Battling Child Neglect

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Battling Child Neglect Toys, Ice cream, ABC songs, candy, giggles and smiles are memories everyone should have from their childhood, but they are not for many children. Tears and silence are memoires of many children who are neglected every day. The definition of Child abuse is "Any recent act or failure to act on the part of a parent or caretaker which results in death, serious physical or emotional harm, sexual abuse or exploitation or an act or failure to act which presents an imminent risk of serious harm."(Definitions of Child Abuse and Neglect in Federal Law) Figure 1. Statistics are from www.Childhelp-usa.com Figure 1. Statistics are from www.Childhelp-usa.com Child Abuse is broken down into many different categories and each category is broken down into sub-categories. The category that is by far the largest is Child neglect which you can see in figure 1. Childhood Neglect is broken down into four separate sub-categories: Physical Neglect, Educational Neglect, Medical Neglect, and Emotional Neglect. Each one of these is a serious issue in its own yet child neglect is often ignored in professional research because the indicators of this form of abuse are usually not clear at first and is harder to determine. Physical Neglect Physical neglect is typically when the caregiver is not providing the basic necessities for the child such as food, clothing, or shelter. Lack of proper nutrition is often easy to determine. The child is either way under or over weight. When we discuss clothing we’re not talking about your child not having the latest Nike’s, Ralph Lauren, or Calvin Klein clothes. These children are just happy to have any pants, shirt, shoes, or even socks. Also included in this category are the more serious child abandonment, or inadequate supervision. Child abandonment is not just leaving your child and never coming back for them. It can also
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