Problem Of Child Abuse Research Articles

The approach of israeli health and mental health students toward child maltreatment

Child maltreatment is a multidisciplinary problem with legal, medical, social service, public policy, and mental health components. Therefore, it is essential to understand how members of different disciplines approach this problem. Studies are lacking on this subject in Israel. A preliminary study was conducted with 1,302 students of the four main disciplines dealing with the problem of child maltreatment: psychology, social work, education, and medicine. An instrument constructed for the purpose of this study was utilized to examine the following main areas used by professionals in determining cases of maltreatment: (a) their perception of the various situations of child maltreatment; (b) their awareness of the risk factors of child maltreatment; (c) their awareness of the signs of child maltreatment; and (d) their willingness to report various cases of maltreatment. The results indicate important areas in detecting cases of child maltreatment which students from the four disciplines may disregard. Those areas which could be strengthened in preparing future professionals for fulfilling their roles are discussed.

A Viewpoint to the Problem of Child Abuse

A Viewpoint to the Problem of Child Abuse

From battered children to family violence: what lessons should we learn?

Child abuse is an ancient problem but one that has grown alarmingly in the United States in the last few decades. Once the problem of child abuse was recognized in the 1960s, mandatory reporting was instituted to develop public health mechanisms for intervention. But the approaches taken then were inadequate, and as sexual abuse of children was acknowledged, social service agencies gradually devolved from providing help to simply investigating, a trend that has contributed to the present emergency situation. Proper knowledge of how best to treat and prevent child abuse is scarce; this makes it harder to base an educational program in family violence on sound evidence. Also, public awareness of child abuse is far ahead of efforts to intervene and prevent it. Neither federal nor state laws have clear policies about what child protection strategies should be, which inhibits professionals who are attempting to deal with the problem. National guidelines and resources are needed, although efforts to solve the problem are best approached on a local level. Any teaching program on child abuse should discuss the policy alternatives, and any group that is helping children and their families must agree on a policy to guide its work. The author maintains that the child protection system should be run not by county or state governments but by the private and public health care system because this system has greater financial resources, has a tradition of scientific inquiry, and is still perceived as a "helping" system.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Child maltreatment as perceived by Arab students of social science in The West Bank

There is a dearth of knowledge about the problem of child maltreatment in Arab societies. In the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the Palestinians are facing the challenge of establishing their own social welfare system as a result of signing the Declaration of Principles with Israel. In creating services for families and children, the helping professionals in these areas find that one of the main challenges is to integrate and apply knowledge accumulated in Western countries into a different sociocultural context. Another challenge is to develop knowledge on this subject congruent with their own cultural background. Because of this lack of knowledge, a study was conducted among 353 students in the helping professions in the West Bank. An instrument constructed for this study was utilized to examine the following subjects: (a) students' perceptions of situations of child maltreatment; (b) their awareness of signs of maltreated children; (c) their awareness of risk factors which could be related to this problem; and (d) their willingness to report cases of child maltreatment. The results indicate a high level of agreement among students in viewing situations of abuse as well as neglect as maltreatment. Differences were found in their willingness to report situations of maltreatment. A higher tendency was found to report situations of abuse rather than neglect. An inclination was found among students to minimize social and cultural factors as risk factors and to disregard signs that did not contain explicit signals of danger as characteristics of maltreated children. Implications for the development of services in Arab societies are discussed.

Child maltreatment: The United States Air Force's response

Families in the military are not immune to problems of child abuse and neglect, but few data have been disseminated which describe child maltreatment in the military. This article reports on the incidence of child maltreatment in the United States Air Force by presenting descriptive data on over 19,587 substantiated cases of child abuse and neglect which occurred over a 6-year period. Annual percentage increases in child maltreatment reports are discussed, as are substantiation rates for child abuse and neglect. This article also describes the United States Air Force programs serving military personnel and their families throughout the world. A subset of cases are analyzed and offenders' and spouses' perceptions of the services received and the benefits derived are reported.

