Jini Roby

• Brigham Young University

The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) stipulates children are entitled to “a family environment…of happiness, love and understanding”. Recent work on deinstitutionalization of children from residential care has found important child wellbeing differences, particularly around hope. Using data from Ghana—a country that has initiated...

The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child declares that children are entitled to grow up in a family environment with love, happiness and understanding. Governments and international child welfare agencies have promoted the reintegration of children currently in residential care facilities with family or other caregivers. We assess whether 157...

Domestic minor sex trafficking (DMST) is a rapidly growing problem in the United States, yet legislative efforts to address victim needs have begun only recently. DMST is an issue that spans several areas of social work practice, as emerging research shows that most children and youths exploited in commercial sex have typically experienced prior ab...

Over 2 million children are cared for in kinship care in Kenya, and approximately 100,000 are believed to be living in residential care centres. Under leading international policy instruments ratified and domesticated by Kenya, domestic adoption is considered an option to be promoted and regulated in ensuring children's right to family-based care....

Despite the abundant scientific evidence demonstrating the benefits of family-based care for children and the damages brought on by institution-based care, the social work profession continues to endorse and engage in practices that promote the latter. This is particularly true through orphan tourism and orphan volunteerism—short- and longer-term f...

Under the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, every child is entitled to free primary school education and access to secondary school or occupational training, and education has become one of the basic indicators of child wellbeing. Large scale studies published in the 1990s and early 2000s generally showed that significant educational disp...

The conflation of various illicit intercountry adoption activities under the umbrella of ‘child trafficking’ has caused confusion in the adoption literature. Utilizing a pragmatic approach, this article explores the cacophony of opinions that have arisen with regard to trafficking in illicit adoption activities, and identifies the concept of exploi...

We provide a brief response to a commentary submitted by Rosky in which he questions the rationale and methodological merits of our original study about full-disclosure polygraph outcome differences between juvenile and adult sex offenders. At the heart of Rosky’s substantive concerns is the premise that only research tying polygraphy outcomes to a...

Despite the empirical and theoretical chasm between the opponents and proponents of polygraphy, its use is prominent among sex offender agencies in the United States. However, current research on polygraph examination outcomes among juvenile sex offenders, along with potential differences from their adult counterparts, is scarce and outdated. In th...

Guatemala has faced a disproportionate number of children placed outside their families through unethical intercountry adoptions or into large residential settings, jeopardising child and family rights. In response, an international team conducted a pilot training in Guatemala on family group conferencing (FGC) as a means of maintaining children in...

Using social justice as the conceptual foundation, the authors present the structural barriers to socially just intercountry adoptions (ICAs) that can exploit and oppress vulnerable children and families participating in ICAs. They argue that such practices threaten the integrity of social work practice in that arena and the survival of ICA as a pl...

Emerging research suggests that biological relatedness contributes to differential treatment between children being raised by kin and the biological children in the caregiver's household. This potential concern may be elevated especially when household resources are stretched thin. In this study, 518 U gandan youth and their caregivers were intervi...

Intercountry adoptions prevent institutionalization but may erode children’s rights to their families and cultural heritage. Family group conferencing offers a culturally adaptable intervention that looks for domestic solutions before turning to out-of-country placements. Guatemalan social work education offers a hospitable environment in which to...

Human trafficking, or trafficking in persons (TIP), is the buying, selling, and exploiting of human beings for profit. It is a modern-day form of slavery in which human beings are treated as properties or commodities. Human trafficking generally falls into two major categories: labor exploitation and sexual exploitation. Victims can be found in a w...

How children perceive parental involvement has implications for their development and well-being, as well as the father-child relationship. Emerging research suggests that father involvement is a multifaceted concept, often driven by evolving cultural mandates. In this study, survey data were collected from 704 adolescents aged 14-16 in Botswana, w...

The shortage of healthcare workers caring for South Africa's 5-6 million persons living with HIV/AIDS (PLHA) calls for inquiry into workers' challenges and experiences. This exploratory study examines one little-studied challenge: stigmatisation of HIV/AIDS healthcare workers based on their association with PLHA. The authors tested the hypotheses t...

In this pilot study, the Children's Hope Scale was used for the first time in Africa to compare hope levels among a sample of 41 orphans and 40 non-orphans, aged 8–16 years, in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. Contrary to results suggested by other regional data and their own hypothesis, authors found that orphaned children reported slightly highe...

There is a growing practice of adoption services on the Internet with varying degrees of regulation, depending on whether it is domestic infant adoption, public foster care adoption, or international adoption. Regulation is particularly lacking in domestic infant adoptions, with Web sites connecting prospective birth and adoptive parents, sometimes...

From a global perspective, the typical person living with HIV/AIDS is likely a sub-Saharan African woman. Yet despite calls from NASW to adopt a global outlook on the HIV/AIDS crisis, little research has examined how such women cope. In this study, the authors used a mixed-methods approach to explore how one sample of sub-Saharan African women (N =...

Although education of children is universally accepted as a leading mechanism of poverty eradication and social development, many developing nations continue to struggle in achieving gender parity in primary and secondary education. While Mozambique has recently accelerated its efforts to reduce this gap, girls are still enrolled and attending scho...

