Introduction
Of late the cases of child neglect and abuse have rapidly increased in the US. In 2008, it was reported that there were about 772,000 children who had been abused in one way or the other which made the federal government to look for ways of minimizing these cases (Bryant, 2009). About 71 % of these children suffered from neglect, 16 % physical abuse, 9 % sexual abuse, 7% psychological abuse, 2 % medical neglect, while 9% suffered from other types of maltreatment (Bryant, 2009). This made the federal government through the congress to amend child abuse prevention and treatment Act 2010. This study looks at the implications of this law in regards to preventing cases of child neglect and abuse. The implications of this Act may be found in different survey reports and statistics as well as different academic journals from the study that have already been carried.
Purpose of this law
Congress found that many children were undergoing mistreatment and neglect each and every year and they lack adequate treatment or protection from their family members or those who are required to take care of them. This meant that there was need to come up with a comprehensive law that would minimize the cases of child abuse and mistreatment. According to this Act, child abuse may be defined as any act by the caretaker or parent which may result in serious emotional or physical harm, sexual exploitation or abuse or even death of the child (Christoffersen & DePanfilis, 2009). In addition, failure of the caretaker or parent to prevent such acts will also be interpreted as child neglect or abuse which is punishable by the law. This Act goes ahead to clearly define all these type of child abuse as a way of ensuring that parents and caretakers are punished when they break rules in this Act. A child may be said to be abused physically if those in charge of him or her fails to provide the necessary shelter, food or even not supervising the child properly. Medical abuse occurs when the caretaker or parent fail to provide mental or medical treatment to the child. A child is said to be emotionally abused if the caretaker or parent fails to meet emotional needs of the child while education abuse occurs when the child is not educated as required by the law. Thus the main purpose of this law is to minimize cases of children neglect and mistreatment by requiring parent to take good care of their children.
This Act also requires caretaker, parents or any other person to report to the police, cases of child neglect or abuse. According to this act ‘any person’ has a duty to report to the nearest authority all the cases of child abuse and failure to do so may lead to a legal punishment on the side of third parties. The purpose for this clause is to ensure that the issue of child protection is for the whole society and all members of the public also have a duty to ensure the cases of child neglect and abuse are minimized.
Impact Human service organizations
According to this Act every person or organization that is mandated to take care of the children has a responsibility to ensure that all those children entrusted under their care are not abused in anyway. The Act require teachers and other personnel in schools; providers of health care such as doctors, nurses, physicians and other health professionals; day care personnel, social workers, personnel for enforcing law; and other groups that deal with children report any cases of suspected child neglect or abuse. If these personnel fail to report such cases to the authority, they will be criminally charged for child negligence and abuse (Herman-Smith, 2011). This law also requires clergies to report cases of child neglect or abuse especially at this time of increased scandals of children sexual abuse by the clergies.
This new amendment will require all the organizations that handle children to come up with their own internal policies that ensure that they have fully complied with it, since failure to do so will lead to a legal punishment. For example, schools will be required to come up with internal rules to minimize cases of teachers abusing their students either physically, emotionally or sexually. Health care professionals will be required to act more professionally to ensure that there are no cases of physical, mental or psychological abuse to the children they are nursing or treating.
Argument for and against this law
Enactment of this Act will minimize the cases of child abuse that are prevalent in the society today. Due to fear of legal punishment, those people who are entrusted with the responsibility of bringing up children as well as the society in general will ensure that no cases of child neglect and abuse (Nunno, 2009). Secondly, costs of treating children who are abused will be saved as these cases reduce in number. On the other hand, this Act is believed to promote practice of law which is unauthorized by allowing people who are not lawyers to come and represent the interests of the abused child. The state law allows an advocate for child to be appointed who may not be necessarily a lawyer. In deed the congress allowed the appointed advocate to give his or her recommendations that will help the court to make its ruling. Secondly, critiques of this law argue that, the state may not be in a position to ensure confidentiality of the information that may be given when a third party is reporting a case of child neglect or abuse. This may limit willingness of the members of the public to come out and report such cases.
Potential ramifications for not following the Act
According to this Act, failure of the organizations to report any case of child neglect or abuse, will lead to their legal punishment. School personnel, health care professionals, social workers and other groups involved in children affairs can be charged in court of law for failure to report to cases of child neglect or abuse. This may lead to fine or any other kind of punishment as the court may find appropriate. On the side of the victims, failure to abide by this law may increases cases of child neglect and abuse in the society.
Conclusion
Increased cases of child neglect and abuse can only be minimized through of law enforcement. Thus this Act will help in addressing this societal problem by punishing those who fail to report cases of child neglect and abuse. However, it is important to enforce it without breaking other laws like use of non lawyers to defend the interests of the victims. Again, confidentiality of the reported cases ought to be checked to ensure no leakage of the reporting person’s details.
References
Bryant, K. (2009). School Counselors and Child Abuse Reporting: A National Survey. Professional School Counseling, 12(5), 333-342.
Christoffersen, M. & DePanfilis, D. (2009).Prevention of child abuse and neglect and improvements in child development. Child Abuse Review, 18(1), 24-40.
Herman-Smith, R. (2011). Early childhood interventionists' perspectives on serving maltreated infants and toddlers. Children & Youth Services Review, 33(8), 1419-1425.
Nunno, M. (2009). Invited Commentary on CAPTA and The Residential Placement: A Survey of State Policy and Practice. Child & Youth Care Forum, 38(2), 69-73.
