Coordinating Child Sexual Abuse Services (Heritage) - Softcover

Despite the magnitude of the problem of child sexual abuse and the concomitant range of behavioural, emotional, and interpersonal problems in child victims, there is a dearth of services available to respond to this client population. Interventions which do exist tend to be sparse, piecemeal in approach, with no systematic follow-up or evaluation. Often services are available to specific target clients (usually victim and perpetrator seen separately), with little consideration directed to other family members or to the social environment in which the abusive behaviour has occurred. In rural areas these problems are compounded - hampered by travel distances, diverse population bases, and limited service resources.

Coordinating Child Sexual Abuse Services in Rural Communities reports on a three-year project concentrating on the design and implementation of a coordinated program for the treatment of child sexual abuse in rural Manitoba. This project was unusual in that if followed a rigorous research design which incorporated a matched comparison of test and control communities. The impact of a `coordinated service model' in response to child sexual abuse was assessed at the family, agency, and community levels. This was also one of the rare studies to date that offered detailed information on the circumstances of service delivery in rural communities, including rich case material to highlight salient practice themes at the case and the community levels. The book is divided into three sections: design and implementation of coordinate community services; evaluation of coordinated services, and reflections on community experience.