BACKGROUND: Several studies have explored the mechanisms of intergenerational transmission of child maltreatment (ITCM), which also involves care-experienced parents; however, what is less explored is their direct experience, especially regarding resilience processes.
OBJECTIVE: Developing the theoretical framework of ITCM through an exploration of the perspectives of those who appear to have interrupted it.
METHODS: A sample of 27 Italian parents - with experience in foster and/or residential care - who have broken the ITCM, completed an in-depth interview between May 2021 and February 2023.
METHODS: A Constructivist Grounded Theory (Charmaz, 2014) approach was adopted in carrying out the interviews, which focused on daily experiences of parenting (Morgan, 2011) and on factors perceived as supporting ITCM interruption. Data were analyzed using open, focused and theoretical coding; the analysis itself was discussed with a consultive board of care-experienced parents.
RESULTS: The study highlighted important aspects that, from parents\' perspectives, play a role in breaking ITCM: for instance, how their parenting experience is a challenging process of constructing what they term \'zero family\'. Furthermore, starting a family from scratch requires coming to terms with the past, re-imagining oneself as a parent, and managing the complexity of everyday life despite such tensions.
CONCLUSIONS: The results throw light on how the transition to parenthood itself is perceived as a significant developmental opportunity for the interruption of ITCM. However, many problems persist, foregrounding the relevance of discussing possible supports to strengthen parenting agency and skills. Such a discussion should therefore be increasingly informed by ecological approaches and parents\' perspectives (also on everyday practices and life contexts), thus avoiding the risk of pathologizing responses.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic increased the likelihood of child maltreatment and made already difficult circumstances for children and their families much worse. This increased the significance of the child protection system\'s role in responding to child maltreatment and ensuring children\'s rights, including their right to a safe life without violence. Unfortunately, accumulating evidence has indicated that the rates of child maltreatment increased during the pandemic.
OBJECTIVE: The current study sought to identify the gaps within child protection responses in various countries during the COVID-19 pandemic and to discover how we can respond to crises in the future while preserving children\'s rights, including their right to protection from maltreatment.
METHODS: Five focus groups with a total of 47 professionals working with children from various countries were conducted via Zoom and analyzed using a thematic approach.
RESULTS: Three main themes were identified: 1) gaps in policies, 2) gaps in practice, and 3) professionals\' messages to improve policy and practice.
CONCLUSIONS: This study emphasizes what was missed in child protection policy and practice, highlighting the continuous neglect of children\'s needs and voices within policies, practices and guidelines worldwide during the pandemic. Professionals\' recommendations for policy and practice are also discussed.

The Open Dialogue approach (OD) emphasizes community-based psychiatric treatment for adolescents, but its success in achieving this is poorly documented.
To analyse out-of-home intervention usage in a national sample of adolescent psychiatric patients and determine if OD is linked to increased time until out-of-home intervention.
The register-based cohort study included all adolescents aged 13-20 who received psychiatric treatment in Finland between 2003 and 2008. The research group (n = 780) included adolescents whose treatment was initiated in the Western Lapland catchment area, where OD covered the entire psychiatric service. The comparison group (n = 44,088) included the rest of Finland. National register data encompassed the period from treatment onset until the end of the 10-year follow-up or death. The primary outcomes of interest were the times to the first and second out-of-home intervention, including foster care, supportive housing, and hospitalization. The secondary outcomes included the clinical/demographic characteristics of adolescents treated out-of-home.
The hypothesis was tested via an inverse probability of treatment-weighted Cox hazard model, plus within- and between-group comparisons to analyse the secondary outcome.
OD was associated with increased time to the first (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR]: 0.61, 95%CI: 0.52-0.72) and second (aHR: 0.75, 95%CI: 0.58-0.96) out-of-home interventions. In both service types, there was a subgroup of adolescents with repeated out-of-home interventions, who also demonstrated poorer long-term outcomes.
OD-based psychiatric services for adolescents are associated with fewer out-of-home interventions. The clinical significance of the findings warrants further research.

