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The sexual exploitation of children and youth remains a critical issue within the child welfare system, despite the limited availability of models of care to support these vulnerable individuals. The START with the YOUTH (STAR‐Y) program adopts a preventative approach, offering personalized care and wraparound support to youth exhibiting at‐risk behaviours. This paper employs a case study methodology using both thematic and content analyses to longitudinally assess the effectiveness of this exploratory program. This evaluation encompasses a comprehensive assessment of various factors associated with the risk of sexual exploitation among program participants. Throughout the program's extended duration (originally planned for one year), predefined risk factors, including concerning Internet behaviours, were monitored and analysed. Qualitative data were gathered through interviews and observations, focusing on the experiences of both the youth and their foster parents. The results highlight the program's successful implementation, with youth enrollment (N = 3) demonstrating a reduction in sexual exploitation risk factors over time, including a decrease in behaviours such as concerning Internet usage. The importance of wraparound support and the foster parent‐youth relationship in mitigating risk and nurturing resilience became evident. This exploratory evaluation serves as the initial phase of a comprehensive assessment aimed at understanding how to effectively support youth within this population, including those at higher risk, such as those possibly involved in sex trafficking. The study's findings provide valuable insights into strategies for mitigating the risk of sexual exploitation among vulnerable youth, informing future endeavours to develop and implement similar programs within the child welfare system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This paper presents findings from qualitative interviews with 24 young people (11-17 years) who have been referred to Children's Social Care Services in England. The paper explores young people's experiences of help seeking and their experiences of receiving help for maltreatment through statutory agencies. A central finding is the importance of relationships for young people when seeking and receiving help. It is through trusting relationships with professionals that young people are most likely to disclose maltreatment and/or engage with services. The paper concludes that young people's expectations and needs are not always met by the current safeguarding system and that the system needs to become more child-centred if it is to address the concerns maltreated young people have consistently voiced through research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on a series of life-history interviews with 16 young adults who were all formerly looked-after children. Eight young men and eight young women aged 17 to 25 took part in the study in Wales, UK. They had experienced a wide range of circumstances at home, in care and after care. They were contacted through a self-advocacy organization and other care leavers' groups. The paper explores how insights from the sociology of the family can serve to enhance understandings of these young people's life stories and, additionally, how their lived experiences can contribute to this sociological field. Key themes explored in the paper include the emotional co-presence of the birth family for children living in substitute care, the dynamic nature of experiences and perceptions of family relationships through the life course, the importance of siblings and the insightful reflections of participants on the challenges of learning to 'do' family across childhoods marked by nomadism. The paper concludes that a holistic theoretical approach that embraces 'psy' and sociological understandings of families and relationships will be most productive for researchers, practitioners and families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This paper presents the results of a study comparing the impacts on helping relationships of locating front-line child protection service providers in central locations or in accessible school and neighbourhood service delivery sites. Creating easier access to front-line child protection service providers, fostering more positive community perceptions of child welfare services, improving client and service provider satisfaction with helping relationships and services, and increasing families' willingness to ask for help were core objectives at the accessible sites. Using a quasi-experimental outcome design, file reviews and qualitative interviews with service providers and parents, this study presents evidence that accessible sites had substantial success in achieving these objectives when compared with central service delivery locations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adoption policy in the UK emphasizes its role in providing secure, permanent relationships to children in care who are unable to live with their birth families. Adoptive parents are crucial in providing this life-long, stable experience of family for these vulnerable children. This paper explores the experience of adoptive parenthood in the context of changes to adoptive kinship relationships brought about by new, unplanned contact with birth family during their child's middle adolescence. This contact was initiated via informal social networks and/or social media, with older birth siblings instrumental in negotiating renewed relationships. The contact precipitated a transition in adoptive family life resulting in emotional challenges and changes in parent/child relationships, which were experienced as additional to the normative transitions expected during adolescence. Parental concern as a dominant theme was founded in the child and birth sibling's stage of adolescence, coupled with constraints on adoptive parenthood imposed by the use of social media, by perceived professional attitudes and by parental social cognitions about the importance of birth ties. Adoptive parents' accounts are interpreted with reference to family life-cycle theory and implications are suggested for professional support of adoptive kinship relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children placed in residential care are significantly over‐represented in youth justice systems. Drawing on interviews and focus groups with service providers, this exploratory study examines practice factors that impact on the criminalization of this group of children across multiple services and systems, including in the residential care environment, police, lawyers, courts and youth justice systems, as well as multi‐systems practice with this group in one Australian state. Positive outcomes were observed for children in residential care where well‐functioning care teams existed, as well as for children in therapeutic