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Training and evaluation of robot-based psychological intervention program for preventing child sexual abuse
(Child Protection and Practice, 2024) Tahan, M., Afrooz, G., & Bolhari, J.
Background
and purpose: Preventing child sexual abuse is a health and medical priority in many countries. The risk of sexual abuse can be markedly reduced through education, awareness, and skill-building for children. The purpose of this study was to train and evaluate a robot-based psychological intervention program for preventing child sexual abuse.
Methods
This study had a semiexperimental design that included pre- and posttests as well as a control group. A stratified random sample of 80 individuals was drawn from the population of eight- to ten-year-old children in Ghaen, Iran, in 2018. Subsequently, the sample was randomly divided into two experimental groups and two control groups. The experimental group participated in a robot-based psychological intervention program, for a total of 10 sessions. The control group received no intervention. The tool used to measure children’s knowledge and awareness of sexual abuse was a custom-designed questionnaire developed by Tahan [1]. Participants completed the questionnaire in the pretest, posttest, and follow-up stages. The collected data were analyzed using repeated measures ANCOVA in SPSS (v.25).
Results
The findings demonstrated that educating children about sexual abuse was effective in enhancing their knowledge of appropriate and inappropriate touching (p<0.01). Furthermore, the robot-based cognitive-behavioral intervention program for the prevention of child sexual abuse was effective (p<0.01).
Conclusion
The psychological intervention program increased children's knowledge and awareness concerning the prevention of sexual abuse and associated coping skills. Furthermore, psychological intervention programs were effective in preventing child sexual abuse.
Child Protection: Dependency Courts
(Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 2023) Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
OJJDP funding supports juvenile and family courts as they develop policies,
practices, and programs to improve safety, permanency, and outcomes for
abused and neglected youth. Funding also broadens youth’s access to welltrained volunteer advocates who represent their best interests in dependency
cases and help decrease the time children spend in foster care.
Support for Prosecutors Who Work With Youth
(Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 2022) Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
Prosecutors who work with youth have a difficult and essential job. Whether
prosecuting a delinquency case or a child welfare case, a prosecutor’s
decisions can potentially change the trajectory of a young person’s life.
Prosecutors need ongoing training to help them develop best practices in
juvenile court and keep them up to date on evolving topics such as adolescent
brain development, risk and needs assessments, expanded juvenile court
jurisdiction, and jurisprudence in child sexual abuse cases. The Office of
Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) provides rigorous
training and technical to increase the competency of prosecutors who work
with youth.
Psychological First Aid Guide for Children’s Advocacy Center Supervisors
(Southern Regional Children’s Advocacy Center, 2024) Miller, B., Brymer, M., Louie, K., & Hangartner, K.
The National Child Traumatic Stress Network and the National Center for PTSD PFA, on
which this guide is based, is an evidence-informed modular approach for assisting people
in the immediate aftermath of disasters, terrorism, or other critical incidents to reduce initial
distress and to foster both short- and long-term adaptive functioning. The version we are
adapting was created by the National Child Traumatic Stress Network and the National
Center for PTSD (Brymer et al., 2006) and has the consensus endorsement of experts in the
field of disaster mental health. PFA is in use and has been disseminated by the American Red
Cross, the American Psychological Association (APA), the Substance Abuse Mental Health
Services Administration (SAMHSA), the World Health Organization (WHO), and many others.
Because PFA is, in essence, a framework for providing a sense of safety, support, and
comfort for a person, it provides helpful ideas in the CAC setting after critical incidents.
Because the aim of PFA is the provision of support and comfort, it is not a clinical
intervention. It includes, rather, very concrete problem-solving approaches, which means
PFA-CAC can be applied by supervisors whether they have clinical training or not.
Similar rates of denial in NICHD and control interviews with alleged child abuse victims in the Netherlands
(Legal and Criminological Psychology, 2024) Bücken, C. A., Mangiulli, I., Erens, B., de Ruiter, C., & Otgaar, H.
Purpose: In the current study, we investigated whether denial and avoidance rates differed statistically significantly
based on the interview protocol used.
Method: We examined 38 National Institute of Child
Health and Human Development (NICHD) interview transcripts, and 30 control transcripts from interviews from an
earlier study (Applied Cognitive Psycholog y, 2022, 36, 7) conducted with alleged child victims of abuse at Dutch child
protection services.
Results: We detected 57 denial and 282 avoidance statements across the 68 interviews. No statistically significant
differences emerged between (1) the proportion of denials using NICHD (42%, n=16/38) and control interviews
(30%, n=9/30), and (2) the average number of denial statements between NICHD (M=0.84) and control interviews
(M=0.83). Furthermore, denials (and avoidances) were not
more or less likely to occur in response to certain types of
questions, even though the majority of denials in our sample occurred in response to option-posing questions (60%,
n=34/57). Denials did occur statistically significantly less
often within the first half of the individual interviews in
NICHD than in control interviews.
Conclusions: Our findings call attention to the difficulties child protection services face in investigative interviews
with alleged child victims