Reducing the over-representation of Aboriginal children in the child protection system is a key target for the Australian government.
We aimed to provide more recent evidence on the population-level cumulative incidence of contacts for Aboriginal children with child protective services (CPS) in Western Australia (WA).
Linked administrative data was provided for WA CPS between 2000 and 2015 for 33,709 Aboriginal children born in WA between 2000 and 2013.
Descriptive summaries and cumulative incidence estimates were used to examine changes in CPS contact trends over time and within sibling groups.
There was an increase in early-childhood contacts for children born more recently, with 7.6 % and 2.3 % of children born in 2000-2001 having a notification and placement in out-of-home care by age one, respectively, compared to 15.1 % and 4.3 % of children born in 2012-2013. Among sibling groups where at least one sibling had a CPS contact, approximately half of children had their first contacts on the same date as another sibling. For children born after one of their siblings had been placed in out-of-home care, 31.9 % had themselves been placed in out-of-home care by age one.
Multiple children tend to be placed into out-of-home care when at least one sibling is, which is likely to have a significant impact on families affected. The additional risk of placement also carries over to children born after the first removal in a sibling group, highlighting the need for further support to prevent future removals.

OBJECTIVE: Infants affected by prenatal alcohol and drug use are more likely to be removed from parental custody than those in the general population, although it is unclear whether their custody outcomes differ from infants investigated by child protection systems (CPS) for other reasons. This analysis seeks to compare trajectories of involvement and custody outcomes among infants investigated by CPS with and without documentation of prenatal substance exposure (PSE).
METHODS: We used vital birth records linked to administrative CPS records to examine the timing of system involvement and 3-year custodial outcomes among investigated infants with and without identified PSE. We defined PSE according to documentation on the state\'s standardized hotline screening form, which CPS completes upon referral for alleged maltreatment. We estimated the likelihood a child was in nonparental custody at age 3 by specifying multivariable generalized linear models, adjusted for covariates available in the birth record.
RESULTS: In our sample of 22,855 infants investigated by CPS in 2017 in California, more than 26% had documentation of PSE. These infants experienced an accelerated timeline of system penetration and were 2.2 times as likely to be in nonparental placement at age 3.
CONCLUSIONS: PSE confers an independent risk of custody interruption among infants investigated by CPS. The younger age of these infants, complexity of parental substance use, and potential misalignment of administrative permanency timelines with parental recovery all suggest the need for increased research, policy, and programmatic interventions to serve this vulnerable population.
Children with PSE face environmental risks in the early developmental period. Often in the United States, CPS is relied on to assess and mitigate these risks. Amid calls for a public health response to PSE, it is essential to understand how children with PSE interact with CPS. We describe the incidence and timing of custody interruptions in a large U.S. state, comparing infants with PSE to those investigated by CPS for other reasons. This study extends current understanding by demonstrating the independent risk of custody interruption conferred by PSE status.

The health services literature indicates that the day and time of a medical encounter is often significant factor in patient outcomes, yet little is known about the role of temporal dimensions in child maltreatment reporting or substantiation.
We examined time-specific dynamics of screened-in reports of alleged maltreatment from different reporter sources, including their relationship to the likelihood of substantiation.
We used a population-based dataset of administrative records for 119,758 child protection investigations involving 193,300 unique children in Los Angeles County, California, between 2016 and 2017.
For each report, we coded three categorical temporal dimensions of the maltreatment report: season, day of the week, and time of day. We descriptively examined how temporal characteristics varied by reporting source. Finally, we ran generalized linear models to estimate the likelihood of substantiation.
We observed variability overall and by reporter type for all three measures of time. Reports were less likely during summer months (22.2 %), during the weekend (13.6 %), and after midnight (10.4 %). Counts of reports from law enforcement were more common after midnight and contributed to a greater proportion of substantiations over the weekend than other reporter types. Weekend and morning reports were nearly 10 % more likely than weekday and afternoon to be substantiated, respectively. Reporter type was the most prominent factor for substantiation regardless of temporal dimensions.
Screened-in reports varied by season and other classifications of time, but temporal dimensions exhibited only a modest influence on the likelihood of substantiation.

