Child Abuse-Reflection and Social Policy Analysis Essay Example

reports are of great interest, since several countries around the world have patterned their child protection systems on the American one, thus demonstrating that the issues faced in United States have wide applicability (Helfer and Kempe 1997 627).

In the course of our study, the intrinsic character of child abuse in the light of social policy shall be covered. Considering the facts and supporting data, the study shall discuss the concept of child abuse that is currently occurring by the depiction of child abuse rates, particularly in the United States and other Asian countries. Proving the existence of such governing social policy, the study shall provide various organizations implementing necessary rules and regulation that provides protection for these children.

Lastly, the study shall include the analytic frameworks, specifically Neoliberalism, Globalization, Post- Modernism or Late Capitalism, that will serve as the fundamental guidelines for the topic discussion. Child Abuse: The Social Policy Child maltreatment has loomed as a serious social problem for centuries. Public recognition of the matter; however, is fairly recent. Concerns regarding children's health and welfare have continued to be at the forefront of social policy, professional practice, and public interest in the United States and throughout the world (Horton and Cruise 2001 1).

Before examining incidence and prevalence rates further, definitions of child maltreatment should be addressed. The definitions found in the federal Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act is used most commonly; however, many states have modified them, yielding no universally accepted legal definitions of child maltreatment. Although, there are ideological similarities across definitions; thus, expressing broad conceptual explanations of five types of maltreatment: Physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, neglect, and witnessing domestic violence

(Horton and Cruise 2001 1).

The types of child abuse are categorized by the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect (NCCAN) in terms of abusers action towards the child. Physical abuse of a child is defined as those acts of commission by a caregiver that cause actual physical harm or have the potential for harm. Such abuse includes the child battering or even slight unreasonable and inappropriate spanking (Pecora 2000 135). Sexual abuse is defined as those acts wherein a caregiver uses a child for sexual gratifications.

The policy depicts the situations of child incest and pedophiles, which is the prime contributors of sexual abuse in children (Krug 2002 60). Emotional abuse includes the failure of a caregiver to provide an appropriate and supportive environment, and includes acts that have an adverse effect on the emotional health and development of a child. Such acts include restricting a child’s movements, denigration, ridicule, threats and intimidation, discrimination, rejection and other nonphysical forms of hostile treatment (Pecora 2000 135).

Neglect refers to the failure of a parent to provide for the development of the child – where the parent is in a position to do so- in one or more of the following areas: health, education, emotional development, nutrition, shelter and safe living conditions. Neglect is thus distinguished from circumstances of poverty in that neglect can occur only in cases where reasonable resources are available to the family or caregiver (Krug 2002 60). Empirical research suggests that the most common and lasting effects of physical abuse, sexual abuse, and neglect tend to be related to associated and embedded psychological experiences.

In such case, most of the negative experiences are repressed in

either the unconscious or subconscious, which causes a great deal of psychological torture in the child (Myers 2002 79). In addition, several studies have indicated that emotional abuse or neglect, occurring alone, is associated with negative effects of a severity equal to or greater than other forms of abuse. Thus, psychological maltreatment may be thought of as a unifying concept that embodies many of the most significant components of child abuse and neglect (Myers 2002 79).

However, the lack of clear and consistent legal definitions likely contributes to problems in identifying child psychological maltreatment, inaccuracies in reporting such maltreatment, and limitations in the ability of child protective services to intervene to protect children who are psychologically maltreated. National reporting statistics have consistently demonstrated that psychological maltreatment is the least common form of reported and substantiated child maltreatment (Wolfe 1999 32).

The American Association for protecting Children (1988) found that psychological maltreatment accounted for approximately 8% of all official reports of child abuse in the United States in 1986. Data from NCCAN indicated that psychological abuse accounted for 6% of reported child maltreatment cases in 1996. The most recent statistics available indicate that in 8% of reported cases of child abuse, psychological maltreatment is the primary form of abuse (Barnett etal 2005 163). However, the data on psychological maltreatment still remains dynamic and unpredictable (Wolfe 1999 32).

The Epidemiology of Child Abuse The child and family social services delivery system in many areas of the country remains overburdened. In 2002, nearly 2 million U. S children were reported as bused and neglected. Compared with 1990 reports, this represents an increase of some 46% in officially reported victims. The United

States federal government recently estimated that 532,000 children were placed in foster care in family and non-family setting, and 813,000 children were served throughout that fiscal year (Jenson and Fraser, 2005 p. 19).

