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Caregiver (CG) worry, a dimension of CG burden, has rarely been explored in CGs of transition-aged autistic youth. The present study investigated CG, youth, and service characteristics as potential predictors of CG worry and explored expressed concerns from CGs about their autistic youth and their care. Data were drawn from a study of 174 family CGs of transition-age autistic youth (age 16–30 years), living in a midwestern metropolitan area. Using a CG worries scale, CGs rated eight worries (e.g., worry about youth's safety, etc.) experienced in the past six months. An OLS regression model of CG worry focused on predictors of CG characteristics (age, health, financial burden, involvement in youth's care), youth characteristics (age, social engagement, adaptive functioning, problematic behavior) and service characteristics (access barriers and engagement in transition planning). CG responses to an open-ended question about their greatest worry regarding the youth and their care were analyzed thematically. CGs were mostly middle-aged mothers, caring for predominantly male (71.8%) ASD youth whose average age was 21. Regression models indicated that CG worry was predicted by problematic behaviors and barriers to accessing services. The expressed CG worries were grouped into four themes, including youth reliance on family CGs, possibilities for the youth's future, youth relationships, and support for youth. These findings support the need for improved access to services for transition-aged youth and raise awareness of the need for potential services and interventions to help families manage various worries during this time. • Problematic behaviors of autistic youth were associated with greater caregiver worry. • Caregiver worry was linked to barriers to accessing services for autistic youth. • Caregivers worried about reliance on family, reaching potential, and relationships. • Central to caregiver worry were services that support autistic youth's independence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Rationale Child maltreatment remains a serious but potentially preventable public health concern in the United States. Although research has examined factors associated with child maltreatment at the neighborhood level, few studies have explicitly focused on the role of the neighborhood built environment in maltreatment. Objective We begin to address these gaps by investigating caregivers' own perceptions of mechanisms by which neighborhood built environments may affect child maltreatment. Method Utilizing a grounded theory approach, we examined open-ended interview data from 400 adult residents residing in 20 different Cleveland, Ohio neighborhoods (census tracts) and caring for at least one child under 18 years of age. Results Our analysis revealed three primary pathways through which caregivers linked the neighborhood built environment to potential child maltreatment: housing density, physical neighborhood space as shaping family relations, and the internalization of the surrounding neighborhood-built environment. Conclusions Our findings suggest that aspects of the neighborhood built environment, such as the presence of abandoned houses or the lack of recreational centers, can be stressors themselves and may also critically alter families' thresholds for navigating other everyday pressures. Conversely, aspects of the neighborhood built environment, such as housing density, may work to mitigate the risk of maltreatment, either by promoting social support or by increasing the likelihood that maltreatment is reported to authorities. Additional research, both qualitative and quantitative, is integral to building and testing models of these separate but related pathways by which the neighborhood built environment may link to child maltreatment. Highlights • Qualitative interview data analysis on child maltreatment and neighborhood ecologies. • Explores caregivers' perceptions of how built environment affects child maltreatment. • Built environment shapes familial dynamics to impact risk for child maltreatment. • Aspects of the built environment can be risk and protective factors at the same time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Interactions with the police can be a traumatic experience for youth. • Officers' verbal behaviors can have an adverse effect on youth mental health. • Officers' use of procedural justice behaviors are a protective factor for youth. • Procedural justice is important for positive police-youth interactions. • Trauma informed care may also be important in terms of police-youth interactions. Research consistently demonstrates that youth involved with the juvenile justice system experience higher levels of trauma exposure and post-traumatic stress disorder. Though prior research suggests that youths' interactions with the police can be a traumatic experience, relatively little research attempts to study post-traumatic stress symptoms within the context of police-youth relationships. Further, research testing the relationship between procedural justice behaviors and police-initiated post-traumatic stress symptomatology PI-PTSS among youth is limited. We test procedural justice behaviors as a protective factor as it relates to PI-PTSS. The results suggest that officers' verbal behaviors play a critical role in influencing PI-PTSS among a sample of youth, but procedural justice buffer youth from the potentially negative effects of interactions with the police. Findings highlight the importance of trauma informed care and procedural justice in juvenile justice settings including police-youth interactions, and underscore the importance of interdisciplinary collaborations between social workers and criminal justice professionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Ongoing social and environmental stress disrupts sleep for children after trauma. • Tangible changes to children's post-trauma environments may promote better sleep. • Changing rooms, changing noise or light levels, and bed-sharing are examples. • Individual agency to change sleep environments may be key for better sleep. • Positive sleep environment change occurs at multiple ecological levels. Over 25% of U.S. children are witness to traumatic intrafamilial or community violence each year, and sleep medicine and developmental research jointly suggest that trauma-exposed youth experience more sleep disturbance than their non-exposed counterparts. Sleep medicine literature emphasizes physical and social environmental factors affecting sleep, and trauma literature underscores children's seeking