Child Abuse

 Essay

Many small fryren suffer boor pace everyday at the hands of adults and it is often their own p arnts who are the ones to do this. They are beaten, kicked, throw into walls, or burned with cigarettes. They assume their heads held under the water of toilet bowls, are scalded by hot water or they are forced to al-Qaida in freezing or scalding raiseers until they pass out. A child could be stuffed into running washing machines or sexually molested and beaten so risky that they are unable to move.Some suffer from neglect in the forms of starvation and lack of medical attention, and still go un noniced by outsiders much(prenominal) as child protective dishs or perhaps tied(p) their pediatricians. It is not unheard of that children die every day in the U.S. all from one form of child jest at or another. It is a revolt practice that has no set standard of rules to finish off the die hard conundrum.Different lands have different methods and agencies to help close out clapp erclaw in the home, some stool rather well while others bomb a jeopardyous gamble when it comes to the life or mental country of a child. The precise number of cobblers lasts from each one yr is not known because of the period of most fatality investigations that could be suspected as child exclaim just are seen as open and shut death cases. A give notice (of) from the National Center on churl Abuse and Neglect, however, depicts much(prenominal) than three million reports of alleged child mal sellment practices in the year of 1995 alone. Many more children are living with abuse rather than anxious(p) from it, too. So what steps are being interpreted to protect our state of matters children? All states have a Child Protective function (or CPS) system.This is the governmental system responsible for investigating reports of child abuse or neglect. In state after state, the CPS agency lacks the resources to respond adequately to the overwhelming number of reports it is legislatively mandated to investigate. All fifty states have child abuse reporting laws requiring reports of suspected abuse to be make by specified professionals and others whose serve brings them into regular contact with children. Any citizen may report suspected abuse as state laws endure for reports to be made to the CPS agency or its equivalent, or to a law enforcement agency.In most states, investigations are conducted by CPS personnel, although law enforcement officers may besides be involved.The basic concern of child wellbeing thespians is for the safety of the child. judicial decision of the risks involved in leaving a child with its family must be made quickly because children johnnot be mutilated from their fami deceits arbitrarily. Once a child has been removed, the goal of child welfare agencies is to return the child to the family. Ideally, caseworkers develop a plan to provide parents with the education of the negociate that children lead, free from abuse or neglect.This plan is not alship canal carried out to its full intention. No state has the financial resources to provide all the go to the children and families who need them.A problem is that in state after state, CPS workers have excessive caseloads, are paid low salaries, and lack adequate training for the sensitive work involved in investigating abuse reports, and participating in decisions to remove children from their families thence placing them in foster care. The overturn rate among child welfare workers is exceptionally high. A report through with(p) by the United States division of Health and Human Services showed the rate of 30 percent to be the norm, annually.Whatever the reason inadequate funding, unavailable services for children and families, high turnover rates, lack of training, overwhelming numbers of reports questions are being raised roughly the CPS system. The system is based on the surmise that removal from a troubled family, followed by a return t o the family when that can be done safely, is best for the child.A different approach to the problems created by child abuse involves Family delivery Services (FPS). Removal of the risk, rather than the child, is the goal of Family Preservation Services. FPS platforms seek to modify the home environment or behavior of other family members so that it is at least as safe for the child to remain in the household as to be removed. Family deliverance is based on the assumption that out of home care hurts children, and on the recognition that most families referred to Child Protective Service can and want to learn new ways of coping with stress. Rather than breaking families apart in order to treat them, intensive family preservation services seek to protect children and heal families by keeping them whole.Specifically, FPS provides intensive services in the home to all the members of a troubled family for a relatively short time four to half dozen-spot weeks.Professional staffs ar e usually assigned two, but no more than four, families at a time. Caseworkers are available to families twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. A worker can stay as long as necessary to stabilize the household, whether that means six, ten, or cardinal hours. Ten states have initiated FPS programs by legislation including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia.Homebuilders, an FPS program based in Tacoma, Washington, provides the longest running assessment of the effectiveness of family preservation services.From 1981 to 1994, Homebuilders saw 3,497 children. Evaluation info indicted that three months after completing the program, an norm of 94 percent of the families had avoided out of home localization. Twelve-month follow up data showed that postal servicement had been averted in 88 percent of the cases. Furthermore, the cost for Homebuilders family services was yet $300 0 per case while the costs for an average foster family home placement in the state was $7586.There is a down side to the Family Preservation Service, though. The track record of FPS seems impressive, but a closer look at another side reveals its not doing such a enormous job.According to the Clarke Foundation, on that point has never been a case of maternal(p) abuse or neglect causing serious injury or the death of a child while receiving family preservation services. But since the FPS provides services for a relatively short period of just a few weeks, there is no way of accurately predicting if after that short amount of reflection that the parents are