Child abuse is disturbingly common, even the most stringent definition: as estimated 1200-1500 children (0. 018 per 1000 children) are killed in the United States each year by their parent or parent figure due to various types of child abuse. However, extreme instances of child abuse comprise only a minority of identified cases in epidemiological studies. According to the survey done by the National Incidence Studies (NIS) that are based on official reports of child abuse, an estimated 1. 5 and 2. 8 million children in the United States have been abused in 1993 (Rutter and Taylor 2002 326).

During the same year, the U. S Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect initiated a declaration of child protection emergency. During the years 1985-1993, there has been an alarming 50% increase in the case reports of child abuse. Every annual span, there are approximately 3 million cases of child abuse being reported in the United States. During these years, the prime abuse that occurred is neglect, which accounts 54% of the said reports. The rationale for this causation has been pointed out due to the absence of child-protecting agencies.

According to the facts gathered by the NIS-1, 160,000 children are being abused annually, which suffers severe or life-threatening maltreatments. In addition, it has been approximated that there are around 1000 to 2000 children that die as resulted by various forms of abuse (Bethea 1999). According to the data gathered by the U. S Department of

Health and Human Resources (2005), child neglection accounts for 61% with a total raw count of 529,460, physical abuse occurred around 10. 9% with reported cases of 94,700, multiple maltreatments rate 10. 8% with 93,912 incidence, psychological maltreatment, others or unknown accounts 9. % with 83,611 raw reports and lastly, sexual abuse with 7. 7% and 66,987 on raw cases (Source: www. acf. dhhs. gov).

Child Abuse: Social Policy Development Child abuse is one of the five leading causes of childhood death in the United States, and other parts of European counties today and has serious physical, emotional, and behavioral consequences for the child, including, in some cases, a tendency toward aggression and violence. The prevailing theory in 1600s about the reasons for child abuse was that parents who abused their children were mentally disturbed.

The focus on parental psychopathology led to “talking cures” – psychotherapy or counseling- or to removing children from the home. The theory ignored the extraordinary stresses many parents of abused children endure (Mankiller 1999 87). The contemporary discourse of child protection began in the aftermath of the child abuse inquiries in England and eventually had an impact worldwide. There had been an explosion of these public inquiries in England, most of which concerned cases of fatal child abuse in the 1960s and 1970s.

The inquiries of providing avenues for the venting of criticisms of policy and practice in child welfare and also in regards to the judging of the competencies of social workers themselves had been pointed out. Argument pertaining to the rights of the states to intervene in family life in accordance to child protection has been a major controversial debate of

their time (Lawrence 2000 70). The argument continued even with the advent of social workers; hence, the attention of the public was focused on management errors resulted by the failing interventions of social workers.

Such condition initiated a “moral panic”, which endeavors a great deal of social anxiety among people; hence, the social community demanded for the policy fixation in accordance to child abuse and social worker’s regulations (Wilson and James 2001 251). In this period, the formation of child protecting agencies and organizations sprung up, and started providing the rightful and appropriate child protection policies. The social community recognized the arguments, perspectives and moral-conceptual frameworks concerning the issues, which in the end, became an internationally recognized social policy (Robert 2002 76).

The intrinsic social policy governing the public concern on child abuse is recognized even before 1960s, and the attitude of the social community about the said issue is predetermined to be contrary. However, not every family complies in this social norm especially during 1960s to 1993, wherein massive child abuse reports occurred; hence, the concept of public awareness in the issue triggered the formation of formal associations that aim to manage the said social policy.

Application of Analytic Frameworks Globalization As with the framework of globalization, the concept reigns in the statement of international move against child abuse wherein every country with differing cultures are subjected to the social policy of protecting these children from abuse. In these days of globalization, different forms of child abuse have been identified such as child pornography, sex tourism, child labour, street children and the abduction of children between one or more countries. More recently, in the United Kingdom, there have

been cases where children in residential care have been abused (Smith and O’Hagan 1999 215).

As exemplified by the international organization, United Nations in the Article 19 of Convention on the Rights of the Child states, child protection is an important role for childcare workers, particularly as they may be the first person to notice that a child is showing signs of abuse or neglect or changes in the child’s behavior. The United Nations requires all early years establishment to have policy on child protection and with this should go a set of procedures clearly stating what workers should do if they suspect that a child is being abused.

