The Importance Of Child Abuse And Neglect

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According to the latest UNICEF reports, literally hundreds of millions of children throughout the world are victims of abuse, neglect and exploitation. In the United States alone, more than three millions of children are reported to official agencies for severe maltreatment in any given year (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2007). Numbers in statistics are frightening and still half of us believe that child’s maltreatment is rare, and that it cannot be happening right next to us. The other half of the society thinks that we should not get involved in ways the parents are “raising and disciplining” their own children. There is a thin line between “keeping them under control” and maltreating in a way that can harm children in profound ways. Our job as a society in a …show more content…

Failure or refusal to provide these necessities endangers the child’s physical health, well-being, psychological growth and development. Physical neglect also includes child abandonment, inadequate supervision, rejection of a child leading to expulsion from the home and failure to adequately provide for the child’s safety and physical and emotional needs. On the other hand emotional neglect is a lack of parental interest in child and his/her needs. This is the most difficult form of maltreatment to recognize and document. Both physical and emotional neglect can severely impact a child’s development by causing failure to thrive; malnutrition; serious illness; physical harm in the form of cuts, bruises, burns or other injuries due to the lack of supervision; and a lifetime of low self-esteem. Signs indentifying emotional/psychological and physical neglect includes poor performance in school, apathetic, withdrawn and inattentive behavior, frequent absences, looks for teacher’s attention and approval as well as delinquent behaviors i.e. stealing and

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