This chapter appears in Child Maltreatment in Residential Care: History, Research, and Current Practice, a volume of research examining the institutionalization of children, child abuse and neglect in residential care, and interventions preventing and responding to violence against children living in out-of-home care settings around the world.
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.