Suggestions for a paper?
 

I am in a Child Welfare and Protective Services course and one of our final papers is 7-10 pages on a specific type of child maltreatment and one method of treatment for the problem. I'm having a hard time thinking of a topic that isn't too broad (I don't want to pick a big topic and not do it justice since the paper is only 10 pages) or too specific (so that I wouldn't have enough information to write about).

I'm trying to go ahead and finish all of my papers early in the semester so I'll be more help to Mom and my family later when they need me. Any suggestions for a topic??

hmmm I LOVE writing and this is my specialty.. well self proclaimed specialty.. lol... ummm topics.. .lets see...

LOL...so did you think of a topic? :D

I'm leaning towards emotional abuse, because I think this often gets neglected and overlooked even though it has a HUGE impact on the child, but I'd need to narrow it quite a bit...and that's hard to do without making it TOO specific. New ideas are more than welcome though... I just want to get started so I can feel productive. ;)

By the way, did you mean your specialty is writing or issues involving children? :confused:

I would go with maybe neglect. I meant writing papers.... lol

I thought about that...but it's almost as broad a topic as emotional abuse. The four main types of maltreatment are emotional abuse, neglect, sexual abuse, and physical abuse, so I probably need to be more specific than any of these. Maybe I could focus on blended families or single-parent families or something like that?

how about looking at it from a standpoint of a child.. maybe that will help...

Angie, maybe use an age category, say 5 to 7 or 8 to 10, and like Cindy said, place yourself in the child's "point of view" it will make it easier.

Hmm, that's a great idea Mandy! Maybe I could do emotional abuse of preschool children and show the long term effects of this abuse. Now I just need a treatment... lol

A possibility I came up with is "Is it abuse if parents smoke in their own home?"
We know the dangers of second hand smoke, but it's not illegal... so could make for interesting debate with yourself.

That's a good and tricky one Tink. I'm sure Angie could make a really good argument with that topic.

My previous idea was also emotional abuse, like only in the home. So many children are treated so poorly in their own home, but you'd never believe it the way their parents make over them in public.

What about the effects of lack of discipline in children? We have a lot of undisciplined kids in our society. My daughter works at the middle school and they have had a big ordeal with a child that is undisciplined and his parents.

Wow, you guys have so many good ideas! Now I have a new problem--how to choose between all of these great topics!!! :) I think I like this problem better than not having a topic at all. :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:

Thank you thank you THANK YOU for all of your input! I really appreciate it!

VERY true Janet, we dont expect it, but it sure happens.

How about one with teens, who think they are being abused.

I've just worked on a few with a student tied to criminal justice. How about the way mandatory minimum sentencing is taking a lot of our young men and women and putting them in jail - creating permanent records - for possession of half a joint of marijuana? It's creating a new culture. Now children visit their parents in jail. The parents get screwed up by the jail culture and have to re-integrate when they come out. It's pretty tough.

Also, how does living in a women's shelter hidden from an abusive father affect children's emotional development?

If you search with google, use their google scholar search tool to get papers you can cite from - http://scholar.google.com/schhp?hl=en

Thanks for the suggestions everyone! I'm well into researching and just beginning to write my paper now. I chose to write it on emotional abuse. I'm still waiting for a few articles to be delivered to our campus library before I'll know what treatment method I'm focusing on, but they will be here within three days. I've already found great sources for specifically defining the problem and describing the effects of the abuse on the child and family. I think the treatment methodology I'll be focusing on will be play therapy which is focused on increasing resilience. I just need a few good sources to back it up.

Thanks for the advice about Google Kate, but I don't usually use Google for scholarly journals because most of the links just give you an abstract and you have to pay for access to the full article. I use our online library from our campus website which breaks down into categories, one which is only journals concerning child welfare. I use a different one for my other courses which only contains social work journals. It makes the research process much faster and provides more reliable information.

Anyway, that's probably more than anyone wanted to know, but almost every bit of my spare time recently has been spent working on this, so it's a pretty big deal to me and I wanted to keep you updated since everyone had such great suggestions. :)

I usually find enough that are free through that search but even finding jstor and other paying sites leads me to which ones my students should look for in the library.

JSTOR is one of the ones I can get through my school website. It's pretty helpful, but I like the layout and search features for the one I've been using. You know what they say, people hate change... :p

Actually, I do have a random question for you Kate (or anyone else who might now). Are you familiar with the Illiad program for getting articles that are not immediately available online due to the site "obtaining copyright permission"?

