
Mental Health for the Young & their Families in Victoria is a collaborative partnership between mental health & other health professionals, service users & the general public.
Mailing Address
MHYFVic
PO Box 206,
Parkville, Vic 3052
PROJECT EVIDENCE for Prevention of Mental Disorders.
[3] Indicated Programs are those for young people who will inevitably develop mental disorders unless there is preventive intervention.
[3 c ] Social factors
i Child victims of abuse
ii Juvenile Justice clients
[3 c i ] Child victims of abuse
The abuse and neglect of children is a major public health problem. In addition to direct risks of injury and death there are immediate threats to mental health (traumatic stress and mood disorders), ongoing threats such as distorted personality development and failure to achieve potential, and long-term consequences of diminished human capital in terms of impaired capacity for relationships and potential for repeating similar patterns in the next generation.
Physical abuse is generally defined as injury occurring to a child by a person responsible for the child’s welfare in circumstances where the child’s health and welfare is under threat.
Emotional abuse involves habitual patterns of hostile and rejecting treatment including denigrating, threatening, restraining, isolating or morally corrupting minors.
Sexual abuse of children involves sexual intrusion, molestation or exposure to developmentally inappropriate sexual material.
Neglect is an act of omission by caretakers failing to meet their duties of care, nurturance and child developmental support.
Notifications of suspected child abuse to Child Protection authorities should result in appropriate investigation. This is discussed in MHYFVic Project Evidence paper 2c iv “Child Protection and Out-of-Home Care” and related Best Practice and Policy papers. These recommend proper assessment, case planning and treatment where deemed possible, with or without a transitional out-of-home placement during treatment, or early permanency planning where it is deemed not possible to remediate the dysfunction.
Although those recommendations involve assessment and remediation of family dysfunction, in the cases where abuse has resulted in emotional disturbances of children it is necessary to specifically include treatment of the child’s emotional disturbance in the management plan.
Last updated 2/3/2019
BEST PRACTICE MODELS for Prevention of Mental Disorders
[3] Indicated Programs
a) Biological factors
b) Psychological factors
c) Social factors
i Child victims of abuse
ii Juvenile Justice clients
[3 c i ] Child victims of abuse
MHYFVic advocates a child-focused policy approach by the Department of Human Services for child protection. This would be one which responds to notifications by a prompt outreach contact with the family to offer support and establish a relationship of trust and communication whilst undertaking an assessment of needs, risks and family functioning.
The preferred intervention would be to improve family functioning with the child at home, although temporary respite and other supports may be necessary. Intensive therapeutic work with the child and family will ascertain whether child’s needs can be met, or alternative long-term arrangements are required.
Corollaries include:
Last updated 2/3/2019
BEST PRACTICE MODELS for Prevention of Mental Disorders
[3] Indicated Programs
a) Biological factors
b) Psychological factors
c) Social factors
i Child victims of abuse
ii Juvenile Justice clients
[3 c i ] Child victims of abuse
The best practice model is one which responds to notifications by a prompt outreach contact with the family to offer support and establish a relationship of trust and communication whilst undertaking an assessment of needs, risks and family functioning.
The preferred intervention would be to improve family functioning with the child at home, but temporary respite and other supports may be necessary. Intensive therapeutic work with the child and family will ascertain whether child’s needs can be met, or alternative long-term arrangements made.
References
Gilbert, N., Parton,N. and Skivenes,M. (Eds) (2011) “Child Protection Systems: International Trends and Orientations.” New York: Oxford University Press.
In addition to family function interventions it may be necessary to include individual child therapeutic interventions to ameliorate the effects of abuse.
In cases where it is deemed impracticable to resolve family dysfunction within the timeframe necessary for healthy developmental progress of children, permanency planning should commence as early as possible.
Last updated 2/3/2019
We welcome discussion about any of the topics in our Roadmap epecially any wish to develop the information or policies.
Please send your comments by email to admin@mhyfvic.org
Speak about issues that concern you such as gaps in services, things that shouldn’t have happened, or things that ought to happen but haven’t; to make a better quality of service…….
Help achieve better access to services & better co-ordination between services together we can…….
Mental Health for the Young & their Families in Victoria is a collaborative partnership between mental health & other health professionals, service users & the general public.
MHYFVic
PO Box 206,
Parkville, Vic 3052
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