Designed for professionals in the field of child maltreatment, this authoritative book presents a compelling theoretical framework that guide's assessment of children and adolescents who have been sexually abused and their parents. The book is designed to make it easier for clinicians to select a number of measures or procedures across three dimensions that have considerable clinical relevance – attachment, dysregulations, and self-perception. Psychological Assessment of Sexually Abused Children and Their Families features in particular the assessment of sexually aggressive children and an extensive set of interview formats, checklists, and other forms that clinicians will find especially useful in evaluating children and their families. The book is also richly illustrated with case studies.

This volume of 18 articles provides information about a diversity of issues - recognition, legal codes, evaluation, psychodynamics, treatment, prognosis and outcome. Included are reports on an extensive survey of professional recognition in England and an examination of European criminal law relating to child sexual abuse, theoretical models of psychosexual development within the family and incest as an expression of a dysfunctional family system. Attention is given to special problems of treatment along with reports on three on-going treatment programmes. Two useful features of the book are a comprehensive bibliography and a critique of available audio-visual materials.

A professional book aimed at practitioners and practitioners in training, this volume is the first attempt to provide a comprehensive, practical approach to the assessment and treatment of physically abused children. While there are other books that cover certain aspects of assessment and treatment, this book is comprehensive in that it covers child-specific, parent-specific, and family-specific interventions. The volume will present an overview of child physical abuse (including statistics and consequences), it will discuss outcome studies and treatment implications, and it will thoroughly discuss assessment and treatment. It will help practitioners: Understand children's abuse experiences, views, exposures to violence, and it will help expose thinking errors or negative attributions. It will also help the practitioner help the children with anxiety management, anger management, social skills, and safety plans. Help parents with child management and development, expectations and cognitive distortions, behavior management, and discipline. Facilitate family communication and problem solving.

A core issue for professionals responsible for addressing sexual abuse is how to correctly identify cases. Interviewing Children About Sexual Abuse: Controversies and Best Practice critically reviews the research and practice on the spectrum of issues related to interviewing the sexually abused child. Its chapters cover all the most important topics that interviewers must keep in mind, from the accuracy of children's memories to appropriate types of questions to include to the use of interview aids, and within each chapter is a comprehensive review of research and practice, leading to conclusions that can be used to guide practice in this most sensitive of assignments.

Assessment of Couples and Families considers the impact of recent changes on the assessment process and provide practitioners with a review of contemporary techniques and the means by which they can be implemented into practice in conjunction with new reporting inventories and observational methods. These new assessment strategies will be presented collaterally with case material that addresses a specific problem, such as family violence or marital suitability. This unique problem focus will provide practitioners with a handy point of reference to acquaint themselves with modern practice techniques that address issues new to the therapy session while providing a supplement to coursework on assessment.

The editors of this collection are experienced practitioners and teachers of forensic psychology. They have collected chapters written by nationally and internationally respected experts in applied research and practice to provide others with their best advice and knowledge on conducting evaluations for and testifying in court.

This book represents a significant contribution to the highly contested debate surrounding how allegations of child sexual abuse should be evaluated. Despite decades of substantial research in this sensitive area, professional consensus remains elusive. A particular source of contention is the sensitivity vs. specificity debate; whether evaluators should aim to reduce the number of true allegations that are labelled false or to reduce the number of false allegations that are labelled true. This edited collection aims to address directly and offer new insights into this debate. It responds directly to Kuehnle and Connell's edited volume, The Evaluation of Child Sexual Abuse Allegations: A Comprehensive Guide to Assessment and Testimony (2009), which included chapters which advocated strong specificity positions at the expense of sensitivity. The chapters in this collection feature both challenges to, and replies by, the authors in Kuehnle and Connell's book, making this an essential resource that moves the debate forward. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Child Sexual Abuse.

This fourth edition text features the latest, most common, and important assessment measures and strategies for addressing problematic clinical issues related to working with families, couples, and children. Chapters provides strategies for systematically utilizing these various assessment measures with a wide range of family dynamics that influence couples and families. These include couples conflict, divorce, separation, mediation, premarital decisions, parenting conflicts, child abuse, family violence, custody evaluation, and child and adolescent conditions, i.e., depression, anxiety, conduct disorder, bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, autism, Asperger’s syndrome, and learning disorders that can significantly influence family dynamics. Filled with extensive clinical case material that illustrates the use of these various assessment measures and strategies in an array of clinical situations, this edition is filled with new assessment devices as well as a new chapter on family trauma and family chronic illness. This book is essential reading for both students in family and couple therapy courses as well as practitioners working with families, couples, and children.

One of the few books on the treatment of psychological trauma in children that provides specific, in-depth individual, group, and family therapy interventions for complex psychological trauma, Treating Complex Trauma in Children and Their Families: An Integrative Approach focuses on the treatment of 6-12 year-old children and their relevant family members. Renowned authors Cheryl B. Lanktree and John N. Briere use their evidence-based, yet flexible treatment model, Integrative Treatment of Complex Trauma for Children (ITCT-C), as they address the use of play therapy, attachment processing, mindfulness, and other approaches, as well as interventions with family/caretaker and community systems. The authors emphasize a culturally sensitive, destigmatizing, and empowering perspective that supports both recovery and posttraumatic growth. Clinical examples and specific tools illustrate how assessment is used to guide individualized and developmentally-appropriate interventions.

Written by a group of nationally-recognized physicians, Evaluation of the Sexually Abused Child, 2E is a comprehensive and authoritative resource that provides a step-by-step discussion of how to interview and clinically evaluate suspected child sexual abuse cases. The contributors draw on their extensive experience to provide sensitive and practical guidance on psychological aspects of abuse, conducting the medical interview and physical exam to make a diagnosis, sexually transmitted disease, and the role of the physician in court. This new edition includes updated information on lab techniques, revised protocols for intervention programs, and a host of new data from several recently released longitudinal studies that followed abused children into adolescence and adulthood. A key feature of the first edition, a photographic atlas documenting and classifying ambiguous signs of abuse, has been expanded by more than 40% to incorporate new photos on the sexual abuse of adolescents, patterns of healing trauma, and additional examples of normal variations and medical conditions.