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University of Minnesota, Twin Cities School of Social Work SW 3701 Child Abuse & Neglect: Prevention & Intervention

Jane F. Gilgun, Ph.D., LICSW 3.19.12 Basic Principles of the Course Related to Understanding Child Abuse & Neglect The following ten points summarize the main learnings of the first half of this course. In the second half of the course, we will apply these learnings to the development and evaluation of intervention and prevention programs. The document I provided on 2.15.12 called Points to Cover in Analysis of Topics/Programs Related to Prevention is a set of guidelines for this development and evaluation. 1. Child abuse and neglect is a serious social problem that affects that quality of life of millions of children, youth, and adults in the United States and throughout the rest of the world. 2. When you think about the effects of child abuse and neglect, think immediately of what is going on or has gone in childrens lives that suggest that they can cope with, adapt to, and overcome the effects of abuse and neglect. This is a definition of resilience. 3. Children can and do cope with, adapt to, and overcome the effects of child abuse and neglect in the safety of secure relationships. a. Secure relationships between parents and children are foundational to optimal child development. b. Many children develop well when they have insecure relationships with one or both parents. In these cases, they have developed long-term secure relationships with other people. 4. Human development results from a set of interactive processes. a. This includes neurological development, physical development, emotional development, cognitive development, sexual development, spiritual development b. Children become who they are through processes related to their genetic endowment, interactions with multiple influences, and how they interpret these influences. c. Multiple influences over time, from micro to macro, affect human development. d. Belief systems and personal meanings are often overlooked in attempts to understand and prevent child abuse and neglect. 5. The nature vs. nurture debate is over: Development is a product of nature AND nurture. a. No one factor accounts for human development: neither family history, nor effects of trauma, nor genetics is destiny. b. Human development is a product of multiple interacting factors from the micro to the macro over time, and human beings continually interpret the meanings of these various influences.

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6. Naturally occurring positive life events are associated with coping with, adapting to, and overcoming the effects of abuse and neglect. a. Resilience arises from secure relationships/attachments with parents and/or others in a sustained way 1.) Secure relationships with parents translates into parental availability not only to guide and celebrate childrens positive development but also to be safe havens for children in times of stress and trauma. 2.) Parents who are physically and emotionally available have coped with, adapted to, and overcome stresses, traumas, and adversities in their own lives 3.) Children require at least one long-term, secure relationship with another person who provides love, role modeling, guidance, and structure. b. Social policies and opportunity structures affect life chances of children, adolescents, and adults. 1.) Some parents may experience stressors over which they have no control such as war, terrorism, forced migration, refugee status, unemployment, access to education and job training. 2.) Some people have more opportunities than others. 3.) Despite these stressors, parents and children may show resilience if opportunities have presented themselves to facilitate coping, adaptation, and overcoming of adversities.. 7. Beliefs about the self, others, and how the world works arise first from earliest experiences of attachment. Attachment theory states that beliefs are part of developing persons inner working models. a. Children and adults who are resilient have had experiences of secure attachments. b. Their inner working models guide them to believe that they are worthy of care, respect, and trust; that other people are worthy of care, respect, and trust; and that the world is generally safe and trustworthy. (These are examples of beliefs about the self, others, and how the world works.) 1.) In times of stress and trauma, securely attached children expect attachment figures to be safe havens and to help them to cope with, adapt to, and overcome these stresses and traumas; they therefore seek out attachment figures during these times. a.) However, they also are excellent problem-solvers and can work well independently; 2.) Children who have had long-term secure relationships develop secure inner working models, good executive skills, and good self-regulation. They have, therefore, capacities for resilience. 3.) No one is resilient in all situations all the time; each person has times of vulnerability; each person sometimes shows poor executive skills and poor selfregulation; they typically bounce back and live primarily fulfilling lives. 8. Good executive function, which includes capacities for self-regulation, arise out of secure attachments. a. Parents and others who abuse and neglect children do not have good executive function and do not have good capacities for self-regulation.

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1.) They may not think through the consequences of their abusive and neglectful behaviors. 2) They may not believe that their behaviors are abusive and neglectful. 3.) They may have absorbed beliefs that what they want and the satisfaction of what they want are more important than thinking about the effects of their behaviors on their children. b. Children who have experienced abuse and neglect are at risk to experience trauma, to develop capacities for insecure relationships, to develop inner working models of self, others, and the world as untrustworthy, to develop poor executive functions, and poor self regulation IN THE ABSENCE OF CORRECTIVE EXPERIENCES. 1.) Corrective experiences include having opportunities to process these negative events in the safety of secure relationships and having capacities to cope with, adapt to, and overcome the effects of abuse, neglect, adversities, and other traumas. 2.) In other words, in the course of human development, even in infancy and early childhood, children have experiences of adversities/unpleasant life events. When parents provide the safety of secure relationships, children learn to cope with, adapt to, and overcome the effects of these negative experiences; they become good problem-solvers, they know how to interpret the behaviors of others, and they know when to enlist the help of others. 9. An understanding of neurobiology is necessary for competence in work with children and families where abuse and neglect have occurred. a. Parents may have neurological issues that affect their capacities for executive function, attachment, and self-regulation. b. Childrens neurological issues can also affect their capacities for executive function, attachment, and self-regulation. c. In the contexts of secure relationships, children with neurological issues may develop their capacities to optimal degrees. 10. Parental mental health and chemical dependency issues, trauma histories, and intellectual functioning can affect their capacities for executive functioning, attachment, and self-regulation a. Parents may be so stressed out and so focused on themselves that they harm their children through abuse and neglect. b. Children may believe that their parents dont love them. They may have good reason to believe this. Parents behaviors can be abusive, neglectful, and therefore unloving. What might be the case, however, is that parents do love them, but parents are so preoccupied with their own issues and wants that they do not show their love for their children to their children. When children do not feel loved, then in their own experience they are unloved. c. Some parents may not have capacities to love their children; these cases are rare, but this does happen for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with the worthiness and loveableness of their children.

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