Network News
Child Welfare Workers Loan Forgiveness Act
Jan 31, 2017State Senator Stewart J. Greenleaf (R-Montgomery/Bucks) is reintroducing Senate Bill 65, the Child Welfare Workers Loan Forgiveness Act, establishing a loan forgiveness program for members of the child welfare workforce who have qualified outstanding loan balances and have at least an undergraduate degree. Read about the bill here.
Children’s Health Exposure Analysis Resource
Jan 18, 2017A wide variety of environmental exposures affect a child’s health and well-being. To promote the broadest possible assessment of these environmental effects on children’s health, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) created The Children’s Health Exposure Analysis Resource (CHEAR) — a new, comprehensive set of resources to enable NIH-funded pediatric researchers access to laboratory analyses of environmental exposures at no cost. CHEAR can provide a wide range of services, including: Expert consultation on exposure analysis, study design, and data analysis and interpretation Analysis of biological samples for biological, psychosocial, chemical, and physical exposures using state-of-the-art techniques A data repository and associated data science tools Statistical and data analytical services including support for meta analyses Development and dissemination of new statistical methods and informatics tools Support for pilot and feasibility studies. Please visit http://chearprogram.org to learn more about the eligibility criteria and application process. We welcome you to share this website with your colleagues who may also be eligible. We hope you are as excited as we are about this opportunity! Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.
Noll named president of APA division 37 section on child maltreatment
Jan 16, 2017Jennie Noll, director of Penn State's Child Maltreatment Solutions Network and professor of human development and family studies, was recently elected president of the American Psychological Association (APA)’s Division 37, the Section on Child Maltreatment. Noll’s responsibilities as an APA section president include organizing member webinars, seminars, symposiums and conferences, such as the Convention of the American Psychological Association in Washington, D.C. This year will mark the 125th for the annual event. Noll is looking forward to encouraging involvement in these programs. “Sustained engagement among members and students is very important to advancing the mission of the section on child maltreatment,” she stated. Another goal Noll aims to accomplish as an APA section president regards the fourth tier of their mission statement: advocacy. She plans to work beyond promoting general awareness to advancing public policy. “We have reached a level of understanding where science can change the way the public perceives the prevention and treatment of child maltreatment. Having science translated into language that policy makers can understand will help advance the kind of policies that will benefit survivors and produce a larger investment in prevention” Noll said. Established 25 years ago, the mission of APA’s Division 37 Section on Child Maltreatment is to “support and promote scientific inquiry, training, professional practice and advocacy” surrounding child abuse and neglect to improve the overall health and well-being of children and their families.
Department of Justice grant to develop Pennsylvania SAFE-T Center
Dec 8, 2016A new Penn State project will use telemedicine technology to enhance access to sexual assault forensic exams in underserved populations. Backed by a $1.1 million U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Victims of Crime grant, Sheridan Miyamoto, assistant professor of nursing, along with Janice Penrod, professor of nursing, and Lorah Dorn, professor of nursing and pediatrics, are planning to launch the 15-month project in December. Called the Sexual Assault Forensic Examination and Training (SAFE-T) Center, the project will focus on improving access to quality forensic sexual assault care for adult and adolescent victims in underserved communities. The Department of Justice cited results of an eight-year study completed by Miyamoto and colleagues at the University of California-Davis as a basis for funding a demonstration in an adult and adolescent population. Through telemedicine, or the use of high-resolution image display, live-examination video conferencing, Miyamoto hopes to improve the quality of services afforded to victims of assault in rural hospitals across Pennsylvania, where sexual assault rates are higher than in urban settings. She calls the instant two-way communication a “rewarding partnership.” “This program is not intended to have an expert on one side and eyes and hands on the other,” Miyamoto explained. “Instead, experienced nurse examiners have the opportunity to mentor those that are less experienced in a partnership designed to result in higher quality patient care and a more forensically defensible exam. The consultant nurse team will offer 24/7 live exam guidance and mentoring to the nurses, who are meanwhile enhancing and developing their skills so they can become the local experts.” The system provides support on an emotional level, too. Miyamoto said the nurses are often handling too many roles simultaneously and performing emotionally burdensome work in isolation, without colleagues. The creation of a network of colleagues who come together using telemedicine technology to share cases and challenges each month goes a long way to reducing that isolation. Miyamoto herself worked at a rural community health clinic as a nurse practitioner after graduate school. She found the lack of specialty resources stark, and she is eager to change that. The SAFE-T Center aims to take a step further outside the hospital doors by engaging Community and Expert Advisory Boards, made up of a multidisciplinary group of community leaders and researchers, to engage in planning for the success and future growth of a state-wide network to support this field. Miyamoto has already enlisted the contributions of Penn State partners