Working in Child Protection and Prevention

1. Understanding Child Abuse and Neglect
Tenth Edition
Chapter 17
Working in Child Protection
and Prevention
PowerPoint Lecture
Slides prepared by
Piljoo Kang, Ph.D.
Toccoa Falls College
Copyright © 2021, 2014, 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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Learning Objectives (1 of 2)
After studying this chapter, you should be able to
17.1 describe some of the activities of a child protection
worker in a given day and explain what might be the
most frustrating for you.
17.2 outline the skills necessary for a child protection
worker and what types of pressures child protection
workers are under.
17.3 describe the challenges that a worker might face in
the field of child protection and discuss how to prepare
for such challenges.

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Learning Objectives (2 of 2)
17.4 discuss the types of prevention in child maltreatment
and the current philosophy and goals of prevention.
17.5 discuss the types of skills taught in school-based and
family-centered prevention and how these help children.
17.6 explain what is meant by effective prevention and
what needs to be done between agencies, in the
community, and in our society.

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A Day in the Life of Today’s Protective
Worker
• Over-inclusion of clients (those referred but should
not be)
• Under-inclusion of clients (families who can benefit
from services, but are not referred)
• Inadequate capacity of Child Protective Services to
meet the needs of clients
• Competing mandates of investigating cases; keeping
families together
• Service delivery is uneven across communities, often
falling short in under-served communities

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Skills and Qualifications Needed for
Child Protection
• Knowledge
• Authority and sanction: accorded by the community
• Ethics: confidentiality
• Professionalism
• Cultural competency
• Personal traits: empathy, caring and nurturing attitude
• Effectively juggling tasks and responsibilities
• Dealing with frustrations and pressures

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Facing the Challenges of Working in
Child Protection
• Bureaucracy: following rules and regulations while meeting the needs
of clients; must be flexible
• Emotional drain: the emotional, day-to-day impact of protective work
can result in secondary traumatic stress
• Vicarious trauma and compassion fatigue can eventually lead to
burnout
• Self-care: need to develop methods of reducing stress, especially
through outside recreation and the maintenance of a healthy support
system.
• Training and Supervision:
– initial and periodic training to do the job effectively
– good supervision to keeping perspective

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An Eye Toward Prevention
• Primary: attempt to educate the general population in
order to prevent maltreatment
• Secondary: effort directed toward high-risk populations
• Tertiary: intervention to prevent abuse and neglect from
continuing
• The goal of prevention is to
– maximize protective factors
– minimize risk factors

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Prevention Efforts in Schools
• Life skills training
– Coping with stress & crisis
– Making decisions
– Learning socialization
– Building positive self-image
• Preparation for parenthood
– Healthy sexuality
– Knowledge of child development
– Learning parenting skills
• Self-protection training for teachers and children
• Educational services for the community & at-risk families

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Prevention Efforts with Families
• Effective home visitation programs
• Parent/child screening and prevention: identify at-risk
parents prenatally; evaluate needs & strengths
• Reaffirm parenting as valuable, but realistically
acknowledge its difficulties
• Provide expanded day-care options
• Promote healthy sexuality
• Provide healthy adult role models
• Limit the violence children observe in media

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Beyond Child Protection
• Create national standards and guidelines for agencies
• Creating a unified response to abuse reports from state
to state; with prompt and adequate follow-up.
• Improved interagency communication
• Provide adequate and ongoing training and support for
workers
• Provide training for cultural competency

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What Does the Future Hold?
• Moved from a “child saving approach” to one that
recognizes systemic factors and has a strength-based
perspective
• Increased attention to surveillance of children, of
pedophiles, and accountability of professionals and
agencies
• Increased acknowledgement of rights of children as well
as parents
• Decreased stigma to being involved in services

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Research Needs
• Efficacy of different types of prevention efforts
• More investigation on neglect
• Study of non-abusive families
• Cross-cultural research
• Study of the survivors of abuse and neglect

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