American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children Colloquium
The American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children, the nation’s premier interdisciplinary child abuse organization, has announced its 2015 Colloquium to be held in Boston July 22-25.
The APSAC Colloquium offers learning and professional development opportunities for professionals who serve children and families affected by child maltreatment and violence. The institutes and workshops offered throughout the Colloquium address all aspects of child maltreatment including prevention, assessment, intervention and treatment with victims, perpetrators, and families affected by physical, sexual, and psychological abuse and neglect.
Comprehensive Protection Needed for Individuals with Profound Developmental Disabilities at Risk of Abuse and Neglect
Maltreatment of individuals who are profoundly developmentally disabled is a problem that occurs across many settings and is investigated by human service workers and others. The prevalence [the total number of people who have experienced maltreatment in a specified time period] and incidence [the ...
Psycho-legal Considerations of Placing Children in Foster Care
When a child is placed in a foster home it is the responsibility of the placing agency to evaluate the prospective home by considering its environmental, physical, emotional, medical, and educational benefits and hazards. Finding a compatible foster home is not just a question of finding the right foster parents. If there are other children in the home they are also crucial to the selection process.
Anonymous versus Identified Reporting of Child Maltreatment
The child abuse and neglect hotline rings. All other factors being equal, does it matter if the reporter is anonymous or identified?
Effective child maltreatment investigation relies to a significant extent upon information supplied by anonymous reporters. Reliance on these reporters presents the child protection, law enforcement, and judicial systems with a challenge: giving proper weight to such reports while safeguarding everyone’s constitutional rights.
During FFY 2012, child protective services agencies received 3.4 million referrals involving approxim...
Revisiting the Presumption of Jointly Placing Siblings in Foster Care
Until fairly recently, it was assumed that when parents divorced and custody was being assigned, it was in the child’s best interest to be placed with the mother. It took time and some tragic and avoidable situations to inform policy makers that this blanket assumption should be rebuttable—if a presumption at all. We have now come to a similar crossroad involving the placement of children in foster care.
There is a presumption in law and policy that it is in the best interest of children going into foster care that they be placed together with their siblings. We ...
A National Responsible Father Registry: Providing Constitutional Protections for Children, Mothers and Fathers
The United States Supreme Court initially acknowledged the right to raise children in 1923 when it held that the liberty interest referred to in the Fourteenth Amendment was “not merely freedom from bodily restraint but also the right of the individual to … establish a home and bring up children ….” Despite this well recognized right, many parents chose to place their children for adoption for a myriad of reasons.
Over the years, adoption in the United States has become more recognized, legally structured and more common. In fact, today every November is ...
Writing for Teenagers in Foster Care about their Legal Rights
Teenagers in foster care need to know what rights they have. Writing for teenagers in foster care about those rights is, to say the least, challenging. The writer must be thoroughly familiar with the law, be succinct, and be deeply in touch with the gamut of emotional aspects of the lives of their audience. The successful writer cannot be judgmental or patronizing and must be keenly aware that teenagers are in constant motion – alternating between feeling vulnerable and invincible, inconsequential and essential. The perspective needs to be honest and real-life. It is ...