NCJ Number
205497
Date Published
March 2004
Length
44 pages
Annotation
This report presents the finding from the Kauffman Foundation’s Best Practices Project, designed to identify and disseminate the best practices on helping children heal from the impact of child abuse.
Abstract
Each year, child abuse touches the lives of millions of American children. In 2001, 2.6 million reports of child abuse were made to child protection authorities, resulting in over 600,000 substantiated cases involving over 900,000 children. Many of these children are offered some form of intervention designed to make them safe, and to help them recover from the after-effects of the maltreatment. In the past two decades, considerable efforts have been devoted to exploring the treatment of child abuse in a more systematic manner and developing evidence based practices. Yet the use of these practices in the field of child abuse remains rare, despite publication in journals, books, at conferences, and through training. This report presents the work of the Kauffman Foundation, which agreed to support the systematic identification and dissemination of best practices on helping children heal from the impact of child abuse. The process consisted of reviewing the existing best practices literature and identifying several relevant sources of potential best practices. One publication, Child Physical Abuse and Sexual Abuse Guidelines and Treatment, was used to review 24 treatment protocols. This process identified the following three intervention protocols as “best practices” in the field of child abuse treatment: 1) Trauma Focused-Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT); 2) Abuse Focused-Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (AF-CBT); and 3) Parent Child Intervention Therapy (PCIT). While there are other well-supported practices, these three protocols had the greatest level of theoretical, clinical, and empirical support, and the most agreement among the participants in the consensus-building process. For each protocol, the report discusses: why the therapy should be used; the definition of the therapy; key components of treatment; presenting problems appropriate for each therapy; and contraindications. This is followed by an examination of the factors that contribute to the poor adoption of these practices, a discussion of change, and a look at the barriers to diffusion and widespread adoption of these practices. The report ends with a list of recommendations from the Kauffman Best Practices Project that will enable the spread of the identified “best practices.” The use of evidence based treatment provides therapists with choices in the interventions they may select to use to resolve the specific problems with which a client presents. 5 figures, general references, references for Trauma Focused-CBT, references for Abuse Focused-CBT, references for Parent Child Interaction Therapy, and Appendix A and B