Risk and protective factors in the assessment of families supported by Social Services: An intergenerational retrospective study

Journal title MALTRATTAMENTO E ABUSO ALL’INFANZIA
Author/s Martina Cattani
Publishing Year 2022 Issue 2022/2
Language Italian Pages 24 P. 63-86 File size 306 KB
DOI 10.3280/MAL2022-002005
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The main interest of this study is to understand the presence and the impact of specific as-pects of interpersonal trauma (maltreatment, neglect, and domestic violence) in the parent-ing assessment of families taken into care by Child Protection Services. For this aim, psy-chosocial records of 65 families were investigated. Once the descriptive analytics were per-formed, analyses were conducted in searching for possible distribution differences of each factor included in the Risks and Protective factors Protocol (Di Blasio, 2005), in families assessed as at high risk or low risk. The impact of specific factors upon the parenting re-coverability level, both for mothers and fathers, has been investigated. Results show that the Protocol application in assessing parenting can discriminate between families at high vs low risk, and its application highlights how specific factors impact parental skills recovera-bility, such as adverse childhood experiences in parents’ personal history, conflicting or difficult relationships with the family of origin and/or partner’s family and a meaningful relationship with a member from the original family. In this last analysis, differences were found between mothers and fathers of the sample.

Keywords: intergenerational trauma, risk factors, protective factors, parenting assessment.

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Martina Cattani, Fattori di rischio e di protezione nella valutazione di famiglie in carico ai Servizi Sociali: uno studio retrospettivo intergenerazionale in "MALTRATTAMENTO E ABUSO ALL’INFANZIA" 2/2022, pp 63-86, DOI: 10.3280/MAL2022-002005