Children’s participation in the child protection system : are young people from poor families less likely to be heard?

Decisions in child protection affect children’s and young people’s lives substantially and sustainably. For young people to participate in these decisions is an ethical requirement, prominently coded in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Although awareness of the importance of child participation and research thereon have grown, predictors of child participation have not been formalized in a conceptual model and studies on the topic have primarily relied on narrative accounts or fictional vignettes rather than actual case data. This article addresses the lack of conceptual modeling by presenting an approach that takes into account three domains of downstream predictors on the degree of child participation in the decision-making process of a child protection case: (a) External constraints; (b) professionals’ willingness and ability to facilitate the child’s participation; (c) the child’s willingness and ability to participate. It further addresses the lack of actual case data in child participation research, focusing on the understudied predictor of family poverty. Analyses are based on a sample of case files of n = 264 children in five Swiss CPS agencies. Outcomes and predictors were extracted from case files with a predefined coding system. Findings suggest that the raised awareness has so far not fully trickled down to an increase in real-life opportunities of participation for young people: The child’s subjective view was documented in the case worker’s report half of the time (48.9 %). Corroborating previous evidence, adolescents were much more likely to have their views included than younger children (OR = 3.715, p =.002). Case workers were less inclined to include the child’s views if the child came from a poor family (OR = 0.326, p =.003). We conclude by suggesting options for improving child participation, highlighting that protection of young people does not have to contradict participation

Mobilizing agencies for incidence surveys on child maltreatment: successful participation in Switzerland and lessons learned

Abstract Background Many countries around the world lack data on the epidemiology of agency response to child maltreatment. They therefore lack information on how many children in need get help and protection or if children stand equal chances across regions to get services. However, it has proven difficult to commit child protection agencies to participation in incidence studies. Methods The Optimus Study invested in a continuous collaborative effort between research and practice to develop a data collection for the first national study on the incidence of agency responses to all forms of child maltreatment in Switzerland. An innovative approach of utilizing individual agencies’ standardized data reduced work burden for participation respectably: any arbitrary excerpt of data on new cases between September 1 and November 30, 2016, could be uploaded to a secured web-based data integration platform. It was then mapped automatically to fit the study’s definitions and operationalizations. Results This strategy has led to a largely successful participation rate of 76% of agencies in the nationwide sample. 253 agencies from the social and health sector, public child protection, and the penal sector have provided data. Conclusions Valuing agencies context-specific knowledge and expertise instead of viewing them as mere providers of data is a precondition for representativeness of incidence data on agency responses to child maltreatment. Potential investigators of future similar studies might benefit from the lessons learned of the presented project

Presence and Persistence of Andes Virus RNA in Human Semen

When infecting humans, Andes orthohantavirus (ANDV) may cause a severe disease called hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome (HCPS). Following non-specific symptoms, the infection may progress to a syndrome of hemorrhagic fever combined with hyper-acute cardiopulmonary failure. The case fatality rate ranges between 25–40%, depending on the outbreak. In this study, we present the follow-up of a male patient who recovered from HCPS six years ago. We demonstrate that the ANDV genome persists within the reproductive tract for at least 71 months. Genome sequence analysis early and late after infection reveals a low number of mutations (two single nucleotide variants and one deletion), suggesting limited replication activity. We can exclude the integration of the viral genome into the host genome, since the treatment of the specimen with RNAse led to a loss of signal. We demonstrate a long-lasting, strong neutralizing antibody response using pseudovirions expressing the ANDV glycoprotein. Taken together, our results show that ANDV has the potential for sexual transmission

Visual mismatch negativity to vanishing parts of objects in younger and older adults.

We investigated visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) to vanishing parts of continuously present objects by comparing the event-related potentials (ERPs) to infrequently (deviant) and frequently (standard) disappearing parts of the objects. This paradigm both excludes low-level stimulus-specific adaptation differences between the responses to deviants and standards, and increases the ecological validity of the stimuli. In comparison to frequently disappearing parts of the stimulus objects, infrequently vanishing parts elicited posterior negative event-related brain activity (vMMN). However, no vMMN emerged to the reappearance of the same parts of the objects. We compared the ERPs of an older and a younger sample of participants. In the 120-180 ms time period vMMN was similar in the two age groups, but in the 180-220 ms time period vMMN emerged only in the younger participants. We consider this difference as an index of more elaborate automatic processing of infrequent stimulus changes in younger adults