specific processing difficulties with tasks involving frontoparietal circuits within the spatial domain. However, some children with WS can achieve similar performance to typically developing children on some tasks involving the dorsal stream, although the strategies and processing may be different in the two groups.

The Influence of Child Protection Orientation on Child Welfare Practice

This article reports the findings of the second part of a two-part research project examining the potential for social workers to make changes in their work with families and children. While social workers in the United Kingdom have been encouraged to shift from a child protection to a child welfare orientation in their practice, such changes have been hampered by professional and organisational concern to manage risk. The research explores the influence of a child protection orientation on practice in child welfare cases. The findings, from two file analyses and interviews with twenty-six social workers, indicate that such an influence is indeed apparent. This is evidenced in two ways; firstly patterns of practice in child welfare cases are similar to those in child protection cases. Secondly, while the majority of social workers express an attitudinal desire to move towards a child welfare orientation, they still prioritise the management of risk in their practice. It is argued that social workers need permission from their employing organisations to make changes in their practice. This, in turn, requires such organisations to state clear goals in line with a child welfare orientation and develop holistic strategies to achieve these.

Parents' Views on Social Work Interventions in Child Welfare Cases

This article reports the findings of the third part of a three-part research project examining the potential for social workers to shift from a child protection to a child welfare orientation in their practice. Whilst social workers in the United Kingdom have been encouraged to make such changes they have been hampered by concerns to manage risk. Findings from the first two parts of the project had indicated that there was potential for a substantial proportion of child protection work to be redesignated as child welfare work, but that were this was achieved in practice there was evidence of continued influence of child protection processes as social workers sought to manage the risks inherent in child welfare cases. The study reported here sets out to ascertain the views of parents who were subject to child welfare interventions. The findings indicate that while parents feel apprehension with regard to contact with social workers, in the majority of cases successful relationships are formed. It is argued that social workers display considerable skill in monitoring potential risks whilst engaging with families and that the subtleties involved in such activity are not captured by official measures of governance which concentrate on more abstract indicators of performance.

Care proceedings: Exploring the relationship between case duration and achieving permanency for the child

The 1989 Children Act in England and Wales and the derivative 1995 Children (NI) Order in Northern Ireland provide the legislative framework within which issues pertaining to the care and supervision of children that come before the Courts are examined. Both pieces of legislation were intended to address a number of problems with the way that such issues were dealt with by the Court, particularly the tendency for proceedings to become protracted and for children to ‘drift’ in care as a consequence. The imposition of the ‘No Delay’ principle in both jurisdictions was designed specifically to address these concerns. However, since the introduction of both the 1989 Children Act (implemented in October 1991) and the 1995 Children (NI) Order (implemented in November 1996), there has been a steady increase in the average duration of proceedings and concerns remain about the impact that this may be having upon the children involved. This paper presents the findings of a research study (McSherry et al., 2004) that explored the complex relationship between the duration of care proceedings and costs to children in terms of the likelihood of achieving permanency.