National Child Abuse Prevention Month

[QuiltinGramma]

The month of April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Children's Bureau, Office on Child Abuse and Neglect and its National Clearinghouse on Child Abuse and Neglect Information has a website at: http://nccanch.acf.hhs.gov/topics/prevention/
They have many resources available for your use. It looks to be a very informative site with many printable/downloadable articles.

(Had I realized this at the beginning of the month, I would have stuck this up then. Sorry!
Let's do what we can to stop the abuse.

[CelticJourney]

Thanks for the information !!

Thank you for posting this!

I'd like to point out though that statistics can be misleading... The National Clearing House linke you gave says that the rate of child abuse is about 12 in 1000 children, which would be slightly over 1%. But this is just *reported* child abuse, and represents only the tip of the ice berg.

Even when a case is reported, it may not be properly classified. This happened in my family the first time a neighbor reported abuse. My brother had been denied food for 3 days running (other than what the neighbor kids were sneaking over). The social worker interviewed us in our home, which we knew carried sound VERY well. There was absolutely no way we could tell her the truth. So as far as I know, that report came back that there was no abuse. It certainly wasn't on file the next time charges were filed 5 years later.

Beyond that, of course many cases are of course not reported. This can be due to lack of outside knowledge, lack of identification of the behavior as abusive, or because people fear an over-reaction from child protective services. People need to understand that 30% of reports filed are not even investigated because they are deemed to be meritless, and of those that are filed, only half end up with charges filed. Yes, miscarriages of justice do happen. But it is MUCH more likely that the error will be in leaving a truly abused child in the situation.

I've read different stats, and I wish I had some of the references noted. One time I read that 10% of adults describe their childhood as abusive. This is probably an under-estimate because of so many who can't, for one reason or another, acknowledge that their parents were abusive (like my brother).

I also have a research paper floating around the house somewhere that was done at a local university. The professor has done a lot of work on child abuse, and at a one time was trying to find out if there was a connection between abuse and socio-economic level. But what he found frightened him. He had 3 study groups or preschool aged children..."abused" (those that had a previous filing of child abuse charges), "low income" (in "Head Start" program), and "middle class" (those in private preschool). What he found when intake surveys were done was that 40% of the mothers admitted to spanking their children hard enough to leave bruises within the last year. This is considered abuse according to the National Clearinghouse. This was preschoolers, and was evenly distributed across groups. Even those in "active counseling" with child protective services. He actually found that in several of the active cases there were documented situations of abuse in the case files that had not been acted upon!

Its sad, really. I wish I knew what to do to fix it other than modeling good behavior. But what makes me sadder is when my Christian neighbor down the street is complaining about how her kids are already driving her nuts only one day into the Easter holiday from school. Sigh.

Jenn

[QuiltinGramma]

Jenn~
Thanks for your update! It's shocking that the statistics are so high.
Not being familiar with child abuse (really on any level until Sean's case), The National Clearing House looked like a good site for people to get information. I am so sorry that the iceberg is so big. Thank you for sharing your information.

[Radosny Matka]