The child abuse reporting laws: an ethical dilemma for professionals : I. Thompson-Cooper, R. Fugère, B. M. Cormier McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

A central issue in the development of family law and child protection in this country has been the right of the state to intervene in family life. The reporting laws, which were developed in the 1960s, made it mandatory for any citizen, including professionals, to report child abuse (physical and sexual) to the authorities. These laws have fundamentally altered the relationship between the clinician and families in need of help and have resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of cases assessed and treated by child welfare agencies. Because of the emphasis on case-finding, the limited resources have been stretched to the point where families with serious problems of child abuse do not get the services they require. Apparently, at least 60% of all reports turn out to be unfounded. Other criticisms of the current system include ineffective intervention, over-intervention and ignoring parents' rights. The legalization and bureaucratization of the child protection process has profoundly affected the relationship between troubled families and social workers who now must investigate them as well as help them. This role conflict is exacerbated even further in cases of alleged child sexual abuse, where social workers are often expected to inform the police of the allegations. The authors argue that the reporting laws have been useful in that society is aware of the problem, and they suggest that it may be more beneficial now to dispose of them.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

State Responses To Child Maltreatment

This article briefly reviews state responses to child maltreatment. First, the magnitude and extent of the problem of child maltreatment is reviewed. There follows a discussion of how states have addressed the problem through reporting laws and special courtroom procedures. The limits of state approaches to child maltreatment are discussed and the potential for an increased federal role in establishing child maltreatment policy is considered.

The Social Context of Child Maltreatment

When Kempe, Silverman, Steele, Droegemueller, and Silver (1962) created a new diagnostic entity--the Battered Child Syndrome--medical legitimacy was given to the ubiquitous problem of child maltreatment. This problem has not abated, despite the considerable ongoing professional attention given to it, perhaps because there has been a breakdown of the traditional support systems that enabled caregivers to cope with personal and social stressors in kinder, gentler times. There is a coherent body of literature and reasonable consensus about what constitutes high-quality parenting in middle-class, predominantly white populations. For such populations, the focus is on styles of parenting and parental practices that generate different kinds and levels of competence, mental health, and character in children. By contrast, the vast and burgeoning literature on child abuse and neglect is applied research, generally cross-sectional, that almost without exception uses impoverished, captive populations as subjects. The literature on child abuse and neglect has not been integrated with the literature on normal and optimal family functioning or socialization effects. One purpose of this article is to evaluate the relevance of findings based on middle-class white populations to the clinical literature on child maltreatment. Most attempts to define child maltreatment in empirical studies have relied of necessity on Child Protective Services records (e.g., Cicchetti & Barnett, 1991), thus excluding the kinds of maltreatment peculiar to middle-class families' ecological niche, such as depriving preschoolers of the opportunity for self-directed play in order to accelerate their scholastic performance. The legislation establishing the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, adopting a value-neutral stance, defined child abuse (or maltreatment) by a caretaker as physical or mental injury, sexual abuse, negligent treatment or maltreatment of a child under eighteen...which indicate that the health or welfare is harmed or threatened thereby. (Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, 1974). This definition fails to define injury or a child's welfare, or to take into account cultural variations in what is meant by optimal development and good parenting. Departures from affluent Euro-American standards of good parenting are often regarded as and implicitly as abuse. Definitions of Psychological maltreatment are especially ambiguous, as can be seen from the exchange between McGee and Wolfe (1991) and a spate of commentators, none of whom agree fully with the authors, or with each other. The position taken in this review is that escalating child maltreatment in the United States is symptomatic of societal abuse and neglect of the forgotten half of our citizens, with the primary causes and cures of child maltreatment attributable primarily to social-structural rather than to psychological factors. Therefore, the economic and cultural factors associated with child abuse are identified, thus situating the abusive family within a larger social context. Special circumstances affecting the occurrence of child maltreatment, such as maternal inexperience, single-parent status, parental discord, adoptive status, and the problematic behavior, are explored. Then, important facets of the two major parenting dimensions of demandingness and responsiveness that describe normal parent-child relations, as well as the patterns of parental authority based on these two dimensions, are examined in their possible application to abusive families. Finally, recommendations for prevention and intervention, and for research on child abuse, are offered. THE FAMILY IN CONTEXT The primary caregiving environment--the family--is itself embedded in a complex ecosystem that impacts family processes through conditions existing in the larger society. Two of those conditions are considered below: economic stress and the subcultural context. …

Child Abuse and Neglect: Controversies and Solutions

Government intervention in the lives of families, in cases of suspected child abuse and neglect, is a controversial subject. This article explores criticisms leveled at the child protection system in the United States, describes the weaknesses of that system, discusses the multitude of child maltreatment problems resulting in child protective service agency involvement, and analyzes the difficulty in assuring a more appropriate response to cases alleging child neglect. Reforms are proposed to help assure that child victims of severe abuse or neglect are kept out of dangerous homes. Legislative proposals are offered for improving the nation’s child protection infrastructure and otherwise helping protect the legal rights and interests of maltreated children.

