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Infant-Toddler Court Teams (ITCTs) are a collaborative practice designed to improve timely identification and receipt of needed services for families of infants and toddlers involved in the child welfare system and their families. The goal of the study was to explore the impact of the first year of COVID compared to the previous year, in the context of ITCT support, on: (1) parents' access to services; (2) parents' services receipt and access within 30 days and within 14 days from referral; and (3) predictors of services access and receipt.Overall, 897 instances of services needs were analyzed, 411 pre-COVID and 486 during COVID. Logistic regression models were used to test for differences pre- and during COVID, controlling for covariates.A reduction in service access was found across all services during COVID (OR = 0.2, CI: 0.1-0.3, p .0001). Nevertheless, if a service was still available, parents were able to maintain similar levels of receipt within 30 days and within 14 days as before COVID. Moreover, a higher percentage of parents in need received mental health services in 30 or fewer days and substance use disorder services in both 14 and 30 or fewer days during COVID compared to pre-COVID.This success is notable given the significant disruption to the availability of services and barriers to accessing services caused by the pandemic. ITCTs provided a robust platform for supporting the health and well-being of families with very young children in the face of a severely reduced service landscape due to COVID-19.

We conducted systematic review and content analysis of measurement strategies related to child exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV). We searched nine electronic databases and supplementary sources for studies published between January 1984 and March 2016. Eligible studies were those that described a measurement strategy that was administered to children between, but not limited to, age 0 and 17, or administered to individuals who could report on youth of this age range. Measures were examined against a taxonomy of IPV exposure (direct involvement, direct eyewitness, and indirect exposure) and the four subtypes of IPV (sexual violence, physical violence, stalking, and psychological aggression). Twenty-eight measures met criteria for inclusion in the review; 18 measures were original, and 10 were modifications of the Conflict Tactics Scales. The majority of measures were published after 2008, demonstrating the considerable progress made in developing and substantially modifying measures over the last decade. Nonetheless, findings suggest important discrepancies in measurement strategies used in research efforts. Relatively few measures assess children's direct involvement in IPV, exposure to coercive control, and sexual violence. No measures found in our review examined children's exposure to stalking. The implications of these findings for research are discussed.

Surveys suggest that between 4.3% and 11.5% of children living in the United States have a serious emotional disturbance (SED). SED is defined in the Federal Register, and federal block grants are allocated to states based on the prevalence of SED. Accurate measurement of SED is critical, yet surveys have used different methodologies and instrumentation to obtain prevalence estimates. Two expert panels were convened by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) in the fall of 2014 to discuss the current state of the field in operationalizing and measuring SED. The aims of this article are to (a) provide an update on SED prevalence rates from survey research, (b) summarize key discussion points that emerged during the SAMHSA expert panel meetings, and (c) make specific recommendations for next steps in measuring the prevalence of SED. Issues addressed in this article are important not only for federal allocation of service dollars to meet the needs of children with SED, but also for broader mental health surveillance efforts within the context of large national research surveys.

The enormous individual, familial, and societal burden of child sexual abuse has underscored the need to address the problem from a public health framework. Much work remains, however, at the first step of this framework — defining and understanding the scope of the problem, or establishing incidence and prevalence estimates. In this occasional paper, we provide an overview of the ways researchers have defined and estimated the scope of child sexual abuse, focusing on agency tabulations and large-scale surveys conducted over the last several decades. More precise estimates of the number of children affected by child sexual abuse would improve the ability of the public health, child welfare, pediatrics, and other communities to prevent and respond to the problem. We recommend using a comprehensive surveillance system to assess and track the scope of child sexual abuse. This system should be grounded by common definitional elements and draw from multiple indicators and sources to estimate the prevalence of a range of sexually abusive experiences.

This study found that youth involved with the child welfare system have high rates of sexual risk behaviors and outcomes, including forced sex, early age at first sex, low contraceptive use, and pregnancy, which are more than double those of adolescents from the general population. Caseworkers may need training in how to address sexual risk factors and may need to support caregivers in addressing these issues with their children. Findings highlight the importance for case-workers, caregivers, and others to address the sexual and reproductive health needs of maltreated youth.