Abstract
Child abuse and neglect continues to be a major social issue in the United States, with nearly 3.36 million child protective services investigation responses in 2015 (US Department of Health & Human Services [DHHS], Can I make an anonymous report of abuse? Children’s bureau, administration for children and families. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Retrieved from https://www.acf.hhs.gov/cb/faq/can8, 2017). This number represents a 9.0 percent increase since 2011 (DHHS, Can I make an anonymous report of abuse? Children’s bureau, administration for children and families. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Retrieved from https://www.acf.hhs.gov/cb/faq/can8, 2017). More than 75% of these children were victims of neglect with younger children being most likely to experience maltreatment (DHHS, Can I make an anonymous report of abuse? Children’s bureau, administration for children and families. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Retrieved from https://www.acf.hhs.gov/cb/faq/can8, 2017). In order to address the needs of these children, psychosocial assessment is required. Social workers perform psychosocial assessments with their clients to explore overall functioning and risk, including psychological and developmental histories and resources and stressors. The social worker in a medical setting should obtain as much information as possible from the patient’s chart and physicians in order to prepare for conducting an assessment. A psychosocial assessment includes both interviewing and observation, and the social worker should build rapport and express genuine concern for patient’s well-being. Although each medical setting will have its own forms and set of criteria to guide an assessment, most psychosocial assessments will follow a similar format.
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Scannapieco, M., Connell-Carrick, K., Casolaro, T. (2019). Psychosocial Assessment of Alleged Victims of Child Maltreatment. In: Giardino, A., Lyn, M., Giardino, E. (eds) A Practical Guide to the Evaluation of Child Physical Abuse and Neglect. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00635-8_16
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