0000000000397337
AUTHOR
Anne Marita Milde
Walking Children Through a Minefield: How Professionals Experience Exploring Adverse Childhood Experiences
Understanding the challenges of professionals in addressing child adversity is key to improving the detection, protection, and care of exposed children. We aimed to synthesize findings from qualitative studies of professionals’ lived experience of addressing child adversity. Through a systematic search, we identified eight qualitative studies and synthesized them using metaethnography. We generated three themes, “feeling inadequate,” “fear of making it worse,” and “facing evil,” and one overarching metaphor, “walking children through a minefield.” The professionals felt that they lacked the means necessary to explore child adversity, that they were apprehensive of worsening the child’s situ…
Entering an emotional minefield: professionals’ experiences with facilitators to address abuse in child interviews
Background Extensive research documents that child abuse is widespread and that it has detrimental effects on victims’ physical, psychological and social well-being. Efforts to help abused children by removing stressors and administering restorative care can reverse these negative effects, but the evidence suggests that professionals often fail to expose child abuse. This study aims to generate insight into professionals’ experiences with facilitators in handling the challenges of addressing abuse in child interviews. We expect that this knowledge can improve interventions that qualify professionals in the identification, protection and care of abused children. Methods Within the qualitativ…
Plunging Into a Dark Sea of Emotions: Professionals' Emotional Experiences Addressing Child Abuse in Interviews With Children.
Comprehending professionals’ emotional challenges when addressing child abuse can help to improve identification, protection, and care for exposed children. This study presents an interpretive description analysis of qualitative interviews with ten child protective services workers and nine child mental health services psychologists in Norway. The participants described intense negative reactions due to addressing child abuse during assessments and investigations. We identified five main themes: (a) facing children’s suffering caused by adults, (b) feeling mean, (c) doubting one’s ability and skills, (d) feeling that one is betraying children, and (e) being obstructed by heavy workload and…
Prerequisites for Maintaining Emotion Self-regulation in Social Work with Traumatized Adolescents: A Qualitative Study among Social Workers in A Norwegian Residential Care Unit
Many adolescents in residential care have a history of traumatization, often with consequences on regulating emotions, thoughts, behaviors, as well as on establishing healthy relationships. Such evidence-based knowledge has paved the way for various trauma-informed models of care that emphasize the adolescents’ need to be other-regulated through caring adults. Being a “regulating other” requires the ability of self-regulation, which may be challenging for staff faced with intense emotional and behavioral expressions from the adolescents. In this qualitative study, fifteen social workers at a residential care unit for adolescents in Norway were individually interviewed on themes addressing w…