Main findings

The prevalence o f psychological adjustment problems within the sample

This was an exploratory study of the current psychological well-being of maltreated children subject to care proceedings who were assessed by the CCCT between 1992 and 1995. The main findings were Grstly that there was a high prevalence of psychological adjustment problems within this sample of children and adolescents. Secondly, a positive relationship was found between children in care’s acceptance of the court proceedings and primary caregivers’ views of the child’s emotional and behavioural adaptation.

Psychological adjustment was assessed through three standard measures: the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), Children’s Depression Inventory (CDI), and the Social Adjustment Inventory for Children and Adolescents (SAICA). Children’s view of the court proceedings and their current lives was indexed by a semi-structured child interview specifically designed for this study. In addition, primary caregivers’ views of the child’s behavioural adjustment and parenting style was assessed by a parent interview, adapted fi'om the Family Health and Development Schedule (Gibbons et al, 1995).

The Children’s Depression Inventory (CDI), as a general self-report measure of children’s depressive symptomatology, revealed that a high prevalence of emotional disturbance existed amongst child participants. Within the present sample ten children, 38.5%, scored above the cut off point for mild depression and a further ten children, 38.5%, scored above the cut off point for clinically significant depressive distress. These rates are considerably higher than those reported within community samples of children and adolescents (Kovacs, 1992, Smucker et al, 1986).

The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), a measure of children’s behavioural and social adjustment, also revealed a high rate of psychopathology when this sample is compared to previous research. Between 38.5% and 65.4% of child participants were perceived by their primary caregivers as exhibiting abnormal behaviour problems on the SDQ sub-scales. The available research literature has indicated that ten percent of non­ maltreated children score within the abnormal range on the SDQ in community studies (Goodman, 1997). Therefore, between three times and six times as many maltreated children in this sample were found to be suffering from clinically significant levels of behavioural and social maladjustment.

Children’s perceptions of their social adaptation, as measured by the Social Adjustment Inventory for Children and Adolescents (SAICA), did not indicate that children in the sample were experiencing significant psychological distress.

Independent samples t-tests revealed that the CCCT research sample’s mean total competence and problem scores are similar to those reported in a previous cross-national study of children and adolescents (John et al, 1989). The high level of social competence found in this sample is consistent with the available empirical research, which has reported strengths in maltreated children’s adaptive behaviour (Kurtz et al, 1993).

Of particular interest, children’s psychological views of the court proceedings were related to their current socioemotional adjustment. Children, who described a maladaptive view of the care proceedings, as indicated by currently blaming themselves, negative affect, and negative thoughts, were more likely to report clinically significant depressive symptomatology on the CDI. This suggests that children’s continued ruminations and negative perceptions of the care proceedings were related to their current psychological distress. Moreover, children’s acceptance of the care proceedings was positively associated with caregivers’ perceptions of the child’s psychological adjustment. A child describing a maladaptive view of the court proceedings was associated with caregivers describing difficulty in the child-caretaker attachment relationship and child behaviour problems. Conversely, children’s coherence and positive perceptions of the court proceedings were related to caregivers’ narrative accounts of children’s psychological adjustment. Interestingly, these findings suggest that children’s sense of confusion and negative cognitive attributional system for understanding the care proceedings is associated with current psychological adjustment problems.

Although the relationship between children’s acceptance of the care proceedings and psychological adjustment are weak (in terms of the proportion of variance in scores accounted for by correlation), they do at least offer some tentative information with regard to factors which may be worthy of further research in large-scale empirical studies.

Correlational analysis examined the relationship between children’s self-reported depressive symptomatology and primary caregivers’ views of the child’s emotional and behavioural adjustment on the parent interview and SDQ. A positive correlation was found between the CDI and caregivers’ reports of the child’s mental health problems on the parent interview. Of particular interest, this suggests that there is consistency in children’s and caregiver’s views of the child’s psychological health status. A significant negative correlation was found between the CDI and SDQ Hyperactivity scale. This suggests that children’s views of their depressive disturbance are negatively related to caregivers’ views of the child’s hyperactive behaviour. However, no significant correlations were found between the CDI and the remainder of the SDQ scales. It was particularly unexpected that no significant relationship was found between children’s CDI scores, and caregivers’ ratings of the child’s emotional symptomatology on the SDQ. Importantly, these findings suggest that there are marked discrepancies between children’s and caregivers’ views of the child’s psychological well-being.