Risk and Protective Factors for Child Maltreatment: a Review
- PDF / 434,918 Bytes
- 9 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 100 Downloads / 254 Views
INJURY EPIDEMIOLOGY (S MARSHALL, SECTION EDITOR)
Risk and Protective Factors for Child Maltreatment: a Review Anna E. Austin 1,2
&
Alexandria M. Lesak 1 & Meghan E. Shanahan 1,2
Accepted: 30 September 2020 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract Purpose of Review The purpose of this review was to synthesize the empirical literature regarding key risk and protective factors for child maltreatment at each level of the socioecological model and to identify directions for future research and practice. Recent Findings Prior research has largely focused on risk and protective factors at the individual and interpersonal levels of the socioecological model. More recently, research has begun to examine risk and protective factors at the community and societal levels, with results suggesting that programmatic and policy interventions that reduce risk and enhance protection at these levels are promising primary prevention strategies for child maltreatment. Summary Future research should continue to focus on risk and protective factors at the community and societal levels with the aim of building the evidence base for population-wide prevention strategies. Such strategies have the potential to create contexts in which families and children thrive. Keywords Child maltreatment . Child abuse and neglect . Risk factors . Protective factors . Socioecological model
Introduction Child Maltreatment: Prevalence and Consequences Child maltreatment is a clear and pressing public health issue in the USA. At the federal level, the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) defines child maltreatment as “any recent act or failure to act on the part of a parent or caregiver that results in death, serious physical or emotional harm, sexual abuse, or exploitation, or an act or failure to act that presents an imminent risk of serious harm” to a child under the age of 18 years. As such, child maltreatment includes experiences of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse and multiple forms of neglect (e.g., physical, emotional, supervisory, medical, educational) [1]. In 2018, child protective
This article is part of the Topical Collection on Injury Epidemiology * Anna E. Austin [email protected] 1
Department of Maternal and Child Health, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA
2
Injury Prevention Research Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA
services (CPS) agencies in the USA received more than 4 million reports of suspected maltreatment involving approximately 7.8 million children [2•]. Recent research indicates that by age 18 years, more than 1 in 3 US children will have had a CPS investigation for suspected maltreatment [3] and 1 in 8 will have experienced confirmed (i.e., substantiated) maltreatment based on the findings of a CPS investigation [4•]. However, it is widely accepted that official CPS reports underestimate the true prevalence of maltreatment as not all cases come to the attention of the child welfare syste
Data Loading...
