Understanding trauma in vulnerable children and families: addressing the intersection of multiple systems' level risk factors

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Despite tremendous growth in research on caregiving relationships that may be overwhelmed by poverty, racism, system involvement, and other structural deficits, there is still much to understand about how trauma and child development intersect in specific environmental contexts. Therefore, this symposium focuses on three distinct studies, each containing racially diverse samples and covering a range of developmental age groups and environmental settings: The first presentation examines mothers’ experiences of trauma and its impact on parenting (sample = 157 African American mothers and their 4-7 year old children), examining the buffering role of positive parenting on the relation between maternal trauma exposure and children’s behavioral outcomes. The second presentation uses nationwide foster care administrative data to examine how a subgroup of children in out of home care–short stayers (removed from caregivers for 30 days or less)--are vulnerable to subsequent repeat interactions with the child welfare system, likely launching a traumatic cycle of removals from caregivers. The third presentation was conducted with 59 Black/African American mothers using hypothetical vignettes to assess their decision-making around circumstances that could be deemed child neglect. This study sheds light on parental perceptions of child neglect and about what it means to be charged with engendering neglect, often related to poverty. Finally, the discussant will critically review the presentations, discussing how policy and research can amplify the protective interventions identified in each study, with a particular focus on how perceptions of families’ lives may not always be aligned with a privileged lens, deemed normative.

Sub Unit

• Family Context & Processes

Chair

• Cassandra A Simmel, Rutgers University - New Brunswick

Discussant

• Emily Bosk, Rutgers University - New Brunswick

Individual Presentations

• Maternal Experiences of Trauma, Parenting, and Child Behavior Among Low-Income, African American Families - Presenting Author: Brenda Jones Harden, Columbia University; Justin Kyle Scott, University of Maryland, Baltimore

• Assessing risk of foster care re-entry for children with short-stays in child welfare systems - Presenting Author: Brett Greenfield, Rutgers University - New Brunswick; Liwei Zhang, Washington University in St. Louis; Cassandra A Simmel, Rutgers University - New Brunswick

• An elicitation analysis of parental perspectives regarding child neglect: Trauma of child protective system oversight - Presenting Author: Darcey Merritt, New York University; James Jaccard, NYU; Rachel Ludeke, Thomas Jefferson University