November 2009

News

• Scars of Bullying Linger - Victims, especially girls, may suffer emotional problems later on, study says

  Children — especially girls — are more likely to have psychiatric problems later in life if they’re bullied or victimized, a new Finnish study finds. The study may be the first of its kind to examine what happens to bullied children of both genders years later. Researchers at Turku University Hospital tried to find links between bullying and victimization at age 8 and later psychiatric problems between ages 13 and 24. The study found that about 6 percent of boys were frequent bullies and 6 percent were frequent victims; 3 percent fit into both categories.

• Teacher Support Is Key to Self-Esteem for Chinese and U.S. Youth

  A new cross-cultural study finds that for both Chinese and American middle schoolers, students who feel supported by their teachers tend to have higher self-esteem, and those who don’t feel supported by fellow students are more likely to be depressed. The study was conducted by researchers at Southeast University (in Nanjing, China), New York University, the Educational Testing Service, Harvard University, the University of Western Ontario, and Nanjing Brain Hospital., appears in the September/October 2009 issue of Child Development.

Publications

• The Indigenous Resiliency Project: a worked example of community-based participatory research

  This paper describes the Indigenous Resiliency Project currently being conducted in Redfern, Townsville and Perth, in Australia. This case study is used to demonstrate how a group of university-based researchers and Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services have used CBPR to work with young Indigenous Australians to explore young people’s perspectives on resilience in relation to bloodborne viruses and sexually transmissible infections. This paper also describes some initial benefits gained through the process of developing the Indigenous Resiliency CBPR Project, such as: developing research capacity; establishing relationships between community organisations and research institutions; and prioritising ethical and social considerations in the conduct of research.

• A Social-Cognitive-Ecological Framework for Understanding the Impact of Exposure to Persistent Ethnic-Political Violence on Children’s Psychosocial Adjustment

  This article describes a theoretical framework for understanding how persistent and extreme exposure to ethnic-political conflict and violence interacts with cognitive, emotional, and self processes to influence children’s psychosocial adjustment. The authors review the recent empirical literature on children’s exposure to ethnic-political violence and they apply the social-cognitive-ecological framework to the empirical findings in this literature. Finally, they propose future directions for research and clinical implications derived from this framework.

• A stitch in time saves nine: Preventing and responding to the abuse and neglect of infants

  The particular focus of this Issues paper is child abuse and neglect in infants aged 0-3 years. It addresses many of the issues confronting Australia at present: how to ensure the protection of individual infants (aged 0-3 years), how to respond to infants who have suffered neglect or abuse in ways that alleviate their suffering and heal and protect them from further harm, how to create a society that reduces the risks of infants and children becoming subject to neglect and abuse, and how to deal with the limits and failures of such endeavours.

• What Works for Summer Learning Programs for Low-Income Children and Youth: Preliminary Lessons from Experimental Evaluations of Social Interventions

  This Fact Sheet presents some emerging lessons from 11 summer learning programs that were evaluated using experimental research designs. All of the programs were implemented with economically disadvantaged children and youth. The findings of this synthesis suggest that summer learning programs can be effective and are likely to have positive impacts when they engage students in learning activities that are hands-on, enjoyable, and have real-world applications. This review also suggests some insights into promising practices.

• How professionals can nurture resilience in youth

  This is a PowerPoint presentation by Michael Ungar from the School of Social Work, Dalhousie University in Halifax for the International Resilience Project. It provides recommendations for professionals dealing with young people seeking help.

• Backing the Future Practical Guide 2: A guide to measuring children’s well-being (free subscription is needed)

  This guide explains how to measure well-being in children and young people. It looks specifically at the scope of subjective indicators (e.g., life satisfaction, optimism about the future) to complement objective indicators of well-being (e.g., child obesity, numeracy and literacy, household income) in informing us about how children experience their lives – from their own perspectives. It covers some of the practical approaches to measuring child well-being that have been implemented and it discusses some of the considerations that need to be made when designing a well-being measurement tool for children, which includes subjective indicators.

• Study finds group homes increase risk of delinquency

  Using administrative records from the Department of Children and Family Services and the Department of Probation in Los Angeles County this study examined the influence of group home placement on delinquent behavior. The authors found that subsequent delinquency was associated with group home status, placement changes related to running away, race and gender. Youth that had at least one placement in a group home or that had a placement change due to running away were two and a half times more likely to be arrested. The risk of delinquency was 80% higher for males, 80% higher for African Americans and 32% higher for Hispanics than for white youth. Furthermore, youth that had many placements or those that were placed for reasons of physical abuse were more likely to be arrested.

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