Introduction
The work in child welfare implies dealing with many challenges. Not only does it put great responsibility on welfare workers, but it also requires a solid amount of empathy and compassion. Moreover, child welfare workers have to understand the sources of danger to be able to react respectively. In this context, the children’s mental well-being should become the priority since it is constantly at risk due to the child’s need to respond to divorce, undesired mental conditions, and maltreatment.
Children Positioning in Divorced Families
When divorce occurs in the family, children face the dilemma of positioning themselves toward the unfolding events. According to Stokkebekk et al. (2019), separated families generally take up to three years to stabilize and successfully adjust to their new life. However, roughly 15% of divorced families remain in a prolonged conflict where parents cannot resolve the separation issues (Stokkebekk et al., 2019). In this context, children are constantly forced to react to parental disagreements, which places a substantial psychological burden on their mental health. The most common position children assume toward the conflict is an attempt to keep balance in the family. They try to foster healthy communication by not choosing a side in the conflict, taking the blame for it, or not bringing up the issue (Stokkebekk et al., 2019). Other positions include distancing from the “troublemaker” or the family overall. While these approaches can reduce the psychological burden, welfare workers must understand that most children are not ready to face such difficult decisions early in life. An inability to cope with the dilemma can result in various undesired conditions, such as suicidal ideation.
Suicidal Ideation
Suicide rates represent one of the most significant concerns for the healthcare field. Some populations, especially young people, are more exposed to suicidal ideation. According to Ruch et al. (2019), the suicide rates in the U. S. among young people aged 10 to 19 registered a 33% increase between the years 1999 and 2014. Childhood and adolescence are critical developmental periods characterized by building and understanding healthy relationships, exploring personal interests, developing essential skills for life and the workplace, and transitioning to further education or the labor force. Having traumatizing experiences during these periods can lead to significantly poor consequences. In this context, children are more prone to develop mental health problems since any poor experience can potentially exacerbate trauma caused by divorce. In other words, adolescents and children have an even greater risk of considering suicide, attempting suicide, and committing suicide because post-divorce care can also be a traumatic experience. Child welfare might become the only chance for these children to live a normal life, that is, if it manages to spot and react to the danger in a timely manner.
Bias and Discrimination
Racial bias and discrimination in systems responsible for protection can be considered the most appalling. According to recent studies, Black youths are less often the object of protection measures than Whites and other racialized minorities (Keddell, 2019). Meanwhile, other racialized families tend to be surveilled by the welfare system unequally, resulting in ill-judged radical decisions (Baughman et al., 2021). The possible conclusion might be that there exists an attitude unfavorable to racialized youths in identifying situations where the child’s rights are truly at risk. In this context, they can either experience prolonged exposure to traumatizing circumstances or, conversely, be subjected to unnecessary family separation. Therefore, due to discrimination occurring in the child welfare sector, children might experience the feeling of societal abandonment and lose trust in institutes created to protect them.
Conclusion
The children’s mental state after the parental divorce is greatly affected by the forced need to react, potential mental exacerbations, and inappropriate treatment, signalizing its utter importance. Not every child or adolescent can cope with the issues in the family and might develop undesired mental conditions, such as suicidal ideation. If this is not timely recognized, which is often the case due to bias within child welfare, the consequences for the child could be grave. This is why child welfare workers should prioritize the children’s mental health in aiming for the best outcomes possible.
References
Baughman, C., Coles, T., Feinberg, J., & Newton, H. (2021). The surveillance tentacles of the child welfare system. Web.
Keddell, Emily. (2019). Algorithmic justice in child protection: Statistical fairness, social justice and the implications for practice. Social Sciences, 8(10), 1-22. Web.
Ruch, D. A., Sheftall, A. H., Schlagbaum, P., Rausch, J., Campo, J. V., & Bridge, J. A. (2019). Trends in suicide among youth aged 10 to 19 years in the United States, 1975 to 2016. JAMA Network Open, 2(5). Web.
Stokkebekk, J., Iversen, A. C., Hollekim, R., & Ness, O. (2019). “Keeping balance”,“Keeping distance” and “Keeping on with life”: Child positions in divorced families with prolonged conflicts. Children and Youth Services Review, 102, 108-119. Web.