Jennifer McCall-Hosenfeld and Chris Sciamanna, physicians at Milton S. Hershey Medical Center; Daniel Perkins, director of the Clearinghouse for Military Family Readiness; Dennis Scanlon, director of the Center for Health Care and Policy Research; Gary Zajac, director of the Justice Center for Research; and Casey McClain, assistant public defender and faculty member. Miyamoto stresses the importance of role diversity within the coalition. “Sexual assault is a multi-faceted issue,” she said. “We need law enforcement, district attorneys, health care, children and youth services and advocates all at the table. We need to ask how we can together build a solution, how we can regionalize service and meet the needs of victims of assault. Together, we can produce the change we wish to see.” The overall goal of the SAFE-T program is two-fold, according to Miyamoto, first to improve quality of examinations, and second to establish sustainability of efforts. She considers Penn State the ideal university for such an undertaking. “The Penn State campuses are conveniently distributed across the state and there is a strong nursing presence both in educational programs and in the Community Based Research Network. I believe this could really grow into a much-needed solution in our largely rural state. Then, if research determines that this model improves access and quality of care and quality of forensic evidence, we will know it is the right thing to do, and ideally, a sustainability plan will follow. That is my great hope,” Miyamoto said. Additional funding for this project is being provided by Penn State’s Child Maltreatment Solutions Network, part of the Social Sciences Research Institute, and the Clinical and Translational Science Institute.
Solutions Network's Font co-authors article on banning corporal punishment in schools
Nov 9, 2016By Elizabeth Gershoff and Sarah A. Font Parents across America send their children to public schools with the understanding that school personnel will teach them and keep them safe. Yet, instead of being protected from harm in their schools, hundreds of thousands of children can be purposely hit by school personnel because they attend schools in states where corporal punishment is legal. Corporal punishment should have no place in our schools. It is time for a federal law to ban its use, regardless of whether the school is public or private. Corporal punishment simply is ineffective and is harmful to students. We can and must do better for our children. Dozens of research studies have confirmed that corporal punishment does not promote better behavior in children, nor does it help them do better in school. There is also another troubling aspect of corporal punishment in our schools, namely who is being subjected to it. In a new study we conducted, we found boys, black children and children with disabilities are much more likely to be corporally punished than girls, non-black children and children without disabilities. For example, in one-fifth of school districts in Alabama and Mississippi, black children are five times as likely to be subject to corporal punishment as non-black children. Children with disabilities are at least 50 percent more likely to experience corporal punishment than their peers in a third or more of school districts in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee. The United States is one of only two industrialized countries that allow corporal punishment in schools. It remains legal in public schools in 19 states and in private schools in 48 states. More than 160,000 children, from preschool through 12th grade, were subjected to corporal punishment in public schools in the 2013-2014 school year, according to the U.S. Department of Education. In some states, it is a common practice, with 85 percent of school districts in Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi reporting they used corporal punishment that year. Aside from these disparities being in direct violation of three federal laws that prohibit discrimination by race, gender or disability status, these districts are doing a disservice to their children and their communities by using an outdated and ineffective disciplinary practice. It is true that parents in some districts can "opt out" of corporal punishment. Yet many times, school staffers do not check to see whether such forms are on file, as was the case with a kindergartner in the North Texas town of DeSoto, who made headlines after he was paddled despite his mother having signed an opt-out form. Some administrators and legislators believe corporal punishment is the only way to ensure that children behave in school, and that if corporal punishment is removed, children will misbehave. But the facts do not support this belief. Data analyzed from the FBI found that juvenile crime does not increase after a state bans school corporal punishment. Schools throughout the country have found ways to discipline children that do not require hitting them with boards. This is the right approach. When professionals from a variety of disciplines who work with children and families are united in publicly calling for an end to school corporal punishment in this country - including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Bar Association, the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, the National Association of Elementary School Principals and the National Association of State Departments of Education - it's obvious national change is needed. Corporal punishment was ruled constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1977 at a time when nearly all states allowed it. Now in 2016, a total of 31 states have banned the practice from public schools. We need to bring that number up to all 50 states and to include private schools. Children deserve more, not less, protection from physical assault than adults. A federal law banning corporal punishment from schools would do just that. Gershoff is an associate professor of human development and family sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. Font is an assistant professor of sociology at Pennsylvania State University.