residential care settings. However, clear limitations were identified across all phases of children's youth justice system involvement, including placement with offending peers, the criminalization of behaviours of concern, greater use of remand and detention, limited support to navigate legal and youth justice processes, challenges to service collaboration, and limited applicability of sentencing considerations. The findings indicate a pervasive level of systemic disadvantage for this group of children, and imply that a holistic strategy underpinned by affirmative action across several systems will be necessary to address the ongoing criminalization of children in residential care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vague programme descriptions are known to impede implementation and evaluation. Yet social work change programmes often fail to describe in detail how they aim to provide better outcomes for children and families. This study focused on the Systemic Practice Model (SPM), which is a Finnish adaptation of Reclaiming Social Work, a practice model developed in England. The SPM aims to deliver systemic practice in children's social care and has recently been widely disseminated across Finland. However, research has found both considerable variation in its delivery and a lack of clarity about what it is. This study, applying realist evaluation, aimed to formulate a programme theory based on the perceptions of key informants (n = 12) involved in the national development and dissemination of the SPM during the period 2017–2019. The analysis yielded three core components (a systemic team, systemic weekly meetings, and systemic practice) and two context‐mechanism‐outcome (CMO) configurations, which represent causal chains of the SPM. The findings should enable its quality implementation and meaningful outcome and process evaluation. The findings will also aid organizations and practitioners both to identify changes required in their service provision and prevent adverse effects. This programme theory should be tested and refined with empirical data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Child‐welfare practices transformed drastically in 2020 after governments instituted quarantining and social‐distancing measures. Child visitation, mental health evaluations and treatment, and court hearings either ceased or only accessible via information communication technologies (ICTs). Peer‐reviewed published scholarship about technology use in child welfare is limited to voluntary, supplemental contexts and insufficient to understand the nuanced effects of this transition on vulnerable populations. We used a critical case study ethnography to name this phenomenon, 'pandemic practice', and describe how case‐management challenges were compounded and/or masked by pandemic practice. Mandatory ICT use in case management contributed to injustices for some families in the child‐welfare system, including children spending extended time in foster care, families receiving superficial treatment services and irreparable harm to timely case progression. We used technology adoption theory and technological capital framework to identify and understand the complexities of pandemic practice beyond a simple digital divide perspective. We present a hierarchy of technological capital necessary to participate in pandemic practice, suggestions to create sufficient capital and implications for policy and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the benefits of monthly family team meetings for parents involved with child welfare. Findings are shared from semi-structured, qualitative interviews conducted with 17 parents whose children had been placed in substitute care. While much of the scholarship on family meetings focuses on opportunities for family voice, this study found that parents received multiple benefits from meetings including, but not limited to, the opportunity for input into decision-making. Specifically, parents appreciated receiving information and feedback, encouragement, and a range of other supports from members of the team. Meetings also facilitated communication and improved the coordination of services and other efforts by team members. Notably, parents reported that regular meetings helped to hold caseworkers and other providers accountable regarding their activities and duties related to the case, often resulting in better follow through. Parents and their advocates were also able to use meetings to push child welfare to respond in a timely way to parents' progress. These findings should be viewed as preliminary evidence of how a particular model of family meetings might work and thereby expand our understanding of what family team decision meetings can do to improve parents' experiences and child welfare outcomes more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mothers with cognitive limitations who have children in placement need to be listened to and to receive help in understanding and dealing with their situation. A support programme for this group was developed in Australia and then adapted for use in a Swedish context and named 'Mamma Trots Allt' (MTA). The aim was to examine the experiences of these mothers regarding their mothering role after participation in MTA. An explorative and qualitative design was used. Inclusion criteria were mothers with cognitive limitations, a child in placement and participation in MTA. Nine mothers, eight of them from a previous study, gave their informed consent to participate. A study‐specific interview guide was adapted to people with cognitive limitations. The interviews took place after the final MTA session. The qualitative analyses resulted in a description of the mothers' experiences and how they changed after MTA, resulting in an overall theme, two subthemes, four categories and 11 subcategories. MTA facilitated the mothers' maturation and broadened their earlier, stereotypic life expectations. Offering a support programme benefits not only the mother but most likely the child as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Sweden, when needed, children of mothers with cognitive limitations are placed in foster homes. There is a lack of knowledge about the mothers with cognitive limitations, their experiences of their maternal role, whether they get the support needed to maintain the relationship with their children, and whether the support system is adapted to mothers with cognitive limitations. The aim was to describe the experiences of the maternal role and support given in mothers with cognitive limitations who have children in placement. An explorative and qualitative design was used. Eleven respondents were interviewed with support from a study‐specific guide. A model representing the respondents' experiences revealed one theme "Struggling, dependent and frustrated mothers," and three categories: I am a mother, I am dependent on an incomprehensible