Thesis (M.A. (MW))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2008.

Thesis (M.A. (MW))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2008.

This study uses selected data from a qualitative study by Ney, Stoltz and Maloney (2013) who explored family experiences of voice and participation in child protection family group conferences in British Columbia, Canada. A family group conference is a decision-making process founded on strengths-based philosophies that encourages collaborative and empowering relationships between child protection workers and client families. Traditionally, relationships between these workers and client families in child protection are situated within an environment founded on problem-based perspectives with child protection workers positioned as experts. This study explores the perspectives of child protection workers and their client families about their experiences with a family group conference, focusing on areas of dissonance between strengths- and problem-based perspectives that are assessed by analyzing interview transcripts. Purposeful extreme case sampling was conducted to select three cases from the primary study that represented both positive and negative family experiences. Inductive and deductive thematic analyses were conducted on interview transcripts of nine participants. Findings from the thematic analyses as well as between-case, within-case and within-participant comparisons revealed an underlying dissonance in two of the three cases in that the workers endorsed the strengths-based philosophies of family group conferencing as well as – and perhaps unknowingly - the problem-based philosophies inherent in child protection practice. The families from these cases experienced the family group conference in contradiction to its strengths-based philosophies. The results point to possible connections between dissonance in practice, worker worldview and family experience. Recommendations for further research and for child protection workers to be more reflective and aware of worldviews are discussed. / Graduate / 0452 / 0630 / wtm@uvic.ca

This thesis examines data and theory about how the system of law (SL) operates and evolves: it contrasts data from social workers and attorneys working in the juvenile dependency court with theories about how individuals and social systems evolve. The analysis is based on research conducted in San Diego and revolves around a theory about human development, or the "individual as a system" (HD), and a theory about social systems, such as the autopoietic theory of law and its self-reproducing system (LA). It is suggested that together, the theories of HD+LA help to examine how professionals and law operate and evolve in the legal system. Overall, the thesis rejects the autopoietic systems theory that law reproduces itself, by itself. Instead, analysis in this study supports the finding that law is defined and operates through a dialectic of the individual and the social (or the organic and the mechanistic respectively) such that each gives rise to the other. On the basis of this system connection, aspects from systems theory about legal autopoiesis are integrated into concepts from constructive-developmental theory (HDLA), thus providing a new framework through which to examine how law and its system functions. The new framework is built around an equation that emerged some time after data analysis and theoretical development: SL=HDLA+DSA . The equation states that: The evolution of the system of law involves processes of human development and to some but a much lesser degree, the autopoietic nature of law. The extent of this evolution is best determined by analyzing data from a court setting. The dialectical relationship between individual and social influences in the evolution of law is facilitated by the accumulation of social action � such as activity from media and advocacy groups � and the individual meaning that professionals make about this action, which in turn has an influence on the formal and informal operations that they perform when operating law. The nature of these interacting dynamics will be shown through two interconnected tools of analysis: one is a typology of individual, professional and system self-concepts; the typology helps to show how a cycle of system change (human development giving rise to legal change and vice versa) occurs in the court; the other is the operative structure (or culture) of systems for law and social work in child abuse cases � which unite in court operations. These two interconnected tools help to show how the court operates and how social action (SA) for change contributes to professional and system change in the evolution of law.

