Ending child abuse may take three generations

massey-university

Fri Aug 03 2007 12:00:00 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)

Ending child abuse may take three generations

Friday, 3 August 2007, 1:23 pm
Press Release: Massey University

Friday, August 3, 2007

Identifying problems in relationships between children and their parents or caregivers is the key to preventing the maltreatment of children, say Massey University development psychologists.

Human development researchers Associate Professor John Kirkland and Dr David Bimler have developed a method of quickly evaluating relationships between young children and the adults they live with – a tool that has been successfully trialled in the United States but remains largely unrecognised by New Zealand agencies involved with children.

According to Dr Kirkland and Dr Bimler, the potential application of these tools could help anyone from a community or social agency dealing with families, such as social workers, teachers, Plunket nurses, childcare workers. Its aim is to detect potential problems and trigger the required assistance or intervention that could prevent the child suffering the type of emotional or physical neglect and decrease the likelihood of them continuing this cycle of neglect or abuse.

Dr Kirkland says agencies can take a convenient “arm’s length” approach, favouring education programmes and treating symptoms rather than getting involved in the emotional aspects of inter-personal relationships.

“It’s what they do well and has a long history, but there are others who are fully immersed in the nitty-gritty of offering direct, practical, emotionally-rich assistance.”

He says abuse or maltreatment of children is learned behaviour. “We do as we were done to and it’s a vexed issue of whether the people doing these often dreadful things to children are actually at fault.

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“We believe it takes three generations of positive action to tackle these problems, so we need to start now if we want to see a reduction in maltreatment of children in 50 years’ time.

“Contributing social factors such as solo-parenthood, unemployment, high stress, over-crowding, drug abuse and childhood diseases can all be addressed in some form with varying degrees of success but the critical issue is understanding the dynamics of relationships, and identifying and dealing with destructive ones.

“There is little point in asking parents about their living conditions or parenting practices because they will lie to protect themselves or their partners. What we do is effectively ask the child. Toddlers cannot tell fibs and cannot be trained or primed to give the right answer, or to hide the evidence. If home-visitors and others know what to look for, appropriate evidence is staring them in the face.

“A trained person can summarise the dynamics of toddler-parent relationships in as little as 10 minutes, after a period of home-based observation. Acquiring the working elements of this procedure takes only a couple of days, after which critical and essential aspects of toddler-parent/caregiver relationships can be reliably documented.

“A parent or caregiver who is frightened or frightening will literally produce a set of identifiable characteristics in their toddlers, which can then be addressed systematically through tailored interventions.”

The “relationship” approach was used in a two-year assessment for a United States-based longitudinal study involving more than 250 observers and 10,000 families. Independent analysis of that study showed the Kirkland-Bimler model was close to theoretically perfect and it continues to be used in several ongoing studies including family interventions.

Activities related to this model are being continued with acknowledgment from overseas researchers and practitioners and the Massey researchers welcome opportunities for engaging in domestic consultation.

Signs of a child in a disorganised or potentially damaging relationship:

- They momentarily freeze in the presence of a parent or caregiver, often awkwardly and while performing a task.

- When called to a parent or caregiver they approach without looking at them.

- When picked up they arch away.

- Sudden, unexpected acts of violence towards the caring adult.

- They cry a lot and are hard to settle in the presence of the adult.

ENDS

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