Skip Navigation

Institution: CLOCKSS Sign In as Personal Subscriber

Brief Treatment and Crisis Intervention Advance Access originally published online on August 28, 2007
Brief Treatment and Crisis Intervention 2007 7(4):275-290; doi:10.1093/brief-treatment/mhm018
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
7/4/275    most recent
mhm018v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Disclaimer
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Alaggia, R.
Right arrow Articles by Redmond, M.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow Articles by Alaggia, R.
Right arrow Articles by Redmond, M.
Social Bookmarking
 Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org.

In Whose Best Interest? A Canadian Case Study of the Impact of Child Welfare Policies in Cases of Domestic Violence

   Ramona Alaggia, MSW, PhD
   Angelique Jenney, MSW
   Josephine Mazzuca, PhD
   Melissa Redmond, MSW

From the Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto (Alaggia, Redmond) and Child Development Institute, Toronto (Jenney, Mazzuca)

Contact author: Ramona Alaggia, Associate Professor, Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto, 246 Bloor Street West, Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A1, Canada. E-mail: ramona.alaggia{at}utoronto.ca.

North American child protection systems have been experiencing an era of sweeping child welfare reform over the last decade. Despite the breadth of these changes, legislative and policy impacts are rarely evaluated to ascertain whether changes are resulting in the outcomes they were designed to achieve. Using a participatory research framework, 70 participants from relevant service sectors and service recipients from a large urban centre in Canada, were interviewed about legislation in cases of children exposed to domestic violence. While most stakeholders noted the "spirit of the Act" to be well-meaning and based on a credible body of child research, there were serious concerns cited with the implementation and impact of policies that resulted from this piece of child welfare legislation. Reluctance of abused women to disclose or seek services for their families, isolation between helping professionals from different sectors, increased demand for services, increased surveillance of mothers, and decreased accountability of perpetrators were predominant themes identified. These data strongly suggest that response models be tested as pilot studies, rigorously evaluated and fully implemented only when there are assurances that appropriate and adequate services are available to meet the complex needs of the communities they are designed to serve.

KEY WORDS: domestic violence, child abuse, child maltreatment, qualitative research


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.