Assessing Child Abuse Risk Factors

The Signs and Symptoms Are There

All one needs to do is open a newspaper or turn on the news to hear about numerous incidents of child abuse. We no longer live in a time where children are seen and not heard, and we recognize that children have voices and a right to live without fear and harm. Child abuse is a serious offense that carries lasting psychological effects, which is why the last decade has seen a forward movement on assessing child abuse risk factors.

Despite the many awareness campaigns on the issue of child abuse and neglect, it has done little to decrease the occurrences, though it has kept the issue important. According to the United States Department of Health and Human Services, it was estimated that 899,000 children fell victim to child abuse and neglect, in the year 2005 alone. This steady increase has encouraged the use of assessment instruments that can be used to identify and predict risk factors that indicate potential child abuse and neglect, instead of waiting for actual cases to surface.

In recent years, research and studies have been done on child abuse and who is likely to enact and carry out this type of behavior. It has yielded information which can help professionals monitor and identify those who are more likely to victimize a child whether physically, emotionally, and even neglectfully. This allows for early intervention and hopefully a decrease in the number of children that will be abused and even become fatalities of child abuse.

It is unfortunate that anyone can be a child abuser, because all it takes is some excess stress in someone's life and an available child to take it out on, to create a climate conducive for the behavior. However, studies have drawn a profile of characteristics associated with someone likely to be or become a child abuser.