For a structured response to the psychosocial consequences of the restrictive measures imposed by the global COVID-19 health pandemic: the MAVIPAN longitudinal prospective cohort study protocol.

INTRODUCTION: The COVID-19 pandemic and associated restrictive measures have caused important disruptions in economies and labour markets, changed the way we work and socialise, forced schools to close and healthcare and social services to reorganise. This unprecedented crisis forces individuals to make considerable efforts to adapt and will have psychological and social consequences, mainly on vulnerable individuals, that will remain once the pandemic is contained and will most likely exacerbate existing social and gender health inequalities. This crisis also puts a toll on the capacity of our healthcare and social services structures to provide timely and adequate care. The MAVIPAN (Ma vie et la pandémie/ My Life and the Pandemic) study aims to document how individuals, families, healthcare workers and health organisations are affected by the pandemic and how they adapt. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: MAVIPAN is a 5-year longitudinal prospective cohort study launched in April 2020 across the province of Quebec (Canada). Quantitative data will be collected through online questionnaires (4-6 times/year) according to the evolution of the pandemic. Qualitative data will be collected with individual and group interviews and will seek to deepen our understanding of coping strategies. Analysis will be conducted under a mixed-method umbrella, with both sequential and simultaneous analyses of quantitative and qualitative data. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: MAVIPAN aims to support the healthcare and social services system response by providing high-quality, real-time information needed to identify those who are most affected by the pandemic and by guiding public health authorities' decision making regarding intervention and resource allocation to mitigate these impacts. MAVIPAN was approved by the Ethics Committees of the Primary Care and Population Health Research Sector of CIUSSS de la Capitale-Nationale (Committee of record) and of the additional participating institutions. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: NCT04575571.

Adjustment of children using supervised access services: Longitudinal outcomes, multiple perspectives, and correlates.

Supervised access services (SAS) allow parents who represent a risk for their children or for the other parent to maintain contact with or exchange custody of their children in the presence of a third person. Even though these services have been designed in the children's best interest, few studies have, until now, documented the evolution in the parents' and children's adjustment or in the quality of the relationships between the family members throughout the services. To better understand this evolution, a longitudinal study comprising 3 time measures was conducted with 96 parents who were beginning the services. Although the results revealed that the children's evolution was stable all throughout the service trajectory, further analyses showed that the school-age children, and more particularly the boys, experienced a high level of difficulty. Furthermore, the study showed that the parents' evaluation of their children's adjustment differed according to whether or not the parent had to see the child in a supervised context. Finally, we observed that the evolution of the children's adjustment was correlated with the parents' psychological distress, the quality of the parent-child relationship, and conflict between the parents, all processes that did not have a tendency to improve throughout the service trajectory. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Social stigma and the situation of young people in lesbian and gay stepfamilies.

This article presents the results of a qualitative study examining how social stigmatization made the lives of young people in gay and lesbian stepfamilies more complex. The study focused primarily on the young people's viewpoint, which has until now rarely been taken into consideration in studies of gay and lesbian families. Eleven semi-structured interviews were conducted with adolescents and young adults from 15 to 29 years old. The results showed that these young people experienced social stigmatization because of the family they lived in, which in turn had repercussions on their personal, family, and interpersonal lives.

Links between parental psychological violence, other family disturbances, and children's adjustment.

In a sample of 143 parent-child dyads from two-parent and separated families, this investigation documented the links between parental psychological violence and separation or divorce, severity of parental conflict, triangulation of the child in this conflict, and polarized parent-child alliances. The unique and combined contributions of all these variables to children's behavior problems were also assessed. Participants were parents, mostly mothers, and their 10-12-year-old child. They were recruited through schools, community organizations, and newspapers. Questionnaires were administered at home. Findings suggest that separated families undergo more relational disturbances than two-parent families (more severe conflicts, more triangulation, stronger parent-child alliances), but the amount of parental psychological violence was similar in both groups. Psychological violence was associated with the severity of parental conflict, especially in two-parent families. Triangulation of the child in parental conflict was another correlate of psychological violence. Once all variables were controlled for, psychological violence remained the only significant correlate of children's externalized behavior problems. These findings raise the importance of preventing psychological violence toward children, especially in families plagued with severe parental conflicts.

Processes that contribute to resilience among youth in foster care.

The objective of this qualitative research is to better understand the processes that contribute to resilience among adolescents in foster care. Twelve boys and girls (X=15.9 years), identified as resilient, participated in this study. The mean duration of the teenagers' placement is 7.3 years. The results point to three types of turning points: action, relation and reflection. Four processes, directly or indirectly linked to the turning point, have also been identified: increase in perceived self-efficacy, distancing oneself from the risks, new opportunities, and the multiplication of benefits.

The impact of serial transitions on behavioral and psychological problems among children in child protection services.

This study focuses on the impacts of serial transitions on externalized and internalized behavior disorders, anxiety, and depression among children in child protection services. The research was carried out with a sample of 741 children. The findings demonstrate that the number of times a family is blended is a stronger predictive factor for children's adjustment than is the family structure at the time of the interview. In predicting externalized and internalized behavior problems among children, however, the effect of family structure disappears in favor of the variables associated with family functioning and family climate.

[The birth of a restructured family: qualitative analysis of discourse between adolescents]. / La naissance d'une famille recomposée: une analyse qualitative du discours d'adolescents et d'adolescentes.

This paper discusses a period in the life of a stepfamily that has not been widely studied until now: the period immediately preceding and immediately following the move towards a blended family. This period is studied from the viewpoint of adolescents living through it. Here, the blending of a family is examined as a family transition; its "paranormative" character brings up issues that pertain especially to the children's adjustment. Twenty-six semistructured interviews were carried out with adolescents between the ages of 11 and 17. Among the main results was the observation that 2 events in particular mark this transition: the announcement of future cohabitation and the cohabitation itself.