Is it possible to overcome the enduring problem of child maltreatment? In Eradicating Child Maltreatment, leading international figures in the field of child welfare address this enduring and thorny question, setting out a public health approach to prevention. It draws on groundbreaking research and practice on prevention and early intervention from around the globe spanning health, social care, education and criminal justice. Contributors describe what is known about the incidence of child maltreatment, how far we have succeeded in eradicating it, which preventative strategies have been proven to be effective, and offers evidenced recommendations for policy and practice. Aiming to draw us nearer to the goal of a world free from child maltreatment first articulated by the visionary paediatrician Dr. C. Henry Kempe in 1978, this important book provides new insights for professionals, managers, academics and policymakers across the range of child and family welfare services.

Each year, child protective services receive reports of child abuse and neglect involving six million children, and many more go unreported. The long-term human and fiscal consequences of child abuse and neglect are not relegated to the victims themselves-they also impact their families, future relationships, and society. In 1993, the National Research Council (NRC) issued the report, Under-standing Child Abuse and Neglect, which provided an overview of the research on child abuse and neglect. New Directions in Child Abuse and Neglect Research updates the 1993 report and provides new recommendations to respond to this public health challenge. According to this report, while there has been great progress in child abuse and neglect research, a coordinated, national research infrastructure with high-level federal support needs to be established and implemented immediately. New Directions in Child Abuse and Neglect Research recommends an actionable framework to guide and support future child abuse and neglect research. This report calls for a comprehensive, multidisciplinary approach to child abuse and neglect research that examines factors related to both children and adults across physical, mental, and behavioral health domains-including those in child welfare, economic support, criminal justice, education, and health care systems-and assesses the needs of a variety of subpopulations. It should also clarify the causal pathways related to child abuse and neglect and, more importantly, assess efforts to interrupt these pathways. New Directions in Child Abuse and Neglect Research identifies four areas to look to in developing a coordinated research enterprise: a national strategic plan, a national surveillance system, a new generation of researchers, and changes in the federal and state programmatic and policy response.

Kids in danger are treated instrumentally to promote the rehabilitation of their parents, the welfare of their communities, and the social justice of their race and tribe—all with the inevitable result that their most precious developmental years are lost in bureaucratic and judicial red tape. It is time to stop letting efforts to fix the child welfare system get derailed by activists who are concerned with race-matching, blood ties, and the abstract demands of social justice, and start asking the most important question: Where are the emotionally and financially stable, loving, and permanent homes where these kids can thrive? “Naomi Riley’s book reveals the extent to which abused and abandoned children are often injured by their government rescuers. It is a must-read for those seeking solutions to this national crisis.” —Robert L. Woodson, Sr., civil rights leader and president of the Woodson Center “Everyone interested in child welfare should grapple with Naomi Riley’s powerful evidence that the current system ill-serves the safety and well-being of vulnerable kids.” —Walter Olson, senior fellow, Cato Institute, Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies

A comprehensive guide to empirically supported approaches for child protection cases The Wiley Handbook of What Works in Child Maltreatment offers clinicians, psychologists, psychiatrists and other professionals an evidence-based approach to best professional practice when working in the area of child protection proceedings and the provision of assessment and intervention services in order to maximize the well-being of young people. It brings together a wealth of knowledge from expert researchers and practitioners, who provide a comprehensive overview of contemporary work informing theory, assessment, service provision, rehabilitation and therapeutic interventions for children and families undergoing care proceedings. Coverage includes theoretical perspectives, insights on the prevalence and effects of child neglect and abuse, assessment, children’s services, and interventions with children, victims and families.

Get the tools to coordinate a plan in your community! The highly anticipated Ending Child Abuse: New Efforts in Prevention, Investigation, and Training presents an exciting vision: to end or significantly reduce child abuse. Respected social scientists and legal scholars discuss empirically sound short- and long- term multidisciplinary strategies that can be implemented in our society. Innovative and well-established concepts and approaches are clearly presented, such as specialized education, rational preventative methods, effective investigation and prosecution strategies, and the analysis of factors that influence law enforcement investigations and child abuse prevention efforts. Several obstacles stand in the way of the elimination of child abuse, such as the failure to investigate most child abuse reports, inadequate training of frontline child protection professionals, lack of financial resources, and the dilemma that child abuse is not addressed at the youngest ages. Ending Child Abuse: New Efforts in Prevention, Investigation, and Training tackles these problems and others with practical guidelines and aggressive creative strategies that can be applied to every community in the United States. This collection is impeccably referenced and soundly supported with research. Ending Child Abuse: New Efforts in Prevention, Investigation, and Training discusses: implementation of a model curriculum in child advocacy for undergraduate and graduate institutions forensic interview training extensive education of the nation’s child protection professionals development and funding of prevention programs at the community level educational reforms of Montclair State University in New Jersey designed to better prepare professionals who advocate for children research-based interview techniques with best practice guidelines possible broader social and system-level reforms vertical prosecution of child abuse cases—with a model for its operation Ending Child Abuse: New Efforts in Prevention, Investigation, and Training is an ambitious eye-opening source perfect for social services professionals, mental health professionals, practitioners, researchers, educators, students, and medical and legal professionals who deal with child abuse and children’s welfare.

First Published in 1990. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book combines experience in child protection with expertise in clinical pharmacology and forensic toxicology, to set out a broad contemporary understanding of child maltreatment with drugs. It explores presentations that range through ante-natal exposure, factitious illness, deliberate poisoning, drug accidents while in the care of drug-affected adults, misuse of therapeutic drugs and the drug-related death of a child. It describes how to recognise where deliberate drug exposure or perversion of proper therapeutics is being used to harm a child, how to use laboratory testing to confirm a diagnosis, how to combine medical and social care with the need to gather legal evidence and how to deploy social, medical and legal resources for child protection. The roles of the forensic toxicologist and contemporary forensic laboratory methods in resolving cryptic presentations are discussed in each context. There is guidance on effective communication about drugs within the child protection team and on writing reports for legal purposes, on the way to returning the child to safety. The book also explores the particular difficulties that arise in reconciling parents' rights and cultural beliefs with the obligation to document a child’s drug exposure and in dealing with parents and carers who themselves may be drug-impaired.