Children grow up in different environments with different caregivers who can be parents or guardians. At times the caregivers could be working in jobs with low pay thereby feeling frustrated financially and stressed up. On severe occasions, the caregivers can indulge in alcohol and drug use to mitigate the stress level affecting them. In such a life, the parents/guardians end up neglecting their children or subjecting them to physical abuse. This needs assessment focuses on understanding the impacts of physical child abuse/neglect on the life of survivors in Rockford Community in Illinois.
The research will employ a qualitative approach to collect data among 315 participants. The method of data collection will entail semi-structured interviews read to the participants over the phone. Then, the data analysis will be done thematically by extracting keywords from the participant’s data and matching it with a theme that matches it.
Abstract
Children grow up in different environments with different caregivers who can be parents or guardians. At times the caregivers could be working in jobs with low pay thereby feeling frustrated financially and stressed up. On severe occasions, the caregivers can indulge in alcohol and drug use to mitigate the stress level affecting them. In such a life, the parents/guardians end up neglecting their children or subjecting them to physical abuse. This needs assessment focuses on understanding the impacts of physical child abuse/neglect on the life of survivors in Rockford Community in Illinois. The research will employ a qualitative approach to collect data among 315 participants. The method of data collection will entail semi-structured interviews read to the participants over the phone. Then, the data analysis will be done thematically through extractions of keywords from the participant’s data and matching it with a theme that matches it.
Keywords: Physical child abuse, Neglect, Caregiver, Parents, Children.
Repercussions of Childhood Abuse and Neglect for the Survivor
Child abuse and neglect form part of the social problems that affect various communities across the Rockford Illinois region. For some time, reports have been published indicating the magnitude of child abuse and neglect in different families (Bundy-Fazioli & DeLong Hamilton, 2013). It has been observed that most parents work all day with low paying jobs and as a result, they feel pressured to achieve work-life balance while striving to improve the financial needs of the family. With the financial hardships, the parents suffer psychological stresses, which make them delve into other lifestyles such as drinking alcohol and taking drugs. The repercussion of such deeds is abuse on the children or neglect leading to the minors suffering from other physical and psychological torture.
There have been various approaches suggested to curb the menace such as the adoption of cognitive-behavioral models. The differences in treatment have heightened the inability of the practitioners to provide efficient therapy to the children thereby leading to other problems in the life of the child. Daniel (2013) denotes that child abuse and neglect are similar concepts, which have received less attention from scholars thereby limiting the efficacy of obtaining accurate interventions to help children. With such challenges, it is posited that these children continue experiencing trauma as they grow. Therefore, it is in this context that the current research will focus on examining the impact of physical abuse and neglect in the lives of children who survive.
Research Background
Observably, child neglect is considered to create a pathway to particular atrocities including juvenile delinquency, improper relationships that lead to conflicts between parents and children, and running away when it becomes hard to bear the situation. Over the years, the cases of child neglect have been rising exponentially as parents focus on other issues particularly work. For instance, most parents living in up countries travel to the cities to look for work and leave their children behind with a promise of coming to check on them regularly. Days elapse and they end up not coming back to check on their children. These children grow up psychologically unstable due to a lack of parental figure they can look up to and bond with. They feel disregarded, which might lead to various ailments affecting them such as depression and anxiety, etc. Nonetheless, the research affiliated with child neglect has lagged behind that of physical abuse due to various factors involved. For instance, the latter is accompanied by certain manifestations such as scars thereby making it easy for someone to deduce that a particular child is going through physical abuse. On the other hand, neglection is an abstract phenomenon whose effects can only be felt internally. As a result, researchers never seem to focus much on this form of maltreatment as it never seems to lead to similar headlines like physical abuse (Dale,2017). The point here is that child neglect can be evident but researchers ignore it considering that fatal cases associated with it are minimal compared to physical abuse.
It would therefore imply that scholars have investigated the aspect of physical abuse quite more than child neglect. In the process, a common definition of child abuse has emerged as a non-accidental injury a caregiver inflicts on a child (McLeod et al., 2014). The external marks associate with the injuries is the main reasons why researchers have delved much into the subject of physical abuse among minors. Besides, McLeod et al. (2014) have documented the possibility that other internal injuries can be caused by physical abuse which can later affect the child in terms of cognition and lead to low self-esteem, depression, psychological distress, etc. Most of these effects are a result of unfavorable mental health of the person as he/she grows up.
As the effects of physical abuse and child neglect are known to particular scholars, another area worth understanding revolves around the causal affiliations between the two concepts. Previous studies such as Bender et al. (2007) have shown that child neglect is caused by a poor relationship between a parent and a child and between the latter and peers. On the other hand, physical abuse is relatable to various factors such as lack of empathy. As a result, it has been pointed out that physical abuse among children can lead to a lack of relational foundation with a demonstration of aggressiveness, anger, and empathy-free nature (Bender et al., 2007). In other words, physical abuse is due to a maladaptive relation between the caregiver and a child while child neglect is affiliated with a lack of relational models that can foster effective alliances between a child and the person looking after them. These indications imply that the caregiver relationship is necessary for the infant’s developmental stages to fill the gap that later results in the effects documented by various researchers.