La recherche présentée s’intéresse au devenir d’enfants accueillis avec leur mère en centre d’hébergement mère-enfant, sept à huit ans après leur sortie. Ce travail s’inscrit dans la perspective écologique du développement humain et s’appuie sur les acquis théoriques et méthodologiques des recherches concernant le devenir des bénéficiaires d’interventions socio-éducatives, et des recherches sur le bien-être de l’enfant. La démarche visait à observer les trajectoires après la sortie, à comprendre les processus de construction de ces parcours, et à appréhender la qualité de vie des enfants au moment de l’enquête. La démarche empirique comprend trois étapes (analyse séquentielle de deux cents trajectoires, entretiens avec quarante-neuf mères et questionnaires de qualité de vie et entretiens avec trente-trois enfants). Les résultats mettent en évidence l’interaction entre le parcours conjugal de la mère, l’évolution de la situation résidentielle et les mesures de protection de l’enfance. Ils soulignent également les effets de la centration du dispositif sur le lien mère-enfant. Enfin, la qualité de vie des enfants semble davantage liée à leur situation au moment de l’enquête qu’à leur parcours antérieur. L’analyse des entretiens permet de proposer des pistes pour comprendre la contribution des conditions matérielles de vie et des dimensions relationnelles à la qualité de vie des enfants. / This research analyses the trajectories and outcomes of children previously housed with their mothers in a maternity home, seven years later. The study falls within the framework of the ecology of human development, and is based on theoretical and methodological knowledge gained from studies concerning outcome after leaving care and from research into child well-being. The aim is to observe trajectories after leaving the maternity homes, in order to understand the building process of these trajectories, and to describe the quality of life of the children at the moment of the survey. There are three empirical phases (sequence analysis of two hundred trajectories, qualitative interviews with forty-nine mothers, and quality of life questionnaires and interviews with thirty-three children). The results show the interactions between the conjugal trajectory of the mother, the housing pathway and the child protection measures taken. They also highlight the effects of focusing social measures on the mother-child relationship. Finally, the children’s quality of life seems more related to their situations at the moment of the survey than to their previous pathways. The analysis of the interviews provides leads to follow in order to gain better understanding of how material conditions and relationships contribute to a child’s quality of life.

This study explores the childhood experiences and transitions to adulthood of 39 Romanian care leavers and adoptees, born around 1989 - 1990. In the past, Romania's children in care became known to the world as 'the Romanian orphans' and some of them have been subjects to neurodevelopmental research studies focusing on the setbacks posed by institutionalisation in early life. This research project takes a different angle by: • Using life history approach and therefore capturing the participants' in-depth accounts of how they recall their childhoods and the challenges they encountered in their transition to independent life; • Exploring four different types of placements and how they affect transition to independent life, from a user's perspective. The fact that Romania undertook reform of the child protection system within the timespan of this generation of children provided a research opportunity to collect the users' views on different types of placement that belonged to the unreformed system of the 1990s (large residential care and intercountry adoption) and the new types of placement (small group homes and foster care). For comparison purposes, I also included domestic adoption, a type of placement that was less controversial than the others at the time reforms were being introduced. Thus, the types of placement that are analysed through the research participants' accounts are: • Residential care (institutions and small group homes); • Foster Care; • Domestic Adoption; • Intercountry adoption. The study addressed two research questions: 1. How do Romanian born young people who grew up in care understand and narrate their experiences in different types of placement? 2. What narratives of agency are constructed by Romanian-born adults who grew up in different types of placement when they describe their transition to adulthood? By taking an interpretive stance, this study brings in the academic arena the voices of care leavers and adoptees. By using narrative analysis and focussing on the concept of dignity by employing identity theories, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Capabilities Approach, the study makes an important contribution to knowledge, with implications for further research, policy and practice. While interventions in child protection are influenced in each country by cultural, political and socio-legal factors, understanding the basic needs of children who are not raised by their birth families is important across different child protection systems. Therefore, the relevance of the research findings is not limited to Romania.