system, and I reluctantly accept my situation. Mothers with children in placement experience a threat to their identity and experience a need to alter their maternal role. They need adapted support to understand the decisions made and facilitate the cooperation with child protection services and the foster home. Offering service adapted to their cognitive limitations could be helpful for the struggling, dependent, and frustrated mothers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of sexual abuse on children is enormous, particularly when a child is abused sexually by a mother figure. In order to gain insight into the experiences of this rarely studied group, the life stories of four foster mothers of victims of maternal sexual abuse were collected. The narratives were coded inductively, and several topics concerning foster motherhood were studied more in‐depth. Four key themes emerged in the women's narratives: their attitude towards the abusing female, the foster child's sexual behaviour towards the foster mother, the emotional and physical distance of the foster mothers towards their foster child, and lastly, their sense of responsibility. The four foster mothers continuously balance between fostering their foster child as a parent and responding as a professional caregiver. The consequences of being a foster mother of a victim of maternal sexual abuse should be more socially acknowledged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This study addresses the relationship between children's participation and the protection and provision offered to them by social services in Sweden. It applies a theoretical framework for analysing child welfare that is anchored in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. How child participation may affect child protection and provision is examined empirically using case documentation from 2 municipalities. The main finding is that when children are not given voice or opportunity to influence the framing of what “the problem” is, the design of protection and care tends to be poorly matched to the actual problems documented in the child investigation and vice versa; when children can influence framing, this is associated with well‐matched protection and care. This suggests that traditional child welfare ethos, to the effect that protection should be of such overriding concern that children even should be protected from participation, is misguided. The study further illustrates the intrinsic problems with the family orientation of Swedish social services and its reliance on partnership with parents, which makes it difficult to live up to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Incorporating child participation into existing service models can transform Swedish social services to an augmented child‐focused system that by ensuring participation also promotes protection and provision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indigenous children and young people are over-represented at all stages of the Australian child protection system. Policy and legislative initiatives exist in the state of Victoria, Australia aiming to support the connection between Indigenous children and young people in state care and their culture and community. This exploratory research involved focus group consultations with seven child and family welfare agencies to investigate the impacts, barriers, benefits and limitations of cultural support planning for Indigenous young people in, and leaving care in, Victoria. Findings indicated that cultural planning was of value when it could be completed. However, various shortcomings of current systems were identified including limited resourcing of Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations to generate plans and provide direct and secondary consultation services to implement plans, difficulty gathering information for plans and some Indigenous young people expressing disinterest in connecting to their culture and community. Complexities in the relationships between the Indigenous and non-Indigenous agencies that aimed to support Indigenous young people in care were also acknowledged. Participants identified a number of strategies to improve outcomes, such as facilitating better relationships between agencies, promoting opportunities for ongoing cultural training for staff in mainstream agencies and improving the resourcing of Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations to deliver planning and to support cultural connections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Children in out-of-home care that demonstrate challenging behaviour are often thought of as 'attachment disordered'. Our understanding of what this might mean for practice is not well developed. In this study, 92 South Australian stakeholders were interviewed about how they understood extremely challenging behaviour amongst school-age children in out-of-home care. Participants consistently described behaviour as arising from attachment difficulties. Despite this, there were a variety of ways that a child's attachment needs were conceptualized, which appeared to be inconsistent with contemporary attachment theory. Thematic analysis yielded four implicit views about children's attachment: attachment as capacity that is limited, attachment as skill that children can learn and transfer to other relationships, attachment as unachievable for some children and an idealized view of attachment as a close and trusting relationship. These possible misconceptions about attachment and attachment needs and their relationship to the development of challenging behaviour are discussed in terms of attachment informed research and theory. The possible implications for placement practice and policy for children in out-of-home care are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our re-analysis of census data shows that 95% of kinship arrangements are 'informal', i.e. made outside the formal child welfare system. Interviews with 80 children aged 8-18 years in informal kinship care and their carers showed that most children were well attached to their kin carers, but one-third had been taunted or bullied because they did not live with their parents. Many children tightly controlled who knew about this potentially stigmatizing information. Most children had good numbers of adults and children in their social networks, and for three-fifths, their parents were still key figures in their lives. The children who regarded few people as very important to them significantly more often lived with older kin carers (many of whom were in poor health), were more often anxious and depressed, and did not talk about their living situation to others. A considerable number of children worried about their carers' poor health and about their own future if they died. The significance of these findings for statutory and voluntary services is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]