Abstract
In the past, children and adolescents who suffered child abuse and neglect in Spain were mostly attended to by private charities. Today, each region in Spain has its own structured child welfare system, which protects vulnerable children by applying measures such as foster or residential care. Previous studies have shown that children and adolescents cared for by the child welfare system are among the most likely to suffer multiple types of victimization or poly-victimization. This chapter presents an original report that analyzes the relationship between poly-victimization and symptom severity among youth cared for in residential facilities. The sample consisted of 95 adolescents (51.6% males and 48.4% females), aged between 12 and 17 (M = 14.49, SD = 1.64) recruited from short- and long-term residential centers. The Juvenile Victimization Questionnaire and the Youth Self-Report were used to assess interpersonal victimization experiences and psychopathology, respectively. Poly-victimization was found to be a significant predictor of clinically severe internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Our findings highlight the importance of regular assessment of the ability of residential care facilities to protect children and adolescents against re-victimization, since the accumulation of multiple types of victimization places adolescent poly-victims at a high risk of developing serious mental health problems.
Don’t turn your face away.
Once you’ve seen, you can no longer act like you don’t know.
Open your eyes to the truth. It’s all around you.
Don’t deny what the eyes to your soul have revealed to you.
Now that you know, you cannot feign ignorance.
Now that you’re aware of the problem, you cannot pretend you don’t care.
To be concerned is to be human.
To act is to care.
Vashti Quiroz-Vega (2013)
This research was supported by research grants from RECERCAIXA 2013, the Directorate General for Children and Adolescents [Direcció General d’Atenció a la Infància i l’Adolescència] of the Generalitat de Catalunya and the Agustí Pedro i Pons Foundation.
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Notes
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Since female participants were older, age was controlled using the Mantel-Haenszel procedure.
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Segura, A., Pereda, N., Guilera, G., Álvarez-Lister, S. (2017). Poly-victimization and Mental Health Problems Among Adolescents in Residential Facilities in Spain. In: Rus, A., Parris, S., Stativa, E. (eds) Child Maltreatment in Residential Care. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57990-0_7
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