Children Prevention and Treatment Programs
Child Abuse Producting Children Prevention and Treatment Programs
In the United States many types of social programs, usually at the county or state levels, have attempted to reduce and prevent child abuse. Current approaches involve identifying high-risk parents-such as young, single, first-time mothers-and providing parental skills training, counseling, education, and social support. Often trained social workers or nurses provide this support by visiting the family’s home on a regular basis, encouraging community contact, and expanding the caretaker’s knowledge about available social services.
Some home visitation programs have shown promise in reducing abuse among high-risk families. The most successful strategies provide home visitation that begins at or before the child’s birth and continues for two or more years. In one such program for unmarried teenage mothers, only 4 percent of mothers had abused or neglected their children after two years, contrasted to 19 percent of a comparison group not in the program.
Other programs, known as intensive family preservation programs, try to preserve families in which abuse has occurred rather than send the child to foster care. A caseworker visits the family’s home frequently and intensively over a period of weeks and provides counseling and practical assistance for such issues as finding employment and obtaining child care.
However, many prevention and treatment programs may not reduce the incidence of child abuse significantly. Studies indicate that the more intervention services a family receives, the more abuse occurs in the family. Intensive family preservation programs, for example, provide short-term relief, but they do not seem to reduce placement of children in foster homes or lower the risk of maltreatment. (1)
In this Section: Child Abuse, Child Abuse Types, Child Abuse Prevalence, Child Abuse Causes (including Intergenerational Transmission of Violence, Social Stress, Social Isolation and Family Structure), Child Abuse Effects, Child Abuse Reporting (including Abused Children Care and Children Prevention and Treatment Programs) and Child Support.
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