No - this is a great idea. I wonder how it's working. http://www.oclc.org/illiad/
Have you used it?

I used it yesterday for the first time to request a specific article. I was going to ask if they gave it to you online or if it just has a nearby library send it to my library. It gave no instructions on how to find it once it gets to me so I don't know if I'm just supposed to go ask a librarian or what... :confused: I couldn't find any information in their "help" section about delivery methods...

I'll try it later today and see if I can figure it out - I was wondering about the same thing. Did you have to register with your email address?

Nope. All I have to do to access any of the programs on our school's site is enter my ID and password. It's pretty convenient.

So if no email I wonder how they reach you.

Well, I'm sure they know the email associated with the ID. The ID is the same as the email just without the @ information. It works that way for all students.

I wonder if I can use it - I have to write right now - paid work! - but I will try it when I am done.

I have just been watching nannie 911 on tv, mum step dad and three rude and unruley kids, step dad was good with them but mum would not cuddle or give them any kinda love so they were all craveing for affection hence became rude to gain her attention be it shouting and teaseing her kids. Even at the end of the program mum did not think she was doing wrong, the children were rude to nannie at the begining but once she showed them love they came round to her and treated her with respect. Nannie told the mum that if she did not treat them with love and affection then it would become a cycle for them to treat there children with out love.

That's a very interesting topic Angie. My mother was emotionally abusive. It certainly leaves scars! It did make me very compassionate towards my students though.
Every cloud has a silver lining.

I teach a course on how to write a research paper at a nearby community college.
My students usually don't go into looking for references to the point you are.
I'm happy when they use the CUNY library database instead of Google. Many are very hard-working though, but haven't been taught that kind of work ethic. I'm not paid enough to start teaching them once they're already in college!

I have a lot of immigrants, adults returning to school, and NYC educated young people. I have to be lenient - they just haven't been taught the skills when they should have been.

Your paper will be wonderful, I'm sure.

Very cool work, Judy! If there is ever anything your students are tracking that you are stuck on, I'd be glad to pitch in. What kind of institution do you teach for?

Wow Judy! It's sad that some of your students made it all the way to college without knowing how to properly research a paper. I guess that just proves how much our education system is lacking in certain areas. At least they are hard-working and willing to learn. Good luck with your class!!

As an update on my paper for those who have been following my progress, I found a really awesome treatment method called Parent-child interaction therapy (PCIT). It is similar to play therapy, but both the parent and the child are involved. Sometimes the parent leads the interaction and sometimes the child does. This is facilitated by a licensed professional who guides the interaction, reinforcing positive behaviors and helping to eliminate the negative behaviors which are emotionally abusive. It is guided by the attachment theory (children need a secure, loving, and supportive parental figure in order to develop properly) and the social learning theory (children learn best by being social, interacting, and watching others). It's focus is on children 2-7 because this is when the parent-child attachment is most impressionable and when children "model" the behaviors of others (You're all familiar with this...when they play house or "cook food" with play dough or try to do everything that mommy and daddy do, they are modeling). Very interesting method, I think!

Most of my students make it all the way to college without knowing how to write a paper! It's amazing how much they cheat.

They do cheat! They think downloading some words from a site and cutting and pasting them into a paper is fine. I teach at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, NY. I only teach once/week for 3 hours so it's not like real work and they pay well.

Angie, those are wonderful you're talking about. You're going to be terrific at this!

As a tutor it stuns me when right in front of me they cut and paste someone else's writing into their papers. With one boy I did get him to credit it all to the original author - he still got full credit for the paper having written none of it himself.

Wow! At my school, if you are caught cheating ONCE, you get kicked out of your major and possibly kicked out of the university if the teacher decides to pursue it further. I wouldn't chance that. Besides, how would you ever learn if you just turned in someone else's work??

These were high school kids - it's amazing. The teachers have mostly given up, I think. If a student takes the time to turn in almost anything, they pass. The system doesn't support the teachers if they start failing kids either.

Sad.

Exactly! Once I started to feel that way, I got ready to retire. It's called "teacher burnout."

Why I am trying to tutor older folks more this year... I want to like my students and support them 100%!

Hey now! Younger students can be fun too. lol :p