National Child Abuse Prevention Month

Not only is April National Volunteer Appreciation Month but it is also National Child Abuse Prevention Month.

Communities can help parents reduce the risk of child abuse and neglect by providing a broad array of family supports, according to this year's theme "Safe Children and Healthy Families Are a Shared Responsibility."

To help communities and families prevent abuse and neglect the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Children Bureau Office on Child abuse and Neglect and its National Clearinghouse on Child Abuse and Neglect information updated their resource packet of prevention materials.

The packet also includes a poster in Spanish and English and a variety of materials that can be used for media events and community awareness activities.

The packet was developed in partnership with 28 national organizations including Prevent Child Abuse America and the FRIENDS National Resource Center for Community-Based Child Abuse Prevention.

A toolkit for evaluating child abuse prevention programs is a new resource available through the Prevention webpage.

Included in the toolkit is the Logic Model Builder which provides guidance in developing a logic model so that indicators of success as well as appropriate evaluation instruments can be identified.

HHS released national statistics on child abuse and neglect for 2004 recently, the most recent stats available to date. According to an April 4th report released, 872,000 children were found to be victims of child abuse or neglect in 2004.

Of the children who were abused and neglected that year, 62.4 percent experienced neglect, 17.5 percent were physically abused, 9.7 percent suffered sexual abuse, 7 percent were emotionally or psychologically abused, and 2.1 percent suffered medical neglect.

An estimated 1,490 children died from abuse or neglect in 2004, more than 80 percent of whom were younger than four years old.

While the rate of victimization has decreased the rate of children whose cases were investigated has increased.