suddenly fit to care for a child. A worker only stays in the house for a maximum of cardinal hours that is not long enough to assess whether the child is in danger and the true nature of the parents. Of course no one is waiver to annihilate or seriously injure a child in precedent of a human services official. No studies a re available that show whether the abuse reoccurred after the Family Preservation Services four to six weeks with the family was finished. The Division of Family Services takes another approach to preventing child abuse. The staff is divided into units, working a variety of shifts and functions to best provide the services indispensable by the children and families.The response unit is responsible for receiving all reports of child abuse, neglect, and dependency. They finalize the nature of the allegations and the inhibit response time for initiating investigation of the allegations. Once abuse or neglect is found or significant risk of its feature is identified, cases are transferred to the treatment unit. Workers in these units are responsible for assessing family needs and connecting the family with appropriate resources and services to address those identified areas. They are also responsible for supervise the familys success at utilizing the available services, and commun icating with various service providers to assess the ongoing safety of the children and the development of the family. They close cases when significant progress has been achieved to eliminate or minimize the ongoing risk of abuse to the children.The comprehensive Unification Unit is responsible for providing intensive reunification services for children who can potentially return home within six months. Staff work closely with the children, their natural family, and the care provider to facilitate smooth transitions and self-made reunification. When the goal of returning children to their natural families is no longer appropriate, the social workers write Termination of Parental Rights (TPR) petitions, which, once approved by Family Court, allow children to flummox free for borrowing. They develop long term foster care plans for those children whose agnatic rights have been terminated, but for whom holdion or returning them to the home is not an appropriate goal. They are a lso responsible for providing assistance throughout the adoption process to support successful adoptive placements.It has been shown that through most individual(prenominal) accounts, that parents never really learn to take care of their children without using abuse.Because of this, it seems quite logical to make the main focus on protecting the child, then if returning them to their family is assessed as being completely logical, that is the way to go. I constitute that a system of three strikes-your out be implemented. With this, the parent bequeath lose rights to the child for a short time while they go through training and counseling. If they are deemed not insane, then they may care for the child again with the warning of what pull up stakes happen to them. They leave have a sort of parole officer that will check up on the family annually. On the second offense, there will be but counseling, jail time, and other means of reform.If they are granted custody again, they will be checked on frequently and unscheduled. If they can not take the child without abuse from there, the child will be put up for adoption. There are very long waiting lists for parents who would experience to adopt a child and will provide a loving family that should be utilized. The state would let the new parents take care of the child financially, but would pay for counseling of that child and training for the rest of the family on how to love on the abused. If in later years, the parent has redeemed him/herself, then they will be allowed to visit and take the child on trips and be allowed to be a friend.After the child has reached the age of eight-teen the will be allowed to go under who they would like to stay with.No system for child protection is going to be full-proof. There are steps that can be taken to improve them. Any system is only as good as the people who implement it. Representative Kaye Steinmetz of Missouri is proposing legislation to require additive training for Child Protective Services workers, establish a state team to assist with investigations of difficult cases, and provide for statewide protocols to ensure worthy investigations. Representative Debbie Stabenow of Michigan advocates early identification of parents at risk of sightly abusers. Michigan Perinatal Coaching project is an example of this.Developed by the states Childrens Trust Fund, the project matches parent volunteers with parents of newborns. by means of the childs first year, the volunteer provides support to the parents, whether that involves advice about crystalise or other areas that new parents may find difficult. A convertible program called Family Skill-Builder is offered in the state of Massachusetts. It offers an in home case guidance series for families who are at risk of abusing and neglecting their children. Its designed to prevent child abuse and neglect and to help families function independently.Deborah Daro, director of seek for the National Co mmittee for Prevention of Child Abuse, has several suggestions for legislators to consider.She maintains that states need to provide more services for victims of abuse, especially therapeutic, remedial and support services. She says, States also need to look at the quality of foster care. Foster care ought to be more than just giving a child a place to live.The goal in preventing child abuse should be permanency and stableness for the child, whether that means a return to the family or, in some cases, termination of parental rights and adoption. The sooner that can be achieved the better.This can be accomplished by setting up time tables for review of foster care cases, and by establishing specific criteria for permanency planning and termination of parental rights. Another come across in preventing child abuse is evaluating each situation case by case. Placing a child in foster care may be the best decision for that particular case, while intensive family preservation services mig ht be best for another. The best answer may lie in a combination of the ideas of different organizations. Individual attention to each case would personalize a plan to get each family on the road to a good, stable, and loving family life in less time.