Dealing with Disclosures by Foster Youth Posted on March 1, 2006 Cassandra Simmel (bio) thinks that all researchers working with children and youth should be prepared for disclosures of abuse.

I think that something that has... It's not just unique to child maltreatment and child welfare researchers but anyone who does research with children and youth is the fact that disclosures of abuse might come up. Now it's obviously going to come up more so in research in the child maltreatment area, but I think that all researchers should be prepared for the fact that something might be disclosed and what does a researcher then do with this disclosure.

Now, specific to child maltreatment and child welfare research, for a long time researchers who are in this area never even specifically asked youth about... They're exploring child abuse and child maltreatment, but not really asking specific questions to the youth about it. That's changing.

There are many more larger-scale projects now where we are specifically asking about the circumstances of the abuse, the history, their reactions. We're also asking questions that are sensitive in other ways about their mental health, about suicidal behavior, about sexual behavior including gay/lesbian behavior.

I think it's taken a while for the field to evolve to think is it OK to probe about these kinds of questions? Again, this is a very highly stressed, highly traumatized population, so is it OK to talk to foster children about these events? Are we opening up a door as researchers? Do we have the resources to handle this? Do researchers have the capacity to respond to these kinds of disclosures and know what to do? Should they provide resources? What should they do? They're acting as researchers, not as clinicians.

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