Lois Pierce

Professor, Director
Ph.D., ACSW, Washington University
130 Bellerive Hall
314-516-6384
piercel@umsl.edu

Lois Pierce is a professor of social work and Director of the School of Social Work at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. She has published extensively in the area of child welfare. Specifically, she has written articles on the role of race and gender in the sexual abuse of children, and has examined factors that lead to return home after children have been placed in out-of home care. She has conducted evaluations for the Missouri Department of Family Services and for several agencies in St. Louis. In addition, her CSAP-funded program, Be A Star, was selected as a program to note and has been replicated by other agencies.

She teaches courses on social work practice and research and in the BSW and MSW programs.

Dr. Pierce has worked as a psychiatric social worker with preadolescent children and their families. She has also worked as a school social worker in Aurora, Illinois and as a therapist in an adolescent clinic in San Bernardino, California. More recently she has worked with survivors of incest in groups and in individual therapy.

Special Interests: Child Welfare, Child Abuse, and Mental Health

Recent Publications:

Pierce, L. and Bozaiek, V. (2009). Colaboration for the Promotion of Comunity and Individual Health. Social Work in Public Health 24(1), 117-123.
(Abstract: Child maltreatment, although defined and measured somewhat differently in the United States and South Africa, presents social workers and others with opportunities for working cross-culturally to increase understanding of this problem and to improve assessment and intervention. This article describes a long-term multiproject collaboration between the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town, South Africa, and the University of Missouri-St. Louis in the United States that has benefited both campuses and their communities.)

Shields, N., Nadasen, K., and Pierce, L. (2008). A Comparison of the Effects of Witnessing Community Violence and Direct Victimization Among Children in Cape Town, South Africa. Journal of Interpersonal Violence 24(7), 1192-1208.
(Abstract: This study is based on a sample of children from the Cape Town area in South Africa. The study compares the effects of witnessing school or neighborhood
violence compared with being victimized in each context on psychological distress.
The findings suggest that in the context of the school, victimization has
a somewhat stronger effect on distress than witnessing violence. However, in
the neighborhood, the opposite was the case. “Unknown locus of control” was
also analyzed as a moderating variable. The findings are interpreted in the context
of violence in South African society. The study also investigates the overlap
between witnessing violence, victimization, and perpetration in the child’s
school and neighborhood. The vast majority of victims had been witnesses as
well as perpetrators. Longitudinal research, which could track involvement in
various forms of violence starting at a very early age, is needed to clearly assess
the differential impact of each form of violence.)

Shields, N., Nadasen, K., and Pierce, L. (2008). The Effects of Community Violence on Children in Cape Town, South Africa. Child Abuse and Neglect 32(5), 589-601.
(Abstract: Objective: The primary objective of the study was to investigate the relationship between exposure to community violence (neighborhood, school, police, and gang violence) and psychological distress in a sample of children living in the Cape Town, South Africa area. Another objective was to identify variables that moderate and mediate the relationship between exposure to community violence and psychological distress. Methods: Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 185 children between the age of 8 and 13 from five Cape Town Township schools. Structured scales were used to measure exposure to several forms of community violence, family functioning, social support, perceptions of safety, and "unknown" locus of control. Results: Exposure to all forms of violence was extremely high and resulted in substantial psychological distress. Perceived safety functioned as a mediating variable for all forms of violence. Unknown locus of control, social support, family organization, and family control moderated the effects of exposure to certain kinds of violence. Surprisingly, exposure to murder was not related to psychological distress, suggesting a possible "numbing" effect of extreme forms of violence. Hearing about violence from others had almost the same effect as actually witnessing it. Older children had witnessed more violence and were experiencing more distress, suggesting an "exposure accumulation" effect. Conclusions: The findings suggest the importance of a child's ability to feel safe in reducing the distress that occurs as a result to exposure to violence. Parents and schools can help children cope, but there appear to be limits. Early intervention, before maladaptive coping mechanisms have developed, also appears to be important. (Contains 1 figure and 5 tables.)

Lewandowski, C. and Pierce, L. (2004). Does Family-Centered Out-of-Home Care Work? Comparison of a Family-Centered Approach and Traditional Care. Social Work Research 28(3), 143-151.
(Abstract: This research assessed the effectiveness of a family-centered approach to out-of-home care in reunifying children with their families by comparing differential exit rates of children whose families received family-centered services with children whose families received routine child welfare services. The sample included 472 children who were in foster care from 1994 to 1996 in Missouri. Survival analysis was used to calculate the probability that a child would be reunified with his or her family at a particular time and to compare the differential exit rates for the children who experienced subsequent placement during the study period. The authors used Cox regression analysis to compare the likelihood of reunification between the two groups. Findings indicate that during the latter part of the study, family-centered out-of-home care counties reunified children at a faster rate than comparison counties.)

Pierce, L. and Bozaiek, V. (2004). Child abuse in South Africa: an examination of how child abuse and neglect are defined. Child Abuse and Neglect 28(8), 817-832.
(Abstract:
Objective: The purpose of this study was to explore which of 17 categories of child maltreatment South Africans evaluated as most serious and to determine if those working with abuse and neglect evaluated abuse and neglect differently from those who did not.
Method: A revised version of Giovannoni and Becerra’s [Giovannoni, J., & Becerra, R. (1979). Defining child abuse. New York: The Free Press] questionnaire exploring the definition of abuse and neglect was completed by 181 residents of Cape Town, South Africa. The new form had 17 categories of child maltreatment, including 4 categories of societal abuse. Respondents were social workers (n = 57), human service workers (n = 42), laypersons (n = 65), and members of the child protection unit of the South African Police (n = 18). ANOVA was used to compare the groups’ responses. When significant differences among groups were found, a Bonferroni post hoc test was run to determine differences between groups.
Results: The respondents ranked sexual abuse and child prostitution as most serious and housing and child labor as least serious of the 17 categories. There was a significant difference (p ≤ .01) between groups on nine categories. When post hoc tests were run, differences were found for eight categories with laypersons generally evaluating categories as significantly more serious than social workers.
Conclusions: Reasons for the order of the rankings are discussed, but concern remains that differences in the evaluation of child maltreatment will lead to difficulty in implementing a protocol for identifying and responding to incidents of abuse and neglect.

Courses:

FS2009

SW 6400 - Practice and Program Evaluation