Child Abuse (cont.)
What is child abuse?
A broad definition of child abuse implies purposeful and serious injury inflicted upon a child by a caregiver. Specific countries and ethnic groups have developed sometimes widely divergent definitions. In the United States, each state is responsible for drafting definitions for child abuse and neglect consistent with federal law. The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, amended in October 1996, provides the basis from which individual states may structure their legislation.
Four broad categories are generally recognized:
- neglect (63%);
- physical abuse (16%);
- sexual abuse (10%) and;
- emotional abuse (7%) (2005 national data).
What does the term child neglect include?
Child neglect is the most frequently reported form of child abuse
(63% of all cases) and the most lethal.
Neglect is defined as the failure to provide for the shelter,
safety, supervision, and nutritional needs of the child. Child
neglect may be physical, educational, or emotional. The assessment of
child neglect requires the consideration of cultural values and
standards of care as well as the recognition that the failure to
provide the necessities of life may be related to poverty.
Physical neglect includes the refusal or delay in seeking
health care, abandonment, inadequate supervision, expulsion from the
home, or refusal to allow a runaway to return home.
Educational neglect includes the allowance of chronic
truancy, failure to enroll a child of mandatory school age in school,
and failure to attend to a special educational need.
Emotional neglect involves a marked inattention to the
child's needs for affection, refusal of or failure to provide needed
psychological care, spousal abuse or parental substance abuse in the
child's presence, and permission of drug or alcohol use by the child.
Next: What actions are viewed as physical child abuse? »
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