NCJ Number
190967
Journal
Child Abuse Review Volume: 10 Issue: 4 Dated: July-August 2001 Pages: 262-278
Date Published
2001
Length
17 pages
Annotation
This paper proposes a community-building framework as an innovative strategy to begin to reclaim children and families at risk of abuse.
Abstract
"Community-building" essentially means embarking upon a journey to solicit the investment and commitment of all stakeholders involved in influencing the development of healthy families. These stakeholders include families and youth who are disadvantaged and in need of assistance, child protection officials and their agencies, other child-serving organizations and their officials, and citizens and their communities. Children's protection goes beyond being the sole responsibility of any one agency or profession. Going it alone in contemporary society is no longer acceptable, especially knowing that current children's protection systems are fraught with problems and that they were never designed to deal with contemporary realities. Community-building is a process and not a model. It is more mission than a program, more orientation than a technique, and more about community-driven practices than community-focused ones. Community-building is about extending interventions beyond the family level to include those at the professional, organizational, and community levels. These interventions are necessary if children's protection is to be concerned about not only protecting children in their own families, but also from the social, economic, and political forces that affect their families and communities. Community-building requires acknowledging that the abuse and neglect of children by society have exceeded the abuse and neglect by parents. This represents a fundamental shift in direction in child protection work. 1 table and 56 references