Abstract
Although the negative impact of child maltreatment on child development is well-established in the literature, little research has explored potential developmental differences in the impact of child maltreatment on child outcomes. The primary aim of this qualitative study was to explore the impact of child maltreatment from the perspective of practitioners who serve maltreated children, including variation in impact and manifestation due to the developmental stage of the child. In this study, 27 in-depth interviews were conducted with practitioners who directly serve maltreated children in an urban Midwestern city in the United States. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. The four themes of developmental differential on the impact of maltreatment included (1) impact manifestation; (2) behavioral expression; (3) locus of control; and, (4) complexity. The findings from this study offer valuable insight to inform developmentally-appropriate interventions for children who have experienced child maltreatment. Our discoveries encourage agencies and those working with maltreated children to consider the child's developmental level to acknowledge how the child will process and react to the maltreatment.
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Data Availability
The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available due them containing information that could compromise research participant privacy/consent, but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of The Ohio State University College of Social Work. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Karla Shockley McCarthy, The Ohio State University College of Social Work, 1947 College Road., Columbus, OH 43210. Email: shockleymccarthy.1@osu.edu.
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This research was funded by an internal grant from The Ohio State University College of Social Work.
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by Karla Shockley McCarthy, Susan Yoon, and Fei Pei. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Karla Shockley McCarthy and all authors commented on subsequent versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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We have no financial or other conflicts of interest. The second author serves as a member of the Board of Trustees of one of the agencies in which data were collected for this study.
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We received approval from The Ohio State University Office of Responsible Research Practices Institutional Review Board (IRB) for this study (Study ID: 2018B0410). Informed consent from each participant was obtained per IRB approved procedures.
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Shockley McCarthy, K., Yoon, S. & Pei, F. Developmental Differential Impact of Child Maltreatment: The Practitioner's Perspective. Child Adolesc Soc Work J 38, 309–324 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10560-020-00683-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10560-020-00683-3