What can communities do?

Promote No-child-abuse Awareness

Although child abuse has huge impacts on the abused children' life, not every parent knows this fact; Some parents still use violence to discipline their kids. Some parents are totally unaware of the concept of child abuse and they often treat their kids improperly. To decrease and finally rid of child abuse, the first thing should be promoting no-child-abuse awareness.

At community level, all kinds of activities can be used to promote awareness of child abuse and its consequences: lectures, training courses, library seminars, elementary school courses, door-to-door delivery of booklets, etc. Outdoor advertisement signs can be used to publicize child abuse. TV, radio, and newspapers all can be used to promote awareness of child abuse. To ensure the lasting effects, these promotion works should be done continually.

In Toronto, the no-child-abuse promotion is especially important because thousands of new immigrants come into the city every year.

Report Child Abuse

To stop child abuse and save the future of the abused kids, all community members have the responsibility to report any kind of child abuse.Only when abuse is reported and then controlled, can child abuse be finally stopped.

All health professionals and social workers are legally required to report any child abuse. However, all neighbors should report the child abuse if they wish to protect the abused kids and the whole community. If every member of the community can stand up against child abuse through reporting, the child abuse will have no room to exist.

Support Abuse Victims and Families

Once a child abuse case is found and reported, the community should give support to both the victims (the abused kids) and the family, including the abusing parents or caregivers.

Supports to the abused kids include both immediate help and long-term assistance. They should have physical, psychosocial, and functional dimensions. The most important thing is that the abused child should be treated as a child with the usual physical needs, developmental tasks, and play interests--not as a victim of abuse (Hockenberry & Wilson, 2007).

The family, even the abusing parents and caregivers, also need support. The siblings and the innocent parents are usually frustrated with the issue and strongly desire physical, psychosocial, and religious support. Most of the abusing parents or caregivers are victims themselves at childhood and live in poverty (Hockenberry & Wilson, 2007), so both health care and social support are needed.

Work on Social Factors of Child Abuse

Many social factors contribute to the child abuse. These include:

• Low socioeconomic status
• Large family size
• Recent life stress (Tonmyr & Doering, 2004)
• Community violence
• Concentrated neighborhood disadvantage (e.g., high poverty and residential instability, high unemployment rates, and high density of alcohol outlets), and poor social connections. (CDC, 2009)
• Social and cultural norms that promote or glorify violence towards others, support the use of corporal punishment, demand rigid gender roles, or diminish the status of the child in parent–child relationships (WHO, 2010)

To eliminate child abuse, all community members, including politicians, health professionals, social workers, police, etc., should work together to control these factors.

Child Protection Agencies and Laws in Ontario

Based on the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General website (2010),  child protection services in Ontario are:

• provided by children's aid societies (sometimes called family and child services)
• governed by the Child and Family Services Act

References

1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2009). Child maltreatment: Risk and protective factors. Retrieved December 14, 2010, from http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/childmaltreatment/riskprotectivefactors.html
2.  Hockenbery, M. J., & Wilson, D. (2007). Wong 's nursing care of infants and children. St. Louis, Missouri: Mosby Elsevier.
3.  Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General. (2010, December). Child protection. Retrieved December 14, 2010, from http://www.attorneygeneral.jus.gov.on.ca/english/family/divorce/child_protection/
4. Tonmyr, L., & Doering, L. (2004). The scope of child maltreatment in Canada. Health Canada: Strengthening the Policy-Research Connection: Health Policy Research, 9, 12-15.
5. World Health Organization. (2010). Child maltreatment. Retrieved December 14, 2010, from http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs150/en/index.html