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OBJECTIVE To understand how youth PTSD symptoms and externalizing problems emerge and change over time for youth with different profiles of victimization, including polyvictimization. METHOD We conducted a latent class analysis (LCA) to identify empirically derived victimization profiles in a sample of 2,776 youth who participated in an evaluation study. We then conducted growth curve analyses to determine whether these victimization profiles predicted change in the course of PTSD symptoms and externalizing problems over a 1-year time period for youth engaged in a variety of community-based services. RESULTS The LCA revealed three profiles: a low victimization profile defined by relatively low endorsement of victimization across types; a witnessing profile defined by particularly high endorsement of witnessing violence; and a polyvictimization profile defined by high endorsement of multiple types of victimization. We found that overall, despite differing initial levels of PTSD symptoms and externalizing problems, all three groups' symptoms improved over the year, but the polyvictimization class generally showed the steepest decreases, particularly in caregiver-reported PTSD symptoms. CONCLUSION Polyvictimized youth participating in community-based services are at increased risk for developing PTSD and externalizing problems, but symptoms appear to decrease to levels similar to other victimized youth after one year. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Objectives The study tests whether participation in interventions offered by a subset of sites from the National Safe Start Promising Approaches for Children Exposed to Violence initiative improved outcomes for children relative to controls.

Children's exposure to violence is common and can lead to mental health problems and delinquent behaviors. Because many interventions have focused on specific violence types or symptoms and been difficult to implement in real-world settings, the evidence base is still emerging. The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention's Safe Start Promising Approaches (SSPA) initiative focused on preventing and reducing the impact of children's exposure to violence through interventions in ten diverse communities. The evaluation examined the effectiveness of the SSPA interventions to address issues for children and families exposed to violence. The ten sites were diverse in their intervention approaches, types of violence exposure targeted, and implementation settings. To evaluate each approach's effectiveness in reducing violence's harmful effects, RAND researchers partnered with the community-based sites to develop a rigorous controlled evaluation design for each intervention, with either a randomized control group or a comparison group selected on similar characteristics. The longitudinal analyses found that families in both the intervention and comparison groups had positive gains on many outcomes, but there was no evidence that the intervention groups improved more. Among those who received Safe Start services, one site produced large, significant improvements in posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms, and another site produced medium, significant effects on several outcomes (child self-control, posttraumatic stress disorder, and behavior; caregiver depression; and family conflict). Although the initiative added to knowledge about how to address the problem, there was no clear case for using a particular intervention to help these children and their families.

Millions of children each year are exposed to violence in their homes, schools, and communities as both witnesses and victims. As a result, evidence-based programs for children and adolescents who have been exposed to traumatic events (CEV-EBPs) have been widely disseminated but rarely evaluated in their real-world applications. One crucial aspect of conducting such evaluations is finding appropriate measures that can be of use both to the practitioner and to the researcher. This review aims to provide guidance to the field by first identifying any gaps in the availability of psychometrically tested measures for certain outcome domains and age ranges and then recommending the measures that are most appropriate for use by both researchers and practitioners. Interviews with content experts in the measurement of trauma symptoms and parent-child relationships were conducted to identify the key outcome domains for measurement that are critical to the evaluation of CEV-EBPs and the criteria for dual-use measures, defined as measures that are useful to both researchers and practitioners. A database of 46 relevant measures was created by compiling measures from existing repositories and conducting a focused literature review. Our review of these measures found that existing repositories had few measures of depression, a major gap that should be addressed. Further, there were few measures for young children ages 0-3 years (n = 15) and only a handful of measures (n = 9) had both a child and parent version of the measure. Overall, although the different repositories that currently exist are helpful, researchers and practitioners would benefit from having a single reputable source (e.g., a centralized repository or item bank) to access when searching for measures to use in evaluating CEV-EBPs. Such a tool would hold promising to narrow the current gap between research and practice in the field of children's exposure to violence.

Youth suicide is a national public health priority, with policymakers highlighting schools as an ideal setting in which to deliver suicide prevention programs. Over the past decade, the number of schools implementing such programs has grown substantially, yet little is known about how successfully such programs are being implemented. This study examines the implementation of a district-wide suicide prevention program through key informant interviews with school personnel. Schools with higher rates of implementing district protocols for at-risk students had an organized system to respond to at-risk students, a process for effectively responding to students who were at-risk for suicide, and strong administrative support. In contrast, schools that had lower rates of implementing district protocols relied on a handful of individuals for suicide prevention activities and had limited administrative support. Attention to organizational factors leading to successful implementation of school-based suicide prevention programs may enhance the role of schools in national adolescent suicide prevention efforts.

