NCJ Number
224881
Journal
Child Abuse and Neglect Volume: 32 Issue: 9 Dated: September 2008 Pages: 831-837
Date Published
September 2008
Length
7 pages
Annotation
This article from the Netherlands provides information regarding trends and characteristics of parents and children involved in situations of abuse.
Abstract
Results found that despite the increased attention paid to child maltreatment, professionals have only detected emotional abuse at higher rates. This implies that detection of other types of child maltreatment is still in need of improvement. Little has changed in the detection of suspected physical and sexual maltreatment by Dutch child health professionals over a 5-year period, despite the increased rates of suspected emotional abuse. Risk groups for any suspected maltreatment comprised older children, boys, and children of low-educated fathers, and mothers who were relatively young. Better training of professionals working in preventive child healthcare in terms of identification of and guidelines for the identification of child abuse might help resolve this problem, as well as employing other means of detection such as emergency care departments. Additional studies are suggested to assess the effectiveness of policies and subsequent interventions. International cooperation, including learning from best practices along with their relative contribution is offered as one way of reaching this goal and to better protect children’s health. Data were collected from trained child health professionals who registered data on child maltreatment for two national community-based samples of children between the ages of 2 to 12 years in 1996/1997, and children between the ages of 14 months to 12 years in 2002/2003. Figure, tables, and references