Since the research revolving around child neglect is quite lean, it becomes important to combine the concept with physical abuse to examine the effects arising from the application of both the concepts. As a result, the focus of this needs assessment is combining the two concepts while assessing the impact caused on survivors of the problem. The basis of the analysis is to center on the aspects of growth and development that are distorted by physical abuse and child neglect. While doing this, the research incorporates the interventions that can minimize the psychological effect of child maltreatment and other negative effects carried to adulthood. The parent-child affiliation is an important model for understanding future relationships and other researches that aim at examining how this kind of affiliation impacts the current generation of children.
The Problem Statement
Physical abuse and child neglect are social issues that continue to attract concerns from social service professionals globally. There has been an increase in incidents of physical abuse and neglect of children. Each of the phenomena has received a unique force of attraction from policymakers and researchers in terms of the effect caused to the child, etc. however, the research on physical abuse has continued to dominate that of child neglect. Moreover, scholars seem to lack single research that only focuses on the predicaments that children go through as a result of combinative factors of physical abuse and child abuse. This research projects that a child can experience physical abuse after neglection especially under the care of the new person looking after the child. Nonetheless, researchers have seemed to focus more on the effects that arise from child abuse rather than the ones that arise from child neglect as well. With such a dearth in literature, the treatment of victims has continued to experience inconsistencies. Physical abuse and neglect impact children in various ways as they grow up and with this in mind, I aim to explore the effects of a combinative phenomenon of the two factors in impacting the life of the adults who survive the trauma. As a result, this study will offer an opportunity to examine and explore the impact of both physical abuse and neglect among children and how these two factors interfere with the growth of the child as they transit to adulthood. Therefore, it is anticipated that the outcome of this study will create a foundation for future investigation regarding the possibility of coming up with effective responses and therapies that can remedy the situation.
Purpose of the Study and Research Questions
The purpose of the study is to understand the impact of physical child abuse and neglect in the lives of survivors. To accomplish this purpose, there would be a need to focus on the implications of child abuse and neglect in our community, its effect on children that are carried into adulthood, and what services are available to assist in dealing with trauma. Therefore, to fulfill the purpose of this study the following research questions can be utilized to guide the research:
1. How do child abuse and neglect affect the community?
2. What are some of the effects the victims of child abuse and neglect exhibit in adulthood?
3. What services/programs are available to help the victims deal with the trauma?
Literature Review
This section reviews the existing literature revolving around child abuse and neglect in terms of the source of the problem and the effects. A theoretical framework that will guide the study is also discussed in this section. This segment begins by defining the key terminologies using previous studies of various scholars followed by the theoretical framework.
Conceptualizing Physical Child Abuse and Neglect
In the U.S., the Child Abuse Protection and Treatment Act (CAPTA) was the first government’s body to define different types of abuse and providing assistance in the identification of children being exposed to abuse (Landry, 2014). According to CAPTA (1979 cited in Landry, 2014), child abuse and neglect refer to the failure of a caregiver or parent to act in a way that portrays commitment to the wellbeing of the child. As a result, the actions exhibited lead to physical injury to the child, emotional instability, or death on severe occasions. Therefore, in the U.S., the federal requires every state to enforce a statute aimed at protecting children from abuse before receiving funds from the government.
On the other hand, the Revised Kansas Code for Care of Children (KCCC, 2006, cited in Landry, 2014) defines several terms affiliated with maltreatment of children cases in Kansas. One terminology is a parent who is perceived as the legal caregiver responsible for ensuring the wellbeing of a child. Secondly, there is the term harm, which is defined as the harm or injury caused to a minor that might be physical or psychological. The third terminology is neglect and it is defined as the actions of parents or particular commissions that contribute to harming a child such as failing to provide the basic needs for the child particularly, food, shelter, medical needs, and clothing.
In this needs assessment research, I am postulating that children’s cognitive abilities and behavior can be affected by abuse and neglect. The kind of treatment accorded to children by their abusers could end up being part and parcel of how they perceive themselves in the future. Including their view of the world, and those around them. In fact, their viewing and interpretation of events in their surrounding can impact their different expressions of behavior and emotional balance (Stirling et al., 2008). Such an observation leads to an inference that every type of child abuse correlates to particular symptoms that can be categorized as cognitive, affective, or behavioral.
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- Citation du texte
- Jacques Meljen (Auteur), 2021, The impacts of child abuse and neglection in families, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/1157204
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