著者

千賀 則史 SENGA Norifumi

出版者

名古屋大学大学院教育発達科学研究科

雑誌

名古屋大学大学院教育発達科学研究科紀要. 心理発達科学 (ISSN:13461729)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.63, pp.21-33, 2016-12-28

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The purpose of this study is to explore the diversity and possibility of psychological support in the field of child welfare by taking up the practice at a child guidance center and a child welfare institution as a subject for discussion. Since a clinical psychology in Japan has developed centering on psychoanalytic therapy, the primary emphasis is on individual psychotherapy in a room, which focuses on the internal world. However, in order to solve child maltreatment it is necessary to have the idea of improving daily life and the environment of children and parents by creating a social network because children are immature and strongly influenced by the external environment. Therefore, it is required for a child welfare psychologist, as a member of the multidisciplinary team, to go out of a room to approach not only the internal world but also the external world. The greatest characteristic of the support system at a child guidance center is a multidisciplinary team approach. The assessment and planning of all cases of a child guidance center are carried out collaboratively by the council system, in which a psychologist is expected to play a role in psychological assessment. Since child maltreatment became a social problem, a child guidance center has been asked to actively intervene in the family suspected of child maltreatment for the purpose of child protection. As a result, the workers at a child guidance center in Japan sought for a new approach, until safety oriented child protection frameworks such as Signs of Safety Approach (SoSA) and Partnering for Safety (PFS) were introduced from foreign countries. In the field of child welfare institutions, psychological support is provided in daily life instead of in a room. It is essential for a psychologist to approach not only an individual child by play therapy but also the environment surrounding a child by consultation for the care workers. A psychologist in a child welfare institution is expected to promote a therapeutic function of network support by bringing the perspective of clinical psychology. It is necessary for a child welfare psychologist to take an integrative approach based on daily life, which deals with both the internal and the external world because child maltreatment occurs when the bio-psycho-social multidimensional factors are complexly intertwined. With the diversity of clinical psychology increasing in this way, unique and innovative approaches such as Holonical Therapy and Open Dialogue have been established as a possibility of new types of psychological support. Although there are already many good practices in the field of child welfare, there are few academic theses which collect such clinical wisdom. It is an urgent task to construct the psychological support model which is effective in the field of child welfare.

著者

千賀 則史 SENGA Norifumi

出版者

名古屋大学大学院教育発達科学研究科

雑誌

名古屋大学大学院教育発達科学研究科紀要. 心理発達科学 (ISSN:13461729)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.61, pp.57-68, 2014-12-26

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The purpose of this study is to explore the current situation and tasks regarding psychological supports for family reunification at child guidance centers. Recently, child maltreatment has become a serious social problem and the number of the cases of child maltreatment accepted and dealt in child guidance centers has rapidly increased since 1990’s. Since the Child Abuse Prevention Law was enforced in 2000, child guidance centers have been reinforced to intervene in the families suspected of child maltreatment. However, the role conflict occurs because child guidance centers have both roles of compulsory intervention and family reunification. It is a difficult and complex work for child guidance centers to build constructive relationship with the parents who are compulsorily intervened. At the field of child protection, community approaches such as outreach and network supports based on multi-institutional collaboration are essential in order to provide necessary services for the involuntary cases of child maltreatment. While there are various factors causing child maltreatment, it is significant for the workers to evaluate not only risk factors but also protective factors. Even if there are many risk factors, protective factors may act as buffers to prevent child maltreatment. Among the cases which achieved family reunification, 50 percent of children returned home within a year and a half, and 70 percent within three years. Meanwhile, 50 to 60 percent of the reunified families got back together with some problems to be solved in a long term; 11 to 14 percent of the cases were re-intervened as child maltreatment case within a year. In practice, it is impossible to solve all of the problems within such a short term. It is necessary to build social support network so that the children can live in the community despite some problems left unsolved. In Japan, 44 percent of child guidance centers use Common Sense Parenting (CSP), and 26 percent of them apply Signs of Safety Approach (SoSA) as family reunification programs. While CSP is a parenting program to give parents effective discipline skills, family reunification is developed by the approach not only to parents but also to children, family and extended family members. Therefore, it is essential for the workers to have not only the perspective on an individual but also the perspective of community psychology, or an ecological perspective on the person-environment fit. SoSA is a safety oriented child protection framework which focuses on the interaction between a person and society. One of the features of SoSA is that it integrates the role of crisis intervention with that of family reunification, so it can be extended to the general social work process. Partnering for Safety (PFS) is a family and safety-centered approach which integrates various theories including SoSA. PFS has useful tools such as ‘The Safety House’ which help the children and their parents participate in the casework process. Through the process of psychological supports for family reunification above, the core role of child psychologists at child guidance centers is to make psychological assessments, which help to share the understanding of the cases and to facilitate collaboration with the workers. As child psychologists are now expected to work in a team, it is required to construct a new psychological support model which takes account of team approach.