Vulnerable children, vulnerable families: the social construction of child abuse

In this book, Susan Janko aims to move beyond sensationalism and platitudes to take a sensitive and serious look at the national problem of child abuse. She delves, through observations and interviews with parents and staff members, into the frustrating world of the child welfare system. The author examines the experiences of three parents who came to be known as abusive by a state-run Child Protection Services agency (CPS), and discusses how they and their children fared under the agency's intervention. From her insider perspectives as former director of the therapeutic pre-school programme and co-director of the CPS-sponsored programme with which these parents are involved, Janko demonstrates a social programme that is often counter-productive. Designed to provide parents with the support and skills necessary to help them raise their children at home, these agencies frequently fail to achieve the aim. And, too often, their well-intentioned intervention concludes with the most unhappy result of all - the child's removal to an institution or foster home. Instead, the author argues, far-reaching policy changes are needed to coordinate earlier and more diverse kinds of support for children and families who experience violence. She describes the parents and caseworkers interviewed as neither saints nor villains, but human beings living in a degenerating society and caught in the coils of an inadequate and misguided governmental construct. Through the lens of the interviews, Janko examines the synergetic relationship between the developing child and caregiving and social environments, and the ways in which society understands and defines child maltreatment - societal tolerances may change, leaving an impression that the prevalence of child maltreatment has declined or risen, although the actual caregiving situations are relatively unchanged.

The prevention of child abuse, part one: Community resources

The literature reveals greater emphasis on the causes and consequences of child abuse than on its prevention. A field study in an Australian capital city shows that while substantial amounts of information and services for people experiencing problems with parenting exist in the community, access to these sources is problematic. Improvements in efficiency or increases in funding will not, by themselves resolve the problem and strategies to change the more fundamental problem of public denial of the problem of child abuse will be required.

The child abuse reporting laws: an ethical dilemma for professionals.

A central issue in the development of family law and child protection in this country has been the right of the state to intervene in family life. The reporting laws, which were developed in the 1960s, made it mandatory for any citizen, including professionals, to report child abuse (physical and sexual) to the authorities. These laws have fundamentally altered the relationship between the clinician and families in need of help and have resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of cases assessed and treated by child welfare agencies. Because of the emphasis on case-finding, the limited resources have been stretched to the point where families with serious problems of child abuse do not get the services they require. Apparently, at least 60% of all reports turn out to be unfounded. Other criticisms of the current system include ineffective intervention, over-intervention and ignoring parents' rights. The legalization and bureaucratization of the child protection process has profoundly affected the relationship between troubled families and social workers who now must "investigate" them as well as help them. This role conflict is exacerbated even further in cases of alleged child sexual abuse, where social workers are often expected to inform the police of the allegations. The authors argue that the reporting laws have been useful in that society is aware of the problem, and they suggest that it may be more beneficial now to dispose of them.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Helpless and Omnipotent: Incongruencies in Canadian Perceptions of ‘Child’

During the last decades the socio‐political status of children in Western societies has become a focus of interest for researchers from various disciplines. As part of the more general trend of struggles for the human rights of specific sectors of society (e.g. African Americans, women, homosexuals) proponents established the “Children's Rights Movement” which has fought on behalf of the younger members of society, trying to secure them certain social rights and legal protection (e.g. Forer, 1973). Concern for children and their social status has been gradually institutionalised until gaining recognition also by major world organisations such as the United Nations which adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child in 1959 and established UNICEF, whose sole aim was to promote the welfare of children around the world. During the past decade extensive political as well as scholarly attention has been concentrated on problems of child abuse and neglect.

Child Abuse and the Bureaucratisation of Social Work

Child abuse became a public issue in the early 1970s. The alleged failure of social workers and welfare agencies to prevent children being killed by their parents and caretakers led to changes in the practice and organisation in child abuse work. The way public inquiries and government departments framed the problem of child abuse produced solutions which were essentially legalistic and bureaucratic. No longer was the aim to rehabilitate poorly functioning families, but to protect children from dangerous parents. But in order to achieve this aim, it was first necessary to identify the factors that would allow child protection agencies to recognise which families were dangerous and which were not. Once these factors were identified, it was possible to develop administrative systems that would facilitate the collection and analysis of information obtained during the investigation of suspected families. These systems allowed welfare agencies to identify ‘high risk’ cases. During the translation of the problem of child abuse into a set of judicial and bureaucratic procedures, therapeutically orientated professional practices found themselves out-manoeuvered. The translation witnessed the production of social workers as ‘passive agents’, a new cognitive perspective on the problem of child abuse, and a contribution to the bureaucratisation of child care practice.