out physically and emotionally safe and predictable environments during trauma recovery. This study employed a hermeneutic phenomenological framing to explore the lived experiences of 65 violence-exposed children and families, and to examine how youths' social and physical sleep environments facilitated or impeded sleep in the aftermath of trauma. Children's sleep experiences following violence exposure shared two primary essences of experience: a) navigating external threats that agitated sleep after trauma; and b) exercising agency over sleep and related environments to restabilize emotional security. Clinicians and social services coordinators working with children and families are uniquely positioned to indicate sleep assessments as part of treatment following trauma, and to also facilitate identification of tangible, sleep-supportive and changeable factors in sleep environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Cross-system collaboration can promote the wellbeing of children exposed to domestic violence. • Trauma-informed care and cultural humility practices should be integrated across all child-serving systems. • Social-emotional school curricula may help youth exposed to domestic violence. Each year, more than 6% of all U.S. children are exposed to domestic violence and require intervention services from agencies that serve affected families. Previous research has examined detrimental biopsychosocial consequences of domestic violence exposure during childhood and the importance of effective prevention and intervention services for this population. However, less research has explored diverse intervention professionals' own perspectives on the needs of the domestic violence-exposed children they serve. This study employed an inductive approach to thematic analysis to investigate intervention professionals' reflections and advice regarding the service, policy, and research needs as well as overall strategies to better protect children exposed to domestic violence. Respondents articulated four primary themes of (a) building general education and awareness of the effects of domestic violence exposure on children; (b) the need for trauma-informed care; (c) the salience of cultural humility in serving affected families; and (d) essential collaboration across service domains. Respondents discussed these themes in the context of four key systems of care: the clinical or therapy, family, school, and judicial systems. Future research should integrate the voices of affected children and families as well as examine models for effectively implementing these recommendations into practice settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined (a) the extent of heterogeneity in the patterns of developmental trajectories of language development and academic functioning in children who have experienced maltreatment, (b) how maltreatment type (i.e., neglect or physical abuse) and timing of abuse explained variation in developmental trajectories, and (c) the extent to which individual protective factors (i.e., preschool attendance, prosocial skills), relationship protective factors (i.e., parental warmth, absence of past-year depressive episode, cognitive/verbal responsiveness) and community protective factors (i.e., neighborhood safety) promoted the development of resilient language/academic functioning trajectories. Longitudinal data analyses were conducted using cohort sequential Growth Mixture Model (CS-GMM) with a United States national representative sample of children reported to Child Protective Services (n = 1,776). Five distinct developmental trajectories from birth to age 10 were identified including two resilient groups. Children who were neglected during infancy/toddlerhood or physically abused during preschool age were more likely to be in the poorer language/academic functioning groups (decreasing/recovery/decreasing and high decreasing) than the resilient high stable group. Child prosocial skills, caregiver warmth, and caregiver cognitive stimulation significantly predicted membership in the two resilient academic functioning groups (low increasing and high stable), after controlling for demographics and child physical abuse and neglect. Results suggest that it is possible for a maltreated child to successfully achieve competent academic functioning, despite the early adversity, and identifies three possible avenues of intervention points. This study also makes a significant contribution to the field of child development research through the novel use of CS-GMM, which has implications for future longitudinal data collection methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has established a relation between ecological contexts and intimate partner violence (IPV), but little is known about how environmental factors affect childhood development over time and culminate in IPV perpetration from the perspective of men who perpetrated IPV. Using grounded theory, this study employed focus groups with 32 predominately low-income, African American men in batterer intervention programs to explore factors and processes through which families, neighborhoods, and policy influence men's development, contributing to their use of IPV. Using an inductive approach, the researchers cycled between data collection and analysis resulting in a parsimonious conceptual model validated by participants. Three core categories emerged from focused and axial coding: adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and trauma, structural forces, and systemic forces. Theoretical coding illuminated how these core categories relate to each other, producing a collective narrative illustrating how environmental contexts contributed to men's development. Study participants described childhood exposure to adversity and trauma within the home that diminished essential foundations of trust and safety. Positive (e.g., Old Heads, matriarchs) and negative (e.g., gangs, community violence) structural neighborhood forces influenced the social learning of violence and exposed participants to re-traumatization outside the home during their adolescence. Finally, key macro forces such as mass incarceration exacerbated violence and trauma exposure through the proliferation of high-risk neighborhoods, predisposing men toward IPV as young adults. Findings reinforce the notion that environmental stress not buffered by protective adults profoundly affects development and behavior. From the perspective of male perpetrators, our results help identify those stressors and how they might contribute to male-to-female IPV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]