Trauma in schools focus of fifth annual Network conference
Oct 24, 2016One out of every four students in the United States shows up to school each day shouldering the burden of a traumatic event that affects their learning habits and behaviors. During Penn State’s Child Maltreatment Solutions Network’s recent fifth annual conference, child welfare researchers, educators and advocates met to discuss the need of trauma informed schools. The conference, held Oct. 10-11, kicked off with exciting news as Network Director Jennie Noll announced the new name for the Child Maltreatment Solutions Network, formerly known as the Network on Child Protection and Well-Being. “The new name better reflects our mission, which is to provide solutions to the issues surrounding child maltreatment, including prevention, detection and treatment,” she said. Nicholas Jones, Penn State's executive vice president and provost, then stepped up to applaud the conference for critiquing pre-college education and paving the way for positive change for schools and other academic institutions. “This conference will help our schools meet the needs of children affected by trauma and maltreatment, overcome achievement gaps, and uncover the child’s true academic achievement.” The four sessions of the conference jump-started conversations on how child maltreatment prevention, detection and intervention can be integrated into the school setting — an important issue because so many students have had traumatic experiences, and trauma can impact learning, behavior and relationships at school and at home. Mary Pulido, executive director of The New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, framed the importance of teaching young children about safe touches. “Most parents don’t talk about child sexual abuse and safe touches, and most children who have been abused don’t tell anyone for at least a year,” she explained. Elizabeth Letourneau, director of the Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse at Johns Hopkins, also emphasized the importance of education as a way of reducing the likelihood of child abuse. “More abuse is being reported and less abuse is happening now than ever before,” she said. Exploring the role of teachers and educators in recognizing and responding to maltreatment, Brian Bliss, superintendent of the Solanco School District, talked about high levels of poverty and how it contributes to child maltreatment in southern Lancaster County. Bliss discussed how the Solanco School District is partnering with Penn State to develop sound methodologies to help students from a research-based perspective. They are incorporating teacher trainings on trauma, into existing trainings and meetings, effectively closing the gap between research and implementation. “We formed focus groups of administrators, teachers, community members and faith-based organizations,” said Carlo Panlilio, assistant professor of education at Penn State and Solutions Network faculty member, about partnering with Solanco. “We’ve found that you need to work with the whole system to instill changes; leaving one out will cause it to fail.” Presenters also discussed the anxiety felt by parents surrounding trauma. “There's a fear with the system, a disconnect somewhere between welfare, children and families,” said Peter Simonsson, director of survivor services at Joseph J. Peters Institute. “We can overcome this with programs that offer support to both the students and parents, inside and outside of the school setting.” Additionally, teachers can be vulnerable to secondary traumatic stress because of their interactions with students who have been exposed to traumatic stress. “Self-care systems are needed, as there is no policy on the supervision of educators that pertains to secondary trauma symptoms,” said Joan Duvall-Flynn, president of the NAACP media branch. “A trauma-sensitive school is one in which all students feel safe, welcomed and supported,” explained Michael Gregory, clinical professor of law at Harvard Law School. “We get there through whole-school effort. Helping traumatized children learn should be a major focus of education reform.” Assistant Director of the Child Maltreatment Solutions Network Sandee Kyler reported, “I was impressed by the participation and dynamic points of discussion during the conference. The goal was to start conversation, and that’s what we did. I believe every attendee left a little more informed, invested and inspired.” More on the conference and the Child Maltreatment Solutions Network can be found at http://www.protectchildren.psu.edu. The Solutions Network was created to advance Penn State’s academic mission of teaching, research and engagement in the area of child maltreatment. Since its launch in 2012, the Solution Network’s annual conferences and awareness events have established a concrete frontier of understanding child maltreatment through advanced research. It is a part of the Social Science Research Institute at Penn State.
