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Points to Ponder Regarding Child Abuse & Neglect: The Smallest Kindness Helps
By Jane Gilgun

Summary In this article, I ask about the roles other people can play in the lives of children who have experienced abuse and neglect. This is an important question because few abused children and their families receive professional services, either through voluntary participation in family education and treatment programs or from child protection agencies. Far right legislators have reduced budgets for services to families and children, which puts abused and neglected children and youth at increased risk. The smallest kindness helps. When Children Do Well illions of children are abused and neglected each year in the United States. Most of these children not only do not go on to perpetrate abuse and neglect themselves but a large percentage appear to do as well and sometimes better than children who were not abused and neglected. This suggests naturally occurring processes that help some children do well despite adversities. They have shown resilience, or capacities to cope with, adapt to, and overcome the effects of abuse and neglect. Research and theory suggest that children who do well under difficult circumstances have at least one parent who is emotionally available to the children and provides the safety and security that children require to show resilience. Typically these parents not only have capacities for secure attachments, but they also have supportive relationships with other people, have good judgment, good capacities for keeping themselves on an even keel emotionally, and have good coping skills. One of many studies

that support these ideas show that children exposed to domestic violence found that children who showed resilience as compared to children who did not had fewer worries and fears and mothers with better mental health and parenting skills (Graham-Burnam et al, 2009, cited in Graham-Burnam & Howell, 2011). These ideas do not mean abused and neglected children require no response from other people. On the contrary, at least half or more children who are abused and neglected have difficulty in a variety of areas, such as school work, forming friendships with other children, and in developing their own interests and talents. This not only affects the quality of their lives but it affects the quality of their contributions to the quality of life of others. Since these children rarely receive any professional services, other people have roles to play in the promotion of childrens resilience when they have experienced abuse and neglect. In short, teachers, youth workers, child care professionals, friends, and neighbors have roles to play. What do you think these others can do? Legal Definitions & Harmful Parental Behaviors Another point to ponder is the differences between legal definitions of abuse and neglect and childrens experiences of harmful parental behaviors. An example of this is the legal definition of medical neglect, where the issue is framed as one of parental obligation alone. When parents fail to provide needed medical treatment, they are liable to charges of medical neglect (Dubowitz, 2011). Dubowitz (2011) cited a case of a six year-old girl who had four hospitalizations for severe asthma attacks. A week after discharge from her latest hospitalization, the child appeared to be doing well at planned medical check-up. However, her mother had not bought the prescribed medication for the childs condition. The mother explained that she was waiting for her next paycheck as she had no medical insurance. Her husband and the childs father had left the family three years before and paid no child support. Who is responsible for the mothers failure to provide her daughter with medication? Discussion Well-functioning societies have high investments in children. The cutbacks in services to children have placed far more children at risk than has been true in the past. These cutbacks raise to the foreground something that has also been a fact of life. It takes a village to raise a children. No matter the state of funding for social services, families, friends, neighbors, teachers, child care professionals, youth workers, police and people from all walks of life can make positive contributions to families and children. The smallest kindnesses help. References

 Dubowitz, Howard (2011). Neglect of childrens health care. In John E. B. Myers, John E. B. (Ed.). The APSAC Handbook on Child maltreatment (3rd ed.) (pp. 145-165). Sage: Thousand Oaks, CA. Gilgun, Jane F. (2010). Child sexual abuse: From harsh realities to hope. Amazon Kindle, iBooks, Nook, and others. Gilgun, Jane F. (2011). The NEATS: A child and family assessment. Amazon Kindle, iBooks, Nook, and others. Graham-Burnam, Sandra & Kathryn H. Howell (2011). Child maltreatment in the contest of intimate partner violence. In John E. B. Myers, John E. B. (Ed.). The APSAC Handbook on Child maltreatment (3rd ed.) (pp. 167-180). Sage: Thousand Oaks, CA. Myers, John E. B. (2001). (Ed.). The APSAC Handbook on Child maltreatment (3rd ed.). Sage: Thousand Oaks, CA. Kidd, Sue Monk (2002). The secret life of bees. New York: Penguin.