Child Maltreatment Case Report

Each year data is collected by many government agencies, both national and local, in an attempt to better understand and ultimately prevent cases of child abuse. A report published by the Children’s Bureau titled Child Maltreatment, in 2014 reflected that, children that had yet to experience their first birthday had the highest rate of victimization at 24.4 per 1,000 children of the same age in the national population (p 12). Abuse is never acceptable, but it is extremely alarming that an age group that relies so heavily on an adult for basic needs would be so greatly represented. Perhaps though the information becomes slight more understandable when we see that the Children’s Bureau also reported that 75% of victims were subjected to neglect …show more content…

Child abuse comes in many other forms, such as physical abuse, sexual abuse, and often abuse that occurs but is not common will be labeled as “other”. In the 2014 published report “approximately 3.2 million children were subject to at least one report [of abuse]” and of those 3.2 million children, an estimated 1,580 were abused in such a way that resulted in their death. While the majority of these numbers are representative of a national problem, a little digging into the Children Bureau’s report revealed that in New York State alone in 2014, 188,058 children were investigated as having been victims of child abuse (p 44). To understand both national and local numbers and how they relate to the State of New York or anywhere else, we must first understand the different types of …show more content…

In the collected reports from all states, 702,208 cases of child abuse were investigated, of those 702,208 cases, 526,744 were indicated as cases of neglect. That is a lot of abused children, but once again we must understand what neglect is to understand what is encompassed in the 526,744 cases. Neglect, I would image can be largely tied back into the inability of a parental figure or guardian to adequately provide for the child or children in their care. This can range in failure to provide proper housing, a source of food, clean living conditions. The children’s Bureau defines neglect as “A type of maltreatment that refers to the failure by the caregiver to provide needed, age-appropriate care although financially able to do so or offered financial or other means to do so (p 120). So in 2014, 526,744 children were not given the basic necessities of life by those who were supposed to love them more than life itself. Granted not all of those cases were sustained, it remains a number that is jaw dropping. A scan of the list of states shows that no matter the state, neglect seems to be the main cause of all child abuse cases investigated. In New York neglect represented 95.4% of the cases, and in fact there were only 6 states that reported less than 50% of their child abuse cases came from neglect (Child Maltreatment p. 57). Although most states reported