As parents, our main job is to protect our children. These days, protection from includes not only the individuals we can see but, also, the individuals that we cannot see – yet who wish to harm our children. And with the growth of social networking and social media parents are often unaware of their child’s interactions on the internet. Protecting Your Children Online: What You Need to Know About Online Threats to Your Children introduces the crimes that can occur in cyberspace, as well as procedures for reporting and obtaining assistance in the event of victimization. Throughout Kimberly McCabe addresses several types of cyber crimes, ranging from child pornography and solicitation to cyberbullying, cyberstalking, and sexting, giving parents the necessary information they need to protect their children in cyberspace. This book builds on the historical efforts to reduce child abuse in the United States and looks at the limitations of these efforts when attempting to address child abuse in cyberspace. By identifying these different types of cybercrimes against children, and offering the definitions of terms and law enacted to prohibit these crimes, Kimberly McCabe gives possible responses for attempting to end internet crime on a national, international, and personal level. A definite must have for parents who want to be proactive in protecting their child in cyberspace, and those who wish to be better able to protect them from victimization.

Even good parents often underestimate the dangers their children face. Research indicates that one in four females and one in six males are sexually abused before age 18. In most cases, the enemy is not a faceless stranger; it's someone you know and trust--a neighbor, a coach, or even a family member. This book provides practical steps to ensure you're doing all you can to reduce the risks of abuse. But since you cannot be with your children 24/7, it goes beyond what you can do as a parent to teach you how to increase your child's own awareness and strategies in the face of potential dangers--without making them fearful. Dr. Robinson, whose decades-long practice focuses on abused and endangered children, calls on her own case studies to show age- appropriate conversation starters for parents, teaching them how to ask the right questions and provide the right boundaries. This book will help you move from fear to confidence on this heavy topic that is just too important to ignore.

This open access book critically explores what child protection policy and professional practice would mean if practice was grounded in human rights standards. This book inspires a new direction in child protection research – one that critically assesses child protection policy and professional practice with regard to human rights in general, and the rights of the child in particular. Each chapter author seeks to approach the rights of the child from their own academic field of interest and through a comparative lens, making the research relevant across nation-state practices. The book is split into five parts to focus on the most important aspects of child protection. The first part explains the origins, aim, and scope of the book; the second part explores aspects of professionalism and organization through law and policy; and the third part discusses several key issues in child protection and professional practice in depth. The fourth part discusses selected areas of importance to child protection practices (low-impact in-house measures, public care in residential care and foster care respectively) and the fifth part provides an analytical summary of the book. Overall, it contributes to the present need for a more comprehensive academic debate regarding the rights of the child, and the supranational perspective this brings to child protection policy and practice across and within nation-states. .

The story of one mother’s fight against the medical establishment to prove the link between infection-triggered PANDAS and her son’s sudden-onset OCD and Tourette syndrome. The summer before entering sixth grade, Sammy, a bright and charming boy who lived on the coast of Maine, suddenly began to exhibit disturbing behavior. He walked and ate with his eyes shut, refused to bathe, burst into fits of rage, slithered against walls, and used his limbs instead of his hands to touch light switches, doorknobs, and faucets. Sammy’s mother, Beth, already coping with the overwhelming responsibility of raising three sons alone, watched helplessly as her middle child descended into madness. Sammy was soon diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and later with Tourette syndrome. Unwilling to accept the doctors’ prognoses for lifelong mental illness and repeated hospitalizations, Beth fought to uncover what was causing this decline. Beth’s quest took her to the center of the medical community’s raging debate about whether OCD and Tourette syndrome can be caused by PANDAS (Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal Infections). With the battle lines firmly drawn, Beth searched until she found two cutting-edge doctors who answered that question with a definitive yes. Together, they cured Sammy. Five years later, he remains symptom free.

Has your child suddenly changed? A host of behaviors-OCD, Tourette's, anxiety, depression, tics, eating disorders, hair pulling, bedwetting, mood swings-are often symptoms of an undiagnosed infection. The correct diagnosis is PANDAS or PANS. In Ms. Maloney's straightforward and clear writing style, she explains: what is it, how it makes your child sick, available treatment options, finding and working with the right doctors, dietary interventions, finding personal support, arranging the correct therapy, hospitalization, your child's legal rights to obtaining an education, and how your child will recover. Top medical experts in the field offer their insights and share their approaches to treating the disorder. This book offers a roadmap to recovery with all the answers you and your doctor need.

"The timing of the publication with the revised Working Together guidelines could not be more advantageous. This book is a unique and important contribution to child care literature. No agency should be without." - Child Abuse Review Professionals concerned with the protection of children face many challenges. This work demands knowledge from several disciplines, a wide variety of skills, and interdisciplinary collaboration. The editors, Howard Dubowitz, a pediatrician, and Diane DePanfilis, a social worker, together with over 70 experts in this field offer what is known about how best to work with maltreated children and their families, in a very practical, concise, and user-friendly way. Structured to follow the life of a case from the time a report of child maltreatment is made through the various pathways in the child protection system, this edited volume synthesizes the best practice principles for responding to reports of child abuse and neglect; engaging children and other family members in intervention; developing cross-cultural practice competencies; assessing risk, evaluating safety, and conducting family assessments; defining outcomes and planning intervention; evaluating risk reduction; and making permanency decisions; and discusses the unique legal, medical, ethical, and other practice issues that work in the child protection field involves. Professionals facing tough dilemmas in practice should find valuable guidance in these pages.

"I commit that by the end of this book, you'll know more and be uncertain less; see more and deny less, accept more and hesitate less; act more and worry less. How can I be so sure? Because if nature selected you for the job of protecting a child, odds are you're up to it."--Gavin de Becker In his groundbreaking bestseller The Gift of Fear, Gavin de Becker showed millions of readers that like every creature on earth, human beings can predict violent behavior. Now, in Protecting the Gift, de Becker empowers parents to trust fully their own intuition when it comes to their children's safety. In this indispensable resource, de Becker provides keen insights into the behavior and strategies of predators. He offers practical new steps to enhance children's safety at every age level: specific questions parents can ask to screen effectively and evaluate baby-sitters, day-care services, schools, and doctors; a "Test of Twelve" safety skills children need before being alone in public; warning signs to help parents protect children from sexual abuse; and how to keep teenage girls and boys from unsafe situations with peers and adults. De Becker also shatters the myth that rules like Never Talk to Strangers will keep your children safe. By showing what danger really looks like--as opposed to what we might imagine it looks like--de Becker gives parents freedom from many common worries and unwarranted fears. All parents face the same challenges when it comes to their children's safety: whom to trust, whom to distrust, what to believe, what to doubt, what to fear, and what not to fear. De Becker helps parents find some certainty about life's highest-stakes questions: How can I know ababy-sitter won't turn out to be someone who harms my child? What should I ask child-care professionals when I interview them? What's the best way to prepare my child for walking to school alone? How can my child be safer at school? How can I spot sexual predators? What should I do if my child is lost in public? How can I teach my child about risk without causing too much fear? What must my teenage daughter know in order to be safe? What must my teenage son know in order to be safe? And finally, in the face of all these questions, how can I reduce the worrying? A generation ago, in Baby and Child Care, Dr. Benjamin Spock told parents that they already possessed most of the important knowledge about their children's health. Similarly, when it comes to predicting violence and protecting children, de Becker demonstrates that you already know most of what you need to know-- parents have, he says, "the wisdom of the species."