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Rwanda established a programme to end institutional care and transition children to family‐based care. As part of their process in a rural area of the country, caregivers who reunited with or adopted a child from institutional care received training in a trauma‐informed intervention (Trust‐Based Relational Intervention® [TBRI®]). To evaluate the potential usefulness of this training, a mixed‐methods, retrospective design was used to examine caregiver‐perceived changes among their reunited/adopted children from pre‐TBRI training to the present day. Results revealed significant decreases in perceived challenging behaviours and trauma symptoms over time. Results from the phenomenological analysis demonstrated that caregivers perceived the training to be effective at equipping them with appropriate parenting strategies and reducing their children's struggles in the home. Findings suggest that training in a trauma‐informed intervention, such as TBRI, may be useful to equip caregivers with strategies to meet the emotional needs of children who are reunited or adopted into families. Success of deinstitutionalization requires programming to support quality family‐based care that meets both the emotional and physical needs of children, and efforts must be made to ensure these resources are included when reuniting or adopting children into families. Key Practitioner Message: Trust‐Based Relational Intervention (TBRI) was used to train caregivers in Rwanda's programme to shift from institutional to family‐based care.Caregivers reported a decrease in reunited/adopted children's trauma symptoms and in intensity of problems from pre‐ to post‐TBRI training.Caregivers perceived TBRI training to be useful, giving them the parenting strategies necessary to care for their reunited/adopted children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The trauma-related emotional and behavioral struggles of adopted children can affect the adoptive family system due to the emotional interdependence of families. To meet the needs of adoptive families, a two-weekend therapeutic family camp intervention was developed from an existing 2-3 week camp model for adopted children called Hope Connection®. The current study examined the preliminary effectiveness of the revised camp, Hope Connection 2.0, to address adoptive families' needs. A two-group (waitlist (n = 4 families) vs. intervention (n = 5 families)) pre-post design was used. The results indicated trending decreases in adopted children's trauma-related emotional and behavioral struggles and trending increases in parent-child relationship quality and family functioning. These findings support future research of the effectiveness of Hope Connection 2.0 to improve adoptive family outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children with a history of maltreatment exhibit differences in a variety of domains, including sensory processing. However, little is known about how domain-specific sensory processing deficits differ by the type of maltreatment experienced. The focus of the current study was to investigate the relationship between abuse, neglect, or no maltreatment on seven sensory domains in a sample of adopted children. Caregivers of 408 adopted children (M= 7.89, SD= 2.03) reported their child's history of maltreatment (abuse, neglect, or no maltreatment) and sensory processing abilities (Short Sensory Profile). Seventy-nine percent of the sample had sensory processing dysfunction (definite difference = 41%; probable difference = 38%). Children with a history of abuse (n = 147) had impairments in tactile sensitivity (84.4%) and taste/smell sensitivity (47.6%). Children with a history of neglect (n = 125) scored differently in underresponsive/seeks sensation (Neglect = 83.2%; Abuse = 57.8%). Both groups had significant differences in underresponsive/seeks sensation and auditory filtering. In summary, children with a history of adversity had domain-specific sensory processing differences that varied by the type of maltreatment experienced. These findings suggest that children may benefit from evaluation by an occupational therapist taking their specific history of maltreatment into account. Implications for allied health and mental health providers are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studying the attachment representations of child welfare workers can benefit workers and the vulnerable populations they serve. The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) is the most widely used and well-validated measure of adult attachment but is also costly and time-consuming to score. Linguistic Inquiry Word Count (LIWC), a text-analysis software program, has the potential to lessen the burden of AAI scoring, making it a lower-cost, faster option for providing basic attachment representation information. In the current study, we explore the use of the LIWC in the AAI transcripts of 239 child welfare professionals. Findings indicate that subsets of LIWC categories could distinguish the AAI transcripts of individuals coded as dismissing, preoccupied, and secure-autonomous in attachment. Further, a subset of LIWC categories predicted AAI classification. Specifically, discriminant function analysis revealed two functions, activation and incoherence, that accurately classified 66.2% of AAI transcripts. Implications for the child welfare workforce are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children who have experienced early adversities are at risk for behavioral problems and trauma symptoms. Using a two-group, pre–post intervention design, the authors evaluated the effectiveness of an online parent training for Trust-Based Relational Intervention, a trauma-informed, attachment-based intervention, in reducing behavioral problems and trauma symptoms in at-risk adopted children. Children of parents in the treatment group (n = 48) demonstrated significant decreases in behavioral problems and trauma symptoms after intervention. Scores for children in a matched-sample control group did not change. Findings suggest this intervention can effectively reduce behavioral problems and trauma symptoms in children with histories of adversities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]