What parents can do to keep their kids off the radar of sexual predators online
Oct 21, 2016Over 20 years, the Amber Alert system has helped rescue 830 children. But the list of missing kids is still too long to imagine and I get a sick feeling in my gut every time my phone starts doing that weird buzzing that can only mean one thing: Someone has abducted a child. And so it was last week when we learned an 11-year old Utah boy had left his bed in the middle of the night. Police suspected a 37-year-old man had enticed this elementary school-aged kid to leave his home. The boy and the man had met online. I started looking up cases with similar scenarios and my jaw dropped. I scrolled through page after page of recent news stories of young people disappearing or suffering assault after meeting up with someone they had met online. Why is this happening at such an alarming rate? Wired Safety explains that between the ages of 13 and 15, kids are vulnerable, impulsive and looking for approval. In fact, it reports the biggest number of cases of sexual exploitation by an adult happen to 13-year-olds. Young women, in particular, can be flattered by the attention and flattery of older men. But sometimes, the adult on the other end of the internet connection is posing as a teen. In the anonymous world of the web, there is often no way to be sure until it’s too late. Dr. Jennie Noll is the director of Penn State University’s Network on Child Protection and Well-Being, and her studies show 30 percent of teenagers report meeting someone in person after chatting with them online. They also admit not fully confirming the identity of that online acquaintance before arranging the face-to-face meeting. Scary. After an Alabama girl met someone on an app and disappeared, cyber investigator Mike Trotter warned WSFA News about teens and technology. “Anytime they have a device, it’s just like having a predator in their bedroom with them. You’re inviting the outside world into your house to communicate, a lot of times, in an unmonitored, unrestrained fashion,” he said. Parents, it’s time to get tough. Children often feel entitled to have their gadgets, to have texting abilities, to have gaming consoles, to have access to any app they want. Having these things is not a right for children. It is a privilege that we grant them as their parents. And we get to make choices about what types of technology are OK for our kids to use. It can get tiring. Believe me, I’ve had the Snapchat argument with my teens over and over, but I will not cave. My kids will survive and flourish, even without Snapchat or anonymous apps on their phones. For children under the age of 13, parents can easily deny them access to social media because, actually, it’s the law. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and others require users to be at least 13 years old. That means, if your 12 and under child has an account on one of these networks, either they lied about their age, or you lied for them. Vine and Yik Yak have an age 17 requirement. So if your high school sophomore has a Vine account, they shouldn’t. I realize every child is different and some are ready for certain technology while others aren’t yet. But why expose them to a wide open, often dangerous online world before you have to? Diana Graber with cyberwise.org gives the perfect reasoning why age limits matter: because children’s personal information is at risk. If parents lie about their kids’ ages so they can get social media accounts, it gives those companies permission to gather all sorts of information about that user. Websites can track crazy amounts of data on your child, including specific location information, phone numbers and photos. Become familiar with potentially dangerous apps and don’t allow them on your kids' gadgets. It’s easy to do a Google search on a regular basis to find out which apps are causing issues among teens. Then, inspect your kids’ phones to make sure they don’t have those apps. Use family sharing plans if needed to control what apps your kids download. Keep apps away from your children that allow people to be completely anonymous like Whisper, Ask.fm, After School and Yik Yak. Apps that encourage meet-ups with other people in your geographic area can be sketchy, too. Kik and ooVoo are just a couple that have school districts, police departments and parents on alert across the country for making it so easy for predators to reach out to children. The app Omegle shouts its objective right on the website: “Talk to strangers!” These types of apps and — don’t forget — online chat rooms are asking for trouble. Be aware of what your child is doing on their devices. Be familiar with the apps they use. Know their online friends and make sure they are real-life friends too, not just someone they met in cyberspace. Amy Iverson is a graduate of the University of Utah. She has worked as a broadcast journalist in Dallas, Seattle, Italy and Salt Lake City. Amy, her husband and three kids live in Summit County, Utah. Contact Amy on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and LinkedIn. Copyright 2016, Deseret News Publishing Company
