G3

BUILDING PREVENTION SYSTEMS: A PROMISING ALTERNATIVE TO "PROGRAMMING" OUR WAY TO PREVENTION

Presenters: Sandra Alexander, Deborah Daro, Catherine Knight, Carol Runyan

Abstract Category: Prevention 

Instruction Level: Intermediate

Presentation: Click Here, Click Here

Description:       

This presentation will identify the adaptive challenges within public institutions and normative conditions necessary to prevent child abuse.

Abstract:

Over the years, child maltreatment researchers and practitioners have explicitly recognized that most maltreatment results from a complex web of factors found within a person’s personality, family history and community context.  Ecological theory, with its acknowledgement that individual, familial, community and societal factors interact to increase or decrease the likelihood of child maltreatment, now represents the most commonly accepted theory of maltreatment.  As such, no single intervention will successfully remediate the consequences of all types of maltreatment nor will it spare all children from initial or repeated abuse or neglect.

This presentation establishes the context for understanding the array of interventions needed to effectively address child maltreatment and highlights the importance of galvanizing these diverse efforts into an effective system of care. For any intervention to realize a notable and sustained reduction in a participant’s risk factors or improvements in key protective factors, the planning process must consider the complementary changes that need to occur in the major institutions and norms that influence a parent’s actions and shape a child’s social environment. 

Although targeted prevention programs can change a parent’s willingness to access health services, health services need to alter their structure and funding procedures to make services more accessible. Similarly, the concept of child protection must include interventions that support families before serious abuse or neglect becomes the normative framework shaping parent-child interactions. Equally important but rarely done is defining the conditions for change in relevant institutions or mainstream efforts. Blending funding streams, reducing central control and bureaucratic requirements, and providing greater local autonomy require more than a minor adjustment in existing operations. Effective child abuse prevention is not simply instituting a new model program but rather discerning and resolving the adaptive challenges that would face the nation’s social, educational, and health institutions were we to make a serious commitment to child protection.