Objective The aim of this study was to examine the trajectory of cases through four systems: child protection, law enforcement, the dependency courts, and the criminal courts. Method This study focused on a county selected from a 41-county telephone survey conducted for the National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (NIS-3). For this analysis prospective samples were drawn from law enforcement (n = 225) and the county child protection (CPS) agency (n = 225) and followed through in-depth case tracking across all agencies and through both the dependency and criminal court systems. Results The percentage of CPS cases opened in dependency court was similar to prior studies (29%), but the acceptance and prosecution rates were much higher—92% of the cases referred from CPS, including many cases of physical abuse. Compared to referrals from CPS to law enforcement (93%), few cases were referred from law enforcement to CPS (17%). Anecdotally, case referral patterns appeared to be influenced by communication patterns and mutual positive regard, regardless of the collaborative protocols in place. One of the most instructive findings was the degree of difficulty in tracking cases across organizations and the types of obstacles that impeded success. Disorganization was not an issue, rather internal structures set up to facilitate intra-organizational processing were the same structures that actually impeded cross-organizational case finding. Conclusions It is not sufficient to rely on the existence of multi-disciplinary teams or Child Advocacy Centers to ensure collaboration. More attention to daily tasks and activities as well as the nature and quality of communication is warranted. On the technical side, use of common case identifiers on cases that are cross-referred is strongly recommended. Future studies should broaden the scope of inquiry to include the consequences of all case trajectories, rather than solely focusing on the justice system.

To develop prevention and intervention programs for children exposed to violence, it is necessary to understand what factors might help alleviate the negative effects of violence exposure. In this study, we sought to test whether relationships exist between certain protective factors and subsequent adjustment and to examine whether violence re-exposure contributed to changes in outcomes over time. The analyses revealed that caregiver reports of both child self-control and the quality of the parent–child relationship were related to changes in child posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms and behavior problems. Furthermore, children experiencing more categories of violence re-exposure had increased behavior problems at follow-up compared to those without re-exposure. These findings advance our understanding of the relationship between these protective factors and outcomes for children exposed to violence and suggest that intervening to bolster these protective factors could improve outcomes.

The study explores whether and how lifetime violence exposure is related to a set of negative symptoms: child internalizing and externalizing behavior problems, child trauma symptoms, and parenting stress. Using a large sample of violence-exposed children recruited to participate in intervention research, the study employs different methods of measuring that exposure. These include total frequency of all lifetime exposure, total frequency of lifetime exposure by broad category (i.e., assault, maltreatment, sexual abuse, and witnessing violence), and polyvictimization defined as exposure to multiple violence categories. The results indicate that only polyvictimization, constructed as a dichotomous variable indicating two or more categories of lifetime exposure, emerged as a consistent predictor of negative symptoms. The total lifetime frequency of all violence exposure was not associated with negative symptoms, after controlling for the influence of polyvictimization. Likewise, in the presence of a dichotomous polyvictimization indicator the total lifetime frequency of exposure to a particular violence category was unrelated to symptoms overall, with the exception of trauma symptoms and experiences of sexual abuse. Taken together, these findings suggest that total lifetime exposure is not particularly important to negative symptoms, nor is any particular category of exposure after controlling for polyvictimization, with the single exception of sexual abuse and trauma symptoms. Instead, it is the mix of exposure experiences that predict negative impacts on children in this sample. Further research is needed to continue to explore and test these issues.

Objectives This research explores the relationship between hypothesized protective factors and outcomes for children investigated for maltreatment. Methods Using data from the National Survey on Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW), we ran logistic regression models to examine the relationship between hypothesized protective factors (social competence, adaptive functioning skills, and peer relationships) and outcomes (externalizing behavior, internalizing behavior, reading competence). Results For each hypothesized protective factor, we found variation in individual scores and sample mean scores at the lower end of the scales, indicating that these children fare worse than most children. However, many children experienced large changes in their individual scores over time suggesting that children can and do improve on these hypothesized protective factors. In examining the relationship between hypothesized protective factors and outcomes, children with higher levels of social competence were significantly more likely to be in the normal range for both externalizing and internalizing behaviors. Children with higher mean adaptive functioning skills were more likely to be in the normal range for both externalizing behavior and reading competence. The positive nature of the child's peer relationships was also related to externalizing behavior and reading competence. Conclusions Overall, our analyses support the idea that social competence, adaptive functioning skills, and peer relationships are related to outcomes for children investigated for maltreatment. While further research is needed to establish a causal link, this work identifies three individual-level hypothesized protective factors as potential sources of variation in outcomes. Practice implications To prevent or alleviate the harmful consequences maltreatment, it is necessary to understand factors that help children move beyond poor outcomes. Our analyses suggest that a strong relationship exists between a child's social competence, adaptive functioning skills and positive peer relationships and select outcomes three years after being investigated for maltreatment. With these individual-level protective factors related to more positive outcomes, it suggests that intervening to increase protective factors could improve outcomes for maltreated and at-risk children.