Pregnant women involved with statutory child protection services could be considered hidden in society or ‘silenced’ due to the lack of published evidence on whether state intervention with this group is beneficial. Scholars continue to call for research exploring the experience of at-risk pregnant women, in particular, for research that examines the impact of prenatal state involvement on outcomes for newborn babies, their mothers, and their significant others such as fathers, partners, families and communities. This study describes a researcher’s experience of attempting to recruit a purposeful sample of women who were the subject of an unborn child high risk birth alert in New South Wales, Australia. Short Message Service mobile telephone messages were utilised to invite participation via an opt-in approach, as a means to hear women’s experiences of the services they received while pregnant with their last child. From a population of eighty-nine, the strategy recruited only two participants. By describing the process undertaken to recruit a non-biased sample of at-risk women to a qualitative research study, future researchers may be able to deploy recruitment strategies that enable and encourage at-risk women to participate in research, in turn, allowing us to hear their voices.
This rural pilot study examined the effectiveness of a brief parenting skills intervention delivered to parents/carers of children who had experienced moderate to severe child abuse. The participants were 35 parents/carers living in rural New South Wales, Australia, who were recruited through referrals to a rural community health service. Participants were assessed pre and post the brief parenting skills education program using a battery of standardised self-report measures. Participants were randomly assigned to an immediate intervention group or a 3-month waitlist control group. The intervention was a three session ‘1-2-3 Magic’ parenting program.T-test analyses indicated that carers who received the intervention reported significant improvements in their mental health and discipline practices, and a significant reduction in child problem behaviour compared to the waitlist control group.The results of the study suggest that a brief psycho-educational parenting group intervention may be effective for carers of abused children in the short-term.
The aim of this systematic literature review was to identify peer‐reviewed publications on the use and/or evaluation of child protection or domestic violence alerts in electronic medical records. A systematic literature search yielded 751 results, with four articles retained for review. Two articles related to the Child Protection – Information Sharing electronic medical record alert system in England and two articles described a clinical decision‐support alert operating in the background of an electronic medical record system in the emergency department of the Pittsburgh Children's Hospital, Pennsylvania, USA. No articles were identified that described domestic violence electronic medical record alert systems. Child protection electronic medical record alert systems are operating in healthcare facilities in several countries. However, despite their promise in terms of improving healthcare and service coordination for children and their families, research testing the efficacy of these systems is limited.
‘Identif[ies] peer‐reviewed publications on the use and/or evaluation of child protection or domestic violence alerts in electronic medical records’
Key Practitioner Messages
Child protection alerts in electronic medical records are used in a number of countries.
No published examples of the use of domestic violence alerts in electronic medical records could be found.
Alerts on linked electronic medical records can convey standardised, current, clinically significant information to a multitude of clinicians across several health services at once.
Two evaluation studies of a child protection electronic medical record alert system were found; therefore, more evaluation studies are required.
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