Font co-authors corporal punishment report
Oct 5, 2016Sarah Font, assistant professor of sociology, PRI associate, and new Network faculty member, co-authored the Social Policy Report “Corporal Punishment in U.S. Public Schools: Prevalence, Disparities in Use, and Status in State and Federal Policy”. The policy report describes the prevalence and geographic dispersion of corporal punishment in U.S. public schools by assessing the extent to which schools disproportionately apply corporal punishment to children who are Black, to boys, and to children with disabilities. It is the first-ever effort to describe the prevalence of and disparities in the use of school corporal punishment at the school and school-district levels. To read the report in its entirety, click here.
Penn State conference to focus on child trauma in schools
Sep 20, 2016One of every four students in the United States shows up to school each day shouldering the burden of a traumatic event that affects their learning habits and behaviors. Child welfare researchers, educators and advocates will be coming together to study and strategize around this relevant concern at Penn State’s Fifth Annual Conference on Child Protection and Well-Being being held Oct. 10 to 11 at the Nittany Lion Inn on the University Park campus. The theme for this year’s conference is “Trauma Informed Schools: How child maltreatment prevention, detection, and intervention can be integrated into the school-setting.” According to Jennie Noll, director of Penn State’s Child Maltreatment Solutions Network and professor of human development and family studies, schools provide a unique opportunity for prevention of child maltreatment. “School is where children are taught at a very young age how to protect themselves, how to talk to adults about things that may be bothering them, and how to get help when they need it,” she said. “Protecting children is the responsibility and the work of everyone in the community, and teachers, school counselors and administrators, if they are aware of the unique issues, can be the front line.” Dedicated efforts to incorporate child abuse identification into the education system are currently underway, initiated by the state legislation that has named teachers primary mandated reporters of suspicion, and persisted by the schools taking on the task. By hosting programs and training their staffs, schools can prepare their faculty and take an active role in prevention, which is the first of four conference session topics. Following the discussion of prevention, session two shifts focus to the developmental influences of trauma on children, across the social, emotional, behavioral, and cognitive plains. Session three zooms out from the campus to the caucus to cover policy change considered pivotal to this movement, and session four examines cooperation between schools and communities. The conference will wrap up with a culminating panel on Oct. 11. This is where, through open deliberation, Noll hopes to sketch and ultimately concrete the steps moving forward in regards to research, policy and schools. “Encouraging the audience to participate is what sets our conference apart from the rest. The audience will include cutting-edge researchers in both prevention and treatment, teachers and school administrators, educative policy makers, and students, all brought together to form a creative discourse. This provides an exciting arena to start a conversation,” Noll explained. This is a conversation everyone is invited to join. For more information about the conference and to register, go to http://protectchildren.psu.edu/content/2016-conference. Deadline to register is Sept. 23. The Child Maltreatment Solutions Network was created to advance Penn State’s academic mission of teaching, research and engagement in the area of child maltreatment. Since the network was launched in fall 2012, its conferences have established a concrete frontier of understanding child maltreatment through advanced research. It is a part of the Social Science Research Institute at Penn State. For more information on the network, visit here.
