Research

Registration now open for sixth annual child maltreatment conference

‘Scientific Synergy & Innovation from Military Family & Child Welfare Contexts’ to be held Sept. 27-28

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A remarkable, but lesser-known aspect of the United States Military is its efforts, programs, and research into the detection and prevention of child abuse in military families.

Penn State’s sixth annual Child Maltreatment Solutions Network conference, “Scientific Synergy & Innovation from Military Family & Child Welfare Contexts,” will be held in partnership with the Clearinghouse for Military Family Readiness, Sept. 27 to 28, in the Nittany Lion Inn on the University Park campus. This event promotes the collaboration of researchers, policy analysts and practice professionals to discuss and determine how to take military family research and programs and use them broadly.

Jennie Noll, Solutions Network director and professor of human development and family studies at Penn State, notes that the military and civilian sectors often work independently, but there is much to gain in working together and gleaning knowledge from each other. “Research has made vast improvements in child abuse detection and prevention, family advocacy, trauma treatment, and long-term psychological and physiological consequences for the victims. Working together rather than in silos will help us expand our collective knowledge around child abuse and neglect to identify similarities and differences within the child welfare and military sectors.”

The purpose of the conference is to present this research to determine if there are disparities in current knowledge; support shared aspects; and allow time for cooperative discussion between its attendees, to take the information that both the military and child maltreatment and welfare research has gathered and integrate them to apply to general practice.

Session topics include:

  • Systematic determination of child abuse and neglect
  • Intervention: combined parent-child cognitive behavioral therapy for families that physically abuse
  • Prevention: innovative program to reduce family stress
  • Solutions and next steps

The sessions incorporate ‘translation’ and ‘future-directions’ aspects that emphasize how the research can be used in situations such as treating stress-exposed individuals, and strategies for prevention, alleviating injuries, and reversibility in child abuse. 

Small group discussions will be incorporated after each session to allow communication between researchers, trainees and practitioners on how to utilize the findings and material presented throughout the event. 

For more information about the conference and to register, go to http://protectchildren.psu.edu/conf17.

The Child Maltreatment Solutions Network was created to advance Penn State’s academic mission of teaching, research and engagement in the area of child maltreatment. Since the Solutions Network was launched in Fall 2012, its conferences have established a concrete frontier of understanding child maltreatment through advanced research. It is part of the Social Science Research Institute at Penn State.

Credit: Penn State / Penn StateCreative Commons

Last Updated July 12, 2021

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