English Intercountry adoption, once viewed as a means of international charity, has recently been challenged by political and economic forces, leading to vio lation of human rights. The authors compare the experiences of two sending countries – Romania and the Marshall Islands – and suggest the utilization of a bottom-up human rights approach. Fren...

In this study, 162 HIV-positive mothers in Uganda were interviewed about the involvement of fathers and paternal kin, regarding current support they provide to children and as child placement options in the event of the mother s death. More than half of the children had fathers who were already deceased. Another one third had fathers who were alive...

In northern Thailand poverty, political turmoil, sex tourism and cultural dynamics converge to create a booming sex industry. The purpose of this article is to examine how the dynamics of supply and demand feed into prostitution in that region, with attention to available information on human trafficking. While the line separating prostitution and...

An estimated 17,000 people are trafficked into the U.S. each year. Nearly a decade after passing the Trafficking Victims and Protection Act (TVPA) to address human trafficking, the U.S. is still grappling to balance punishing traffickers and protecting victims. This paper examines the victim benefits and the trend in criminal prosecution of the per...

In response to the orphan crisis in sub-Saharan Africa, the international child welfare community has agreed on a model that aims to increase the capacity of families and communities. Yet, little is known thus far about the service content and efficacy of programs based on the model. This project examined a community-based program in Uganda that pr...

English In this article the practice of using child soldiers is examined in the light of the structural elements that facilitate and perpetuate this form of institutionalized child abuse. Based on new models for understanding this form of child abuse, the authors suggest intervention methods at the macro and micro levels. French Cette étude examine...

This study explored the child welfare plans of 102 mothers with terminal illnesses (predominantly AIDS) in rural Mozambique. The majority of mothers assumed that after their death the extended family would care for the children, but none offered a clearly identified plan. Many hoped that the government would provide for the children's education, fo...

AS THE NUMBER of children orphaned increases due to HIV/AIDS, international attention has been directed towards finding best practices of caring for these children. However the voices of the caregivers responsible for raising these orphans are rarely heard in the discussion about responsibilities and solutions. Believing their opinions to be of gre...

The plight of Africa's AIDS orphans has reached crisis proportions, and the international community is beginning to mobilize at the family, community, national, and international levels. Despite these encouraging efforts, the response is inadequate, and increased attention and action are needed. The authors suggest that international adoption, alth...

Along with the increasing numbers of international adoptions, there is a developing trend toward openness. In this study, the authors examined the experiences of U.S. adoptive parents who adopted children from the Republic of Marshall Islands. The surveys addressed their initial motivations, the facilitation process for openness, the terms and cond...

This study examines the opinions and perceptions of 454 adults representing 15% of the total households in the Republic of Marshall Islands regarding intrafamily and in-country adoptions. Qualitative and quantitative methods yielded results indicating a nearly unanimous agreement for children staying within the extended family and against stranger,...

English Around 1.2 million women and girls enter the sex trade every year, generating US$1.5 billion annually for their exploiters. Between 30 percent and 35 percent of the victims are girls under 18 years old. This article explores the growing problem of global trafficking of women and children for prostitution and outlines specific policy recomme...

Angel (not her real name) was first sexually abused by her uncle when she was eight years old. At that time, Angel was working rather than going to school, selling sampaguita flowers on the streets of Metro Manila to help support her family. When her uncle began abusing her, she was so ashamed that she chose not to tell anyone in her family. Later,...

Web-based videoconferencing is one method employed by some schools of social work to supervise students in international field placements. This paper examines how specific international and national laws apply to that process. Laws examined include the European Union Privacy Directive, the United States' Health Portability and Accountability Act (H...

The family group conference (FGC) involves the extended family in a solution-focused, strengths-based approach to solving problems. As initially implemented in a state child welfare system, the FGC model was evaluated through questionnaires and comprehensive interviews with family members and professionals who participated in 21 conferences. Resear...

This study assessed the impact of an educational breast-feeding intervention on the knowledge, attitudes and perceived ability to access breast-feeding resources among Spanish-speaking Latino families making breast-feeding decisions. Conducted in cooperation with the local office of The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and...

During the last two decades, the extended family has been rediscovered as a viable and meaningful resource for nurturing and protecting children. The purpose of this article is to provide an historical context for involving the extended family in child welfare cases and to identify key factors influencing that involvement.

Increasing numbers of social work training programs are offering international field practicum placements. However, because it is difficult to provide appropriate, high quality supervision that is needed over large distances, many educators and researchers are calling for the greater use of Internet-based videoconferencing to deliver remote supervi...

While poverty is suspected to be the major reason for birth families relinquishing their children for international adoptions, little is known of the impact of the interplay among the economic, familial, and cultural aspects of a particular sending country which culminates in the adoption decision. In this study, the authors studied 73 birthmothers...

Since the days of Mary Ellen Wilson, the American child welfare system has become increasingly regulated and monitored by the legal system of laws and courts. It is a reality of modern child welfare practice that the most important decisions about a case are made not at the agency, but on the legislative floor and in the courtroom. A child welfare...

While legislative efforts at the federal and state levels have represented a dramatic change in the last three decades, there is a great range and variations in the laws addressing elder abuse, leading to difficulty in generating comparison data, and coordinating program creation and implementation across state lines. This article examines the legi...