In Memoriam: Penelope K. Trickett, 73
Sep 15, 2016It is with sadness to announce the death of Penelope (Penny) Trickett, the David Lawrence Stein/Violet Goldberg Sachs Professor of Mental Health at the USC School of Social Work, died July 15 in San Pedro, California, of complications from heart failure. She was 73 years old. The daughter of Nathaniel and Marjorie Keith, Penny was born in New York City and came to Washington, D.C. as a young child. She graduated from the Hawthorne School in Washington, D.C. and Bryn Mawr College with a BS in Psychology. Later she received a Ph.D. from the New School for Social Research, New York, NY. She is survived by two daughters, Jennifer Loryn Trickett and Katechen Alyssa Trickett, both of San Pedro, CA. Her husband, John Horn was deceased in 2006. She began her research career as a Research Associate in the Department of Psychology at Yale University in 1976, later becoming a senior fellow at the at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, MD. She subsequently joined the Psychology Department faculty at the University of Southern California as an Associate Research Professor and later as a Professor and David Lawrence Stein/Violet Goldberg Sachs Professor of Mental Health in the School of Social Work where she served for 27 years. Her career was illustrious and she was among the first to conduct research on the consequences of child abuse and/or neglect. Penny was highly regarded for her groundbreaking research monitoring the developmental trajectories of girls who experienced sexual abuse. Now in its 30th year when these women are entering their 40’s, this study has document that sexual abuse is associated with earlier onsets of puberty, cognitive deficits, maladaptive sexual development, high rates of obesity, more major illnesses, psychiatric problems, revictimization, teen motherhood, and domestic violence. Being the first study of its kind to document the intergenerational transmission, this study also showed that offspring born to these abused mothers were at increased risk for child maltreatment and overall maldevelopment. A unique aspect of her studies was that she combined biomarkers of stress, specifically cortisol, with dimensions of psychological development which earned Penny and her team the 2012 Excellence in Research Award from the Society for Social Work and Research. This paper was instrumental in reconciling long-standing discrepancies across the child and adult literatures by demonstrating that early over activation of the stress-response system can manifest in later-life attenuated stress-response—a condition tied to antisocial behaviors, post-traumatic stress disorder, and a number of long-term physical health problems. Penny was also principal investigator of another longitudinal study where many of the mechanism and consequences of her 30-year study are being explicated with greater precision including; endocrine-autonomic asymmetry, predicting mental health effects over time, the impact of early puberty on later development, and the characteristics of caregivers, such as custody arrangements and depression, that impact victim well-being. Being some of the first long-term research to document the deleterious consequences of child abuse, the impact of Penny’s work is far-reaching and is used to influence child welfare policy decisions, research funding priorities, and prevention and treatment appropriations. In fact, her passion for impacting policy led her to design an annual policy immersion experience in Washington DC for Master of Social Work students—the first of its kind for USC’s School of Social Work. She served as a member and later president of the American Psychological Association’s Committee on Children, Youth and Families Section on Child Maltreatment. Penny was also active in the Society for Research on Child Development, Society for Research on Adolescents, American Association for Psychological Sciences, the Society for Social Work and Research, and American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children. Among her many accolades were several federally funded research grants including the Independent Scientist Award from the National Institute of Mental Health for her work “The Developmental Consequences of Child Abuse and Violence” and the Sterling C. Franklin Faculty Award for Research and Scholarship from the School of Social Work. We have lost a magnificent friend, colleague, mother, mentor, scholar, and advocate to maltreated children throughout the world. She was so loved by all who came into her life. Her elegance, modesty and gentle spirit are sorely missed. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made in Trickett’s name to the South Bay Center for Counseling’s Preventative and Aftercare Program at 540 N. Marine Ave., Wilmington, CA 90744. Because of Trickett’s love for her gardens, family, friends, and good food and wine, a private memorial service will be held at her home in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, at a later date.