Improving collaboration: a qualitative assessment of inter-agency collaboration between a pilot Multisystemic Therapy Child Abuse and Neglect (MST-CAN) program and a child protection team

A Novel Method for Measuring, Visualizing, and Monitoring E-Collaboration

With its roots in the 1960s, e-collaboration has dramatically evolved and expanded over the past decades and became a globally adopted practice of teamwork. On the other hand, despite the development of e-collaboration technologies, the lack of true collaboration remains one of the main reasons for teamwork failures. However, traditional approaches to improving collaboration due to time-consuming, complicated, and expensive procedures do not meet the modern setup's requirements. This paper presents a new fast, simple, and low-cost method to improve e-collaboration through active engagement measures by analyzing data logs. The authors designed and ran a feedback system to mirror the participants' engagement during a collaborative engineering design course. The results of two case studies, including nine teams, suggest meaningful positive impacts of the method. The presented approach is applicable in upgrading e-collaboration platforms and further investigation on improving web-based collaborative learning and teamwork through monitoring dashboards and feedback systems.

Differences in developmental problems between victims of different types of child maltreatment

This study examined differences in developmental problems between children who were victims of two child maltreatment dimensions: abuse versus neglect, and physical versus emotional maltreatment. Family demographics and developmental problems were examined in a clinical sample of 146 Dutch children from families involved in a Multisystemic Therapy - Child Abuse and Neglect treatment trajectory. No differences were found in child behavior problems within the dimension abuse versus neglect. However, more externalizing behavior problems (e.g., aggressive problems) were found in children who experienced physical maltreatment compared to children who experienced emotional maltreatment. Further, more behavior problems (e.g., social problems, attention problems, and trauma symptoms) were found in victims of multitype maltreatment compared to victims of any single-type maltreatment. The results of this study increase the understanding of the impact of child maltreatment poly-victimization, and highlight the value of classifying child maltreatment into physical and emotional maltreatment.

Behavioral and pharmacological interventions for the prevention and treatment of psychiatric disorders with children exposed to maltreatment

There is a well-established relation between exposure to child maltreatment and the onset and course of multiple, comorbid psychiatric disorders. Given the heterogeneous clinical presentations at the time services are initiated, interventions for children exposed to maltreatment need to be highly effective to curtail the lifelong burden and public health costs attributable to psychiatric disorders. The current review describes the most effective, well-researched, and widely-used behavioral and pharmacological interventions for preventing and treating a range of psychiatric disorders common in children exposed to maltreatment. Detailed descriptions of each intervention, including their target population, indicated age range, hypothesized mechanisms of action, and effectiveness demonstrated through randomized controlled trials research, are presented. Current limitations of these interventions are noted to guide specific directions for future research aiming to optimize both treatment effectiveness and efficiency with children and families exposed to maltreatment. Strategic and programmatic future research can continue the substantial progress that has been made in the prevention and treatment of psychiatric disorders for children exposed to maltreatment.

Multisystemic Therapy for Child Abuse and Neglect: Do Parents Show Improvement in Parental Mental Health Problems and Parental Stress?

Multisystemic Therapy for Child Abuse and Neglect (MST-CAN) is an evidence-based program for families with children who experience maltreatment. This clinical trial is the first evaluation of MST-CAN in a German-speaking area. Parental psychological problems and parental stress have been shown to be risk factors for child abuse and neglect. By the end of treatment, parents reported significantly less psychological distress than before the start of MST-CAN. Six months after treatment, this reduction was still evident. However, parents did not report any significant reduction of parental stress at any of the three time points. MST-CAN is an effective intervention for child maltreatment that not only combats child abuse and neglect but also has the potential to alleviate parental psychological distress.

Better Together? A Review of Evidence for Multi-Disciplinary Teams Responding to Physical and Sexual Child Abuse

Multi-Disciplinary teams (MDTs) have often been presented as the key to dealing with a number of intractable problems associated with responding to allegations of physical and sexual child abuse. While these approaches have proliferated internationally, researchers have complained of the lack of a specific evidence base identifying the processes and structures supporting multi-disciplinary work and how these contribute to high-level outcomes. This systematic search of the literature aims to synthesize the existing state of knowledge on the effectiveness of MDTs. This review found that overall there is reasonable evidence to support the idea that MDTs are effective in improving criminal justice and mental health responses compared to standard agency practices. The next step toward developing a viable evidence base to inform these types of approaches seems to be to more clearly identify the mechanisms associated with effective MDTs in order to better inform how they are planned and implemented.

A Multisystemic Approach to the Prevention and Treatment of Child Abuse and Neglect

Families experiencing physical abuse and/or neglect are at risk of continued difficulties that may involve long-term monitoring by Child Protective Services (CPS) and perhaps even removal of the child. Interventions needed to help the family remain intact safely and reduce both the clinical challenges they are experiencing and risk of further maltreatment will need to meet the multiple needs of all family members and involve a positive, collaborative working relationship with CPS. If services that are typically provided at outpatient clinics are used, the CPS case worker may be tasked with linking the family to many providers. When the family cannot make all the appointments, they are at further risk of removal of their child. In this article we present Multisystemic Therapy for Child Abuse and Neglect (MST-CAN), an ecologically based treatment for families experiencing physical abuse and/or neglect in which research-supported mental health services are delivered in the home by one clinical team to families who have serious clinical needs. To date, MST-CAN has been implemented with families experiencing the most serious levels of risk, but application is feasible for families with lower risk levels. Among high-risk families, MST-CAN has been shown effective for reducing out-of-home placement, abusive or neglectful parent behavior, and parent and child mental health difficulties and for increasing natural social supports. Two specialty population programs based on MST-CAN are also presented. These are MST - Building Stronger Families, a specialty program for parents who are experiencing abuse or neglect co-occurring with substance abuse, and MST for Intimate Partner Violence for families experiencing abuse or neglect and intimate partner violence. All models are based on the core Standard MST model. We trace the history of model development to dissemination.

Substance Misuse–Related Parental Child Maltreatment

In Australia, children removed from the parental home because substance use–related child maltreatment issues are commonly placed in grandparent custodial care; however, the longer term relational costs of this approach have yet to be determined. Conventional, summative, and directive content analyses were conducted on data extracted from 88 Australian custodial grandparent completed Grandcarer Needs, Wellbeing and Health Surveys. Conventional analysis revealed the most common reason grandparents gave for their assumption of custodial care was drug use–related acts of parental child maltreatment. Summative analysis revealed antidepressants, marijuana, Valium, ice, and amphetamines were the most commonly used parental drugs and that these drugs were frequently used in combination with dexamphetamine, antipsychotics, heroin, ecstasy, and cocaine. Directed analysis contextualized the strain that drug use–related custodial caregiving places on grandparents’ financial resources, and how this strain is burdensome when the grandparents’ annual income is less than Aus$80,000. It also contextualizes the need for future research to explore family reunification desires/barriers.

Multisystemic Therapy for Externalizing Youth

Externalizing problems are multidetermined and related to individual, family, peer, school, and community risk factors. Multisystemic therapy (MST) was originally developed to address these risk factors among youth with serious conduct problems who are at-risk for out-of-home placement. Several decades of research have established MST as an evidence-based intervention for adolescents with serious clinical problems, including serious offending, delinquency, substance abuse, and parental physical abuse and neglect. This article presents an overview of the clinical procedures and evidence base of MST for externalizing problems as well as 2 adaptations: MST for Substance Abuse and MST for Child Abuse and Neglect.