The period of globalization has contributed a lot on the development of social policy by instilling the specifications of social workers responsible for child welfare and protection (Smith and O’Hagan 1999 216). In this same period, the acts of child abuse are tremendously evident even with the implementation of social workers. Moreover, the moral panic is still on its verge due to the failing governmental interventions against child abuse. The privacy and welfare of the families have greatly affected; hence, the issuance of such social policy of child abuse has been modified and placed into specific limitations (Dunning 2004 291).

In the case of child abuse policies, the social workers are not allowed to intervene unless further evidences portraying any form of child abuse has been directly proven. The case requires valid social proofs of child abuse whether or not claimed by the abused child. The limitations provided a significant decrease in moral anxiety of the public against social service, and further enhanced the development of such firms. However,

even with the advent of such governmental agencies, the epidemiological count of child abuse is still on its verge of increase (Schmidt and Hersh 2000 162).

Parenting structure has become one of the major contributing factors of child abuse during this period. As perceived by societal concepts, males are the predominating members of the family during the times wherein child abuse is condemned to the point of social calamity. The society issued equal rights between the two parents in terms of child management in order to ensure as well the security of the child. However, contrary to the expectations of the public, recent research found out that child abuse cases reported are predominately coming from single parent mothers who possess low economic status in life (Rutter and Taylor 2002 326).

The concept of globalization also covers the stage of market industrialization, wherein the view of economic and production increase are subjected to various factory establishments. The period of slave market, wherein low payments for increased number of working hours are widely implemented especially for those areas with lesser decent work opportunities. Age limit in human resource firms and gender classifications are not reviewed as part of work-admissions, which caused minor children to work at an early stage. In fact, due to poverty, parents are even forcing their children as early as 12 years old to work in factories.

Such scenario of child abuse has contributed to the triggering of the universal policy against child abuse (Jenson and Fraser, 2005 19). Working age has been established and establishments employing minors have been issued with legal violations against child abuse policies. Legal rights and moral concepts against the controversy have

greatly expanded, and development of the social policy in the human labour environment has progressed ever since. During the same year, 1990s, the acts of sexual exploits have greatly been emphasized.

Critiques and researchers review such behavior as primary effects of the neoliberalistic behavior that manifests toleration against pornographic and sexually oriented subjects. Although nation states have long played a key role in the regulation of commercial sexual exploitation through their responses to prostitution and pornography at national and local levels, groups campaigning against “child sex tourism” and child pornography hold that the globalization of child sexual exploitation calls for an international response (Edwards and Elger 1999 202).

As for pedophilia, although it is certainly a contributing factor to sexual abuse of children, it certainly cannot be considered as the main cause (Jenson and Fraser, 2005 19). The 1996 Stockholm World Congress clearly established that commercial sexual exploitation and sexual abuse of children have a multitude of common causes: poverty, consumerism, breakdown of communal values through armed conflicts, economic upheavals brought about by globalization process and structural adjustment policies, etc.

The widespread sexual abuse and exploitation of children and their trivialization are symptoms of a serious and deep dysfunction within a community or society, affecting all aspects of child rights. The National and grassroots NGOs in various regions of the world have frequently stressed that sexual abuse, violence and exploitation of children are not problems, which can be taken in isolation, but rather that they cut across many other social and legal issues involved in child management (Edwards and Elger 1999 202).

Most programs that have implemented in this period aims to promote family wellness and prevent maltreatment, which

are directed toward families at risk. Instead of promoting models of social responsibility, the concept of globalization promotes individual responsibility as the solution to social and family controversies, particularly child abuse. Despite massive evidence concerning the interdependence of personal and social factors in abuse and maltreatment, individual responsibilities are still viewed as the most potent conceptual interventions to resolve the issue on child upbringing management.

Realizing the ideal of human rights implementation without seeing the child being demoralized is a challenge for contemporary child welfare. Emphasis on the pursuit of children’s rights, representing them in the media, legislation and governmental directives via terms such as “abused”, “maltreatment” and “child protection” all lead to an abstract conception of children, sanitized from reality. The decontextualizing of children in this way ignores a host of other social, economic and political factors that need to be acknowledged when describing the fundamental human child rights.