BACKGROUND: Individuals with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) are at risk of having adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), especially those with child protection and/or justice system involvement. The complex relationship between FASD and psychosocial vulnerabilities in the affected individual is an important clinical risk factor for comorbidity. This study (1) explored the ACEs and associated stressors in individuals with FASD; (2) investigated the association between ACEs and negative outcomes, i.e., justice/child protection system involvement; and (3) examined the relationship between ACEs and comorbid conditions such as mood and neurodevelopmental disorders.
METHODS: Data were collected retrospectively via file review from diagnostic clinics in Western Australia. Life adversity was coded using a standardised ACEs questionnaire. A total of 211 participants (72% males) with FASD with a mean age of 11 years (range = 2-21) were included in the final sample. 70% of the total sample had been involved with the child protection system and 40% had trouble with the law.
RESULTS: Exposure to drinking/substance misuse at home (70%) and domestic violence (52%) were the two most common ACEs across the total sample. In the entire cohort, 39% had four or more ACEs, indicating higher risks of poor health outcomes. Additional stressors recorded were disengagement from school (43%), transiency (19%), victims of bullying (12%), traumatic brain injury (9%) and homelessness (5%). ACEs such as drinking/substance misuse at home, emotional neglect and physical neglect were positively associated with child protection system involvement. Additionally, exposure to domestic violence was positively correlated with justice system involvement. Higher rates of life adversity in this clinical population were associated with an increased number of comorbidities. Specifically, those with FASD who had comorbidities such as attachment disorder, substance use disorder, and PTSD also reported higher ACEs scores.
CONCLUSIONS: ACEs were common in this clinical population. Increased ACEs in this sample were associated with increased comorbidities and involvement with the child protection and/or justice system. This highlights that prevention, intervention and early diagnosis of FASD are important for at risk children to reduce the negative effects of ACEs.

Calls continue for staff training as an instrumental response to racially based differences in rates of child protection system interactions and outcomes. These recommendations echo a reliance on implicit bias and diversity training (referred to broadly as \"anti-bias and racial sensitivity training\") across disciplines of social and human services in the United States as a feasible and politically expedient solution to racial disparities. But focusing on anti-bias training to address racial disparities in child protection systems will almost certainly fail to achieve desired objectives for at least three reasons: (a) there is no evidence that implicit bias or racial sensitivity trainings change behavior; (b) personnel training initiatives misapply an individual behavioral solution to an institutional and structural problem; and (c) an emphasis on internal training initiatives distracts and reduces the accountability of other systems of care better positioned to produce change. We conclude that if the goal is to reduce racial disparities, systemic innovations and broader policy reforms both internal and external to the child protection system are needed. Training will not meaningfully shift the downstream effects of structural racism.

Protection and promotion of child rights are referred to as a central purpose of the European Union (EU). Therefore in 2021, the EU Strategy on the Rights of the Child and the European Child Guarantee were published to enable children to have the best possible life in the EU and worldwide. Member states were invited to implement the directions of both documents into practice. The present study analyses and showcases the evidence on how to progress implementation of the Strategy and the Guarantee regarding alternative care in Portugal. A literature review was conducted based on international literature. Evidence-based recommendations for the Portuguese transition process towards quality, family and community-based care are stated. De-institutionalisation and strengthening specific services-kinship care, special guardianship, and foster care-are advocated, namely specialising the workforce, and promoting training for kinship carers and prospective special guardians. To conclude, the revision and monitoring of the measures for children in need of alternative care are suggested as well as integrating and publishing data from the diverse services of the alternative care system.

COVID-19 infection prevention measures have enhanced risks of abuse and neglect for children and youth. Simultaneously, they have affected the practice of child protection, especially impacting the social infrastructure on which child protection work tends to rely, as well as the ability of practitioners to meet with family members face-to-face and in their homes.
This article focuses on the ways in which infection prevention measures have shaped child protection plans in Germany, i.e. family support and counselling, which is accompanied by monitoring and scrutiny.
The article is based on a qualitative study, in which 40 semi-structured interviews were held with first-line management representatives of German Youth Welfare Agencies between July and October 2020.
The study\'s results show that protection plans have either been maintained, modified or (temporarily) suspended. Several influencing factors were identified. First, the extent to which the social infrastructure relevant for child protection could be maintained, or emerging gaps be filled in a timely fashion by child and youth welfare organisations. Second, the degree of effectiveness of the working relationship between practitioners and parents under the new conditions, including practitioners\' ability to resort to flexible, digital or hybrid communication methods with families proved important. Moreover, everyday practical help from Youth Welfare Agencies and family service providers could often change the parental perception of these professionals for the better, thereby strengthening the relationship between practitioners and parents.
A key limitation of the study comprises the fact that the study findings are limited to the earlier phase of the pandemic.