Child welfare

Excerpted from Part 4: Special Issues - TAPP-C: Clinician’s Manual for Preventing and Treating Juvenile Fire Involvement.

Considerations

Fire involvement by children and youth is a very serious matter. Some caregivers become highly alarmed and struggle to find appropriate ways to manage their child’s fire involvement, particularly if it continues despite using their typical caregiving and disciplinary strategies. As a result, caregivers may respond to their child’s fire involvement with inappropriate strategies. Some examples include the following:

1. harsh or abusive discipline in response to an episode of fire involvement by the child
2. threatening to use or using exposure to heat or fire; for example, forcibly touching a child’s hand to a hot stove to “educate” a child regarding the dangers of firesetting and
3. locking a child with a history of fire involvement into his or her bedroom in order to manage night-time wandering or other behaviours. This child may have hidden fire-starting materials in the bedroom. If a fire were to start in the bedroom with the door locked, this child’s ability to escape the fire would be compromised.

There is no evidence that these drastic strategies by caregivers are effective in eliminating fire involvement. There is, however, very good evidence that harsh discipline is counter-productive in stopping antisocial behaviour in general.

These types of caregiver responses usually require involvement of local child welfare authorities.

Other situations that may warrant consulting child welfare authorities include the following:

1. fire involvement that is targeted toward siblings
2. caregiver non-compliance with treatment recommendations, such as eliminating the child or youth’s access to fire materials and/or unsupervised time in the community and
3. withdrawal from, or failure to attend, treatment.

Intervention modifications

Clinicians need to be proactive by preparing before becoming aware of such caregiver responses. This includes ensuring that caregivers and children are aware of the limits of confidentiality and knowing your child welfare reporting requirements.

In addition, it is helpful to become familiar with your local child welfare agencies so that, should these situations arise, you can respond in a routine, matter-of-fact way.

It is important for children’s mental health and child welfare professionals to work collaboratively to ensure that the best interests of children and families are protected.

These measures should help to ensure that families continue to participate in your service in a meaningful and effective way.

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