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* This topic is developed with the collaboration of the Centre of Excellence for Child Welfare.
Programs aimed at preventing child maltreatment enhance protective factors and reduce risk factors. They promote the well-being of children, parents and families by preventing many negative outcomes.
The following programs are among the most effective preventive strategies:
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Perinatal home visiting by nurses
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High-quality child care and preventive early-childhood education programs
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Public education, such as awareness and media campaigns for targeted issues (i.e. shaken baby syndrome)
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Professional education, better training in identifying maltreatment and better screening tools
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Intervention has the potential to help both children and parents. Earlier identification of children at risk of SBS may reduce individual, medical and societal costs associated with this form of maltreatment. Health professionals can play a key role in home assessment and in helping parents identify key risk situations, such as excessive crying. Interventions for children exposed to domestic violence aim to help them cope with the associated stressors and to reduce disruptions in parenting.
While positive impacts have been observed, it should be noted that we cannot extrapolate these results to all situations. For example, David Olds’ well-studied nurse home-visiting program has been shown to be effective in preventing child maltreatment, but it cannot be assumed that other home visiting programs will be as effective, until there is evidence for it. Certain conditions must apply for the effects to be repeated—for instance, there is evidence that preschool prevention programs must be long and intensive in order to have short- and long-term preventive impacts. In some instances, our knowledge of the full effects of programs is limited. For instance, sexual abuse education programs for children are associated with increased disclosure of abuse, but it is uncertain whether they also help reduce the occurrence of abuse.
Much work remains to be done if we are to fully understand and exploit the effects of preventive programs on child maltreatment. Currently, we need to achieve consensus on uniform definitions and ethical issues in order to accomplish serious research in child maltreatment prevention. We also need to examine program processes and outcomes in different cultural contexts and become more sensitive to diverse ethnic and cultural groups. Child maltreatment prevention requires coordination of efforts at multiple levels: government, the public, agencies, law enforcement, researchers and service-providers.
Ultimately, the most effective approaches to preventing child maltreatment will address the multilevel root causes of maltreatment by tackling, with the general population as well as at-risk and clinical populations, issues of poverty, housing, employment, schools, health care and other community systems, and supporting parents in raising young children.
See also...
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