L’intervention publique dans l’intimité de la famille caractérise les relations de l’État et de la famille dans l’époque moderne, dont le propre est le dédoublement des espaces privé et public articulés autour de l’enfant dès lors que celui-ci est retiré de l’espace commun. Mais elle est souvent analysée du point de vue des rapports de force entre les acteurs plutôt que du point de vue de ce qui les réunit. En partant des relations contractuelles entre parents et services de l’Aide sociale à l’enfance (ASE), cette thèse analyse donc l’évolution des rapports familles-institutions au prisme du statut de l’enfance et de son évolution au cours du temps. Une étude socio-historique sur la base de dossiers de protection administrative de l’ASE depuis les années 1960 doublée, pour la période contemporaine, d’entretiens avec des parents, permet de retracer les évolutions d’un travail négocié avec la famille. La recherche fait apparaître que l’enfant prend de plus en plus une place d’acteur dans sa propre protection selon son évolution en âge et en discernement, évolution qui pourrait bien comporter un revers rendant l’enfant acteur du danger qu’il encourt au même titre que de la protection à laquelle il a droit. Cette thèse montre que si l’enfance moderne s’est construite sur l’idée d’un temps et d’un espace spécifiques consacrés à une éducation à l’écart des adultes, loin d’être unifiée, l’enfance contemporaine se voit accéder à un statut inédit qui questionne autant l’éducation familiale qu’institutionnelle. De nouveaux modes de socialisation se font jour dans un renouveau du mélange des âges sans qu’il soit sûr que l’expérience concrète et la spécificité de l’enfant y soient réellement prises en compte. L’articulation des sphères publique et privée se recompose autour de l’enfant : dans le face-à-face des parents et des institutions, la société civile pourrait prendre une place de tiers renforcée. / Public intervention in the intimacy of the family is characteristic of the relationships between the institutions and the families in the modern era, marked by the separation of private and public spaces around children when they are taken away from collective space. But those relationships are often studied from the standpoint of power relations rather than from what the different actors have in common. Looking at contracted relationships between parents and child protection services, the present work analyses the changing in parent-institutions relationships in the light of the status of childhood and its changes in time. Through a socio-historical study based on child protection service files since the 1960s and, for the present time, on interviews with parents, we can trace the changes in a social work negotiated with the families. This research shows that children are more and more active in their own protection depending on their age and discernment. This changing could have a reverse effect leading children to be as active in the dangers they are exposed to as in the protection they are entitled to. The present thesis shows that if modern childhood was shaped by specific time and space with an education apart form adults, present childhood, far from being united, is given a totally new status questioning education in the family as well as in the institutions. New socializing ways are emerging adjusting a new mixing of ages without knowing if concrete experience and the specificity of children are really taken in consideration. Public and private interactions are being reshaped through the new status of children: the civil society could play a new role.

Although there is extensive research on children’s exposure to intimate partner violence and its impacts, there is very little information available with respect to how child protection workers assess the risks posed to children by the negative parenting associated with battering and how these workers intervene to protect children. This case study therefore sought to understand how child protection workers accounted for the parenting of men who batter in their assessments of child safety and in their service plans. It explores in detail how mothers and child protection workers conceptualize and describe the parenting attitudes and behaviours of the men who came to the attention of MCFD due to battering, how protection workers assessed children’s safety in light of the parenting behaviours and examines the types of child welfare responses or interventions that were utilized in order to deal with these challenges. Results show that despite the level of understanding on the part of the child protection workers’ with regard to the links between the perpetration of intimate partner violence and negative parenting approaches, these fathers’ parenting was largely overlooked in the child safety assessment and service delivery plans. Thus, it is recommended that child welfare policies draw robust links between the perpetration of intimate partner violence and negative parenting approaches and provide child protection workers with the safety assessment tools and clear direction to assess the parenting behaviours of fathers who batter their children’s mothers. / Graduate

Since 2009 the Swedish Sport Confederation has included a child rights perspective in their policy guidelines for child sport in Sweden. These guidelines states that all children shall be protected from all forms of physical or mental violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation. Despite this, studies show not only that emotional abuse and maltreatment occurs in children´s sport but that it is has a great effect on children. The aim of this study was to analyze the experiences and effects of emotional abuse and maltreatment among children athletes. Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews with nine children, 13-18 years old, from both team- and individual sports. The result shows that emotional abuse and maltreatment occurs between both athletes and between athletes and their coaches. It is the coherency and atmosphere in the group that is a vital factor for the sport to lead to positive feelings and experiences. When there is no strong coherency, the atmosphere is perceived as negative, destructive criticism between athletes increases or when destructive criticism comes from coaches, it leads to negative feelings and experiences. The most commonly form of emotional abuse and maltreatment was verbal abuse, lack of attention, neglect and non-verbal abuse. The result show effects such as decrease in performance, lower self-confidence and insecurity. It also shows effects associated with feelings such as irritation, inadequateness, unsuccessfulness and sadness. Emotional abuse and maltreatment occurs on practice, competitions as well as beside the field of play and is in the vast majority of situations linked to performance.

