This project was supported by the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services, Department for Medicaid; Norton Healthcare; and the School of Medicine, Department of Pediatrics; School of Public Health and Information Sciences; and Kent School of Social Work at the University of Louisville. Kentucky Medicaid approved the use of the data and granted permission to publish but played no role in the interpretation of data. Lui is employed by Kentucky Medicaid. The other authors report no potential conflicts of interest. An earlier version of this study was presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies' Annual Meeting in Baltimore, MD, on April 30-May 3, 2016. A poster presentation was given at the Society for Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics in Cleveland, OH, on October 14-16, 2017.

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Children in foster care have exceptional needs due to their histories of abuse, neglect, and increased exposure to violence. The rates of psychiatric symptoms and disorders, such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, and reactive attachment disorder, are much higher in children in foster care; furthermore, the rate of these children receiving psychotropic medications is 3 times that of children who are not in foster care. Pediatricians, in their role of providing a medical home, play a central role in safeguarding the physical and mental health of these children. By taking a trauma-informed approach to understanding the unique needs and gaps in their health care, pediatricians can improve the mental health and maximize outcome for children in foster care. [Pediatr Ann. 2016;45(10):e342-e348.].

Pediatricians regularly care for children who have experienced child maltreatment. Child maltreatment is a risk factor for a broad range of mental health problems. Issues specific to child maltreatment make addressing emotional and behavioral challenges among maltreated children difficult. This clinical report focuses on 2 key issues necessary for the care of maltreated children and adolescents in pediatric settings: trauma-informed assessments and the role of pharmacotherapy in maltreated children and adolescents. Specific to assessment, current or past involvement of the child in the child welfare system can hinder obtaining necessary information or access to appropriate treatments. Furthermore, trauma-informed assessments can help identify the need for specific interventions. Finally, it is important to take both child welfare system and trauma-informed assessment approaches into account when considering the use of psychotropic agents because there are critical diagnostic and systemic issues that affect the prescribing and discontinuing of psychiatric medications among children with a history of child maltreatment.

Validated brief screening instruments are needed to improve the detection of anxiety disorders in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The Screen for Child Anxiety-Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED), a 41-item parent- and self-reported scale measuring anxiety, was compared to the Achenbach System of Empirically Based Assessment (ASEBA) scales. One hundred participants with a clinical diagnosis of high-functioning ASD, aged 8–18 years, and their parents completed the above scales. We hypothesized that the SCARED would be useful in screening for anxiety and its results for total scores of anxiety would converge with ASEBA syndrome scales for anxiety and internalizing disorders. Significant correlations were shown between the SCARED and the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) and Youth Self-Report (YSR) across a broad spectrum of scales. The CBCL syndrome scale for anxious/depressed showed the highest correlation and predicted anxiety scores on the SCARED. While many of the YSR scales significantly correlated with child ratings of anxiety, none of the scales predicted the SCARED child scores. Differences in self and parent reports suggest that parents interpret externalizing behaviors as signs of anxiety in ASD, whereas youth may describe internalized symptoms as anxiety. Females were more likely to self-report anxiety than males. Results support the use of the SCARED as a screening tool for anxiety in high-functioning ASD, but it should be supplemented with other tools to increase the specificity of its results.