CHILD ABUSE

Child abuse is an increasing phenomenon globally, and is divided into four dimensions: physical, sexual, emotional and negligence. Child abuse is now recognized as a global phenomenon and a public health concern. The World Health Organization announced that more than 40 million children over the world are considered victims of child abuse yearly.

Barriers to recognizing child abuse and neglect include providers’ desire to believe the caregiver, failure to recognize that a child’s presentation could be due to child abuse and neglect, challenges innate to working work setting such as lack of ongoing contact with a family and provider biases.

Barriers to reporting child abuse and neglect included factors associated with the reporting process, lack of follow-up of reported cases, and negative consequences of reporting such as testifying in court.

Reported facilitators included real-time case discussion with peers or supervisors and the belief that it was better for the child to report in the setting of suspicion.

There is a growing need for case-based education and child abuse and neglect consultation for unclear cases.

Protecting children from being abused is not the responsibility of a single agency or a governmental institution. Clear, concise and structured child protection policy is necessary to enable different proffessionals to report and deal with abuse cases and to improve the effectiveness of reporting and caring for such cases.

The presence of a well-organized system to deal with this phenomenon is crucial. Protecting children from being abused is not the responsibility of a single agency or a governmental institution. Therefore, all governmental and private institutions in addition to the whole community should collaborate to protect children from being abused. Despite the importance of this collaboration, it is important to restrict this phenomenon by producing clear laws and regulations to assign accountability and responsibility in child abuse cases. Subsequently, governments should prepare clear policies that define theoretical and practical meanings of child abuse and the chain of responsibility in these incidences.