Les adolescents difficiles préoccupent de plus en plus nos politiques et interrogent particulièrement les différents professionnels œuvrant auprès d’eux (travailleurs sociaux, psychologues, etc.). Ces jeunes sont essentiellement repérés par notre société au travers de leurs actes oppositionnels et délinquants, voire violents, mais moins pour leurs souffrances pourtant multiples. Les spécialistes du soin et du travail social cherchent par ailleurs à pouvoir prendre en charge cette jeunesse et leurs familles de façon la plus adaptée possible en fonction des problématique relevées. La Protection de l’Enfance repère les enfants et adolescents en danger dans leur environnement et/ou dans leur famille et propose des placements et des accompagnements médico-sociaux et éducatifs par le biais de l’Aide Sociale à l’Enfance ou de la Protection Judiciaire de la Jeunesse. Notre étude s’intéresse à l’évaluation de la trajectoire des adolescents accueillis au sein de l’association Second Souffle proposant des séjours de rupture à des jeunes en grandes difficultés sociales, scolaires, familiales et personnelles. Ainsi, nous avons étudié l’évolution éducative et psychopathologique de 47 adolescents et adolescentes ayant participé à des séjours courts et longs en France et à l’étranger. / Adolescents with difficulties preoccupy our politicians more and more, and question different professionals working with them (social workers, psychologists, etc.). They essentially call for our society’s attention through oppositional, delinquant, or worse, violent actions, less through the extent of their suffering. With regard to the observed needs, specialists try to provide the best care possible to those youths and their families. Child Protection Services (Protection de l’Enfance) identify children and adolescents at risk in their institutional or family environment and suggest placements and social and medical measures through Child Social Help Services (Aide sociale à l’Enfance) or Judicial Protection Services for Youth (Protection Judiciaire de la Jeunesse).The historical development of outdoor education and/or therapy programs in France and abroad reveals an growing interest with innovating programs intended for children, adolescents and families with severe difficulties. Wether anglo-saxon or originating in the antipsychiatric or judicial context in France, such programs share the objectives of offering a temporary removal from a pathogenetic environement to the adolescent, valuing their individual potential by « looking elwewhere », and remaining part of the youth’s educational trajectory. However, in a social and economical context where the assessment of professional practices is becoming systematic, no scientific evaluation of such experimental placements has been conducted to this day in France. Educational evaluations have been led in Belgium, following a political demand, and in Switzerland, through a university study. However, some methodological difficulties limit the scope of such evaluations and their results; on the one hand, one has to point out the shortage of standardised evaluation tools; on the other hand, one should bear in mind the complexity and uniqueness of such programs as well as of the individual situations of the concerned youth. Our study evaluates the trajectory of adolescents cared for within a specific program (the Second Souffle association) providing outdoor educational/therapeutical experiences to youth with major social, educational, family and personal difficulties. We studied the educational and psychopathological evolution of 47 adolescents that participated in short and long outdoor educationm/therapy programs in France and abroad. Our methodology was adapted to the specific context (Second Souffle program) and to the psychopathological particularities of the reference population, as well as to existing research pertaining to adolescent psychopathology. Our study protocol develops a longitudinal evaluation involving several measurement times : before and after short and long outdoor programs, during long programs, dans two months after all pograms. Results show a global improvement of the adolescents’ trajectories at the end of the programs, as well on educational as on psychopathological asepcts. With regard to the longitudinal evaluation, those positive evolutions tend to be maintained, especially in cases where follow up recommendations are implemented after the adolescents return. Besides, personal and family problems are related to educational and psychopathological outcomes. However, the small size of our study sample has resulted in reduced power for our statistical analyses; however several results showing the efficiency of the program are statistically significant. In conclusion : Our study shows interesting relationships between organisation, functioning, educational objective attainment, and the evolution of adolescents which benefit from the measures. Considered within a given time frame and with this limited sample, the outdoor education/therapy program studied seems to positively impact the adolescents’ educational and psychopathological trajectories.