Child Maltreatment

This book addresses a broad array of issues and topics related to child maltreatment and seeks to honor the sacred trust that former UN Secretary-General Annan speaks of by shedding light on how best to serve children and families confronting various forms of victimisation. Topics span from how decisions are made by child protection professionals to the tools needed to effectively advocate for system reform at the community and state levels. Section One, Practice Consideration, contains four chapters written by leading frontline professionals who explore decision making among child protection professionals, how medical and nonmedical team members ideally interact and share their expertise in the context of a team, and finally how advanced training in Child Abuse Pediatrics is now being provided to physicians who make an additional 3-year commitment beyond residency to become board certified in this relatively new specialty. Section 2, Providing Care, consists of four chapters that examine human trafficking, the emergence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in children and adolescents who have experienced child maltreatment, and takes on an international flare and explores the trends in child maltreatment in the setting of multiple births in Japan. Section 3, Prevention and Advocacy, ends the book with five chapters that seek to go upstream and which work toward systematic efforts to prevent child maltreatment. Using a quality improvement methodology, a hospital-based abusive head trauma program is implemented and evaluated in granular detail, concluding with lessons learned at the front line, where all programs either rise or fall. Next, the growing awareness of childhood adversity and the role that these early negative experiences can play in the health and wellbeing of children as they grow and develop is explored from a public health perspective. The book concludes with a call to action for effective advocacy at the community and state levels to reform the systems we have institutionalised to manage the problem of child maltreatment.