Family Violence in the Air Force: A Look at Offenders and the Role of the Family Advocacy Program

Family violence exists throughout society and, unfortunately, also among military families. The Air Force's Family Advocacy Program is designed not only to treat victims, offenders, and families of abuse and neglect, but also to provide prevention services. Each Air Force base has a Family Advocacy Officer, who is a credentialed clinical social worker, charged with the duty of addressing spouse abuse and child maltreatment problems. To evaluate the effectiveness of current services, and to improve the quality of the services provided through the Family Advocacy Program, the Air Force is currently conducting a 4-year evaluation study. This research represents the largest study ever conducted on family violence, with either military or civilian offenders. This paper, based upon the first year of data collected at approximately one-third of all Air Force medical treatment facilities, reported on the descriptive characteristics of the substantiated cases of spouse abuse and child abuse/neglect, and the interventions which were being recommended to alleviate the abusive situations and to prevent future maltreatment. The results will guide policy and future manning and staffing decisions for the Air Force Family Advocacy Program, and serve to document the kinds of treatment strategies which work most effectively for which kinds of problems. Findings are expected to help improve the quality of services to victims, offenders, and families, and to do so for those who are civilians as well as for those who are in the military.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Rights, Moral Values and Natural Facts: a reply to Mary Midgley on the problem of child-abuse

Mary Midgley asserts that my argument concerning the problem of child-abuse was inappropriately framed in the language of rights, and neglected certain pertinent natural facts. I defend the view that the use of rights-talk was both apposite and did not misrepresent the moral problem in question. I assess the status and character of the natural facts Midgley adduces in criticism of my case, concluding that they do not obviously establish the conclusions she believes they do. Finally I briefly respond to the charge that my suggestions were illiberal.

Paediatric intervention in child protection

AbstractSince BASPCAN was founded 12 years ago an enormous amount has been achieved in both understanding and responding to the problems of child maltreatment. Paediatricians have played their part along with others, although the traditional view of medicine was that this was a social problem outside medical responsibility. Attitudes are changing and there is an increasing appreciation of the importance of maltreatment in many child health problems. It is also now accepted that doctors can only be effective if they work together in teams with other professionals. The consequences of child maltreatment present to paediatricians in many ways and symptoms and signs linked to abuse are common in clinical practice. Today the role of the paediatrician is much clearer and there is more guidance and information available about the diagnosis of sexual abuse. 1991 was the beginning of a new era in child protection where it will be seen whether the new insights acquired over the past decade can be applied for the welfare of children and families.

Conditions of risk for substitute care

The nationwide rise in the substitute care rate appears related, in part, to changes in children's family life which have increased the risk of out-of-home care. These changes include rising levels of teenage motherhood and never-married parenthood, high child poverty rates, and problems of child abuse and neglect, drug dependence and AIDS. The rise in substitute care is also correlated with an increased public reliance on kinship foster care. Placement with relatives was the largest component of growth in publicly supported foster care in Illinois during the 1980s. California and New York experienced similar increases. Current Population Survey data on children's living arrangements provide inclusive evidence on whether the growth in kinship foster care constitutes an expansion of the substitute care of children or reflects merely the incorporation of pre-existing informal arrangements into the formal system. The potential blurring of the boundaries between the two systems of kinship care raises budgetary concerns and adds to the need for better information about the circumstances of non-custodial parents in general. Data show that non-custodial mothers in inner-city Chicago share a similar profile with mothers of children in formal care: They are more likely to be single, economically vulnerable, in poor health, and socially isolated than custodial mothers. In addition, they are more likely to have experienced foster care themselves as children.

Treatment for abused children: When is a partial solution acceptable?

Physically maltreated children display a range of serious psychological problems. Despite the availability of effective treatment of similar problems in other populations of children, direct psychological treatment of abused children has rarely been reported. It is argued that such direct treatment, while constituting only a “partial solutiond” to the problem of child abuse, needs to be addressed through research and application.

Problems of child abuse with adolescents in chemically dependent families

Problems of child abuse with adolescents in chemically dependent families