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Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect: Successfully Out of the Blocks

NCJ Number
205862
Journal
Child Abuse & Neglect Volume: 25 Issue: 4 Dated: April 2001 Pages: 431-439
Author(s)
John M. Leventhal
Date Published
April 2001
Length
9 pages
Annotation
This review of progress in preventing child abuse and neglect in the United States in the last 5 years considers how far prevention efforts have progressed, the nature of the new challenges, and measures of success.
Abstract
Two home-based prevention models have characterized child abuse/neglect prevention efforts in communities throughout the States. One is entitled Healthy Families (HF), in which a home visitor is a trained paraprofessional supervised by a social worker and health personnel; and the second is the Olds' model, in which the home visitor is a nurse supervised by a social worker. Over 425 HF sites and over 140 Olds' sites have been established, and more are being developed. The data suggest that some 42,000 families are receiving prevention services, and communities are investing approximately $170 million in prevention. The Healthy Start Program (HSP), which served as the model of home visiting provided by Healthy Families America, aims to provide services to all high-risk families beginning at the time of birth, rather than just first-time, high-risk families, as in the HF model. The authors examined the implementation of the HSP operated by three agencies in six sites on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. Services were provided by 43 home visitors. Results provide striking evidence that at least in one community, there has been marked variability in how the programs were implemented, and there were substantial difficulties in achieving the goals set by program developers. As programs develop in more communities, there are at least eight challenges that must be addressed. The challenges are to bring the programs up to scale so they provide services to new families annually; to provide the funding needed to do this; to maintain program quality; to foster flexibility and adaptability; to address societal changes that impact families; to develop community-based services to meet the variety of needs of family members; to involve fathers in prevention efforts; and to provide funding for research and evaluation. The success of prevention efforts must be measured by a percentage reduction in the occurrence of child maltreatment. The size of the percentage reduction depends on at least three factors: the percentage of cases of maltreatment that occur in high-risk children when no child abuse prevention program is available in a community, the number of high-risk families who actually receive home visiting services when a prevention program is available, and the effectiveness of the program in reducing the occurrences of maltreatment in these high-risk families. 1 table and 19 references