- Title
- Factors influencing risk of child abuse to improve risk assessment in child protective services
- Creator
- Casey, Julie
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2019
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- This study explores parental risk factors such as poor mental health, domestic violence and parental attachment classification for child abuse with the aim of describing high and low risk parents and their psychological attributes contribute to child abuse. Risk factors also vary according to the systems and policies that have been put in place by any particular jurisdiction, with child protection legislation varying across countries, states and governments. The variation in what is considered a risk factor; how to assess them; and the reliability of screening tools available to identify risk are all questions requiring extensive research. The study evaluated "at risk" families known to Family and Community Services with a view to explore the relationship between intergenerational abuse, reflective functioning, attachment, mental health and trauma to evaluate the impact of parental personality on the risk for child abuse. The participant's compromised of 50 mothers (18-40 years) with at least one dependent child under the age of one year. The mothers were grouped as "high risk" group (n=21) a "low risk" group (n=19) that were known to Family and Community Services and a "community group" (n=10) that were volunteers that were recruited from the local community. All of the participants' completed the Depression, Anxiety and Stress (DASS-21), the Zanarini Rating scale for Borderline Personality symptoms (ZAN-BPD) and the Parent Development Interview (PDI-R2S Slade et al., 2003) measuring the parent's emotional attachment relationship with their child. Results showed the shortcomings for the NSW Structured Decision Making System assessment tool (NSW SDM). The NSW Structure Decision Making System assessment tool (NSW, SDM) fails to recognise the significance of the intergenerational transmission of abuse and reflective functioning for a child's optimum psychological growth. The findings from the study also demonstrated that the NSW Structured Decision Making System assessment tool (NSW, SDM) is not designed to sensitively screen for mental health, symptoms such as borderline personality, and/or attachment classifications. The findings also showed that the categories of "high risk' and "low risk" families are perhaps more arbitrary that is desirable for effective community services involvement and that the variable of reflective functioning may be a possible predictor of distressed family relationships; trauma and personality attributes.
- Subject
- attachment; child protection; risk protection; risk
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1406450
- Identifier
- uon:35630
- Rights
- Copyright 2019 Julie Casey
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT01 | Thesis | 22 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download | ||
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT02 | Abstract | 1 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |