Issues in Brief
The Child Maltreatment Policy Resource Center disseminates information and products in many formats. Issues in Brief reports provide an easily accessible snapshot of critical issues in topic areas being researched and addressed by the Center.
Issues in Brief provides an orientation to a topic or issue, an outline of the main concerns, a brief review of the supporting literature, and initial recommendations, all toward goals of raising awareness and quickly orienting readers to the substance of critical child maltreatment concerns. In most cases, policy white papers and articles are available on the Center website to support a deeper and more comprehensive dive into the topic area and its related concerns.
Poverty, Neglect, and Child Protection Reform
Over the past 30 years, Child Protective Services (CPS) has evolved from a highly specialized system designed to investigate and respond to child abuse and neglect to one expected to also provide social services and material supports to vulnerable families and children in poverty. This has led to mission creep in CPS agencies and service discontinuities for families struggling to meet their children’s basic needs. We explore why and how this shift occurred and offer recommendations for universal access to financial and social supports to at-risk and vulnerable families, without undermining the responsibility and capacity of CPS agencies to identify and respond to culpable child neglect.
Youth on Sex Offender Registries
Registration and public notification were enacted to protect the public from high-risk sexual offenders and to help law enforcement monitor their whereabouts. Youth with problematic sexual behaviors were subsequently added to these registries. However, research indicates that very few youth with problematic sexual behaviors re-offend or evolve into adult perpetrators, that youth respond well to treatment, and that registration has significant negative consequences on youth development and well-being. We examine trends in rates of youth sexual offenses in states where reforms have occurred to determine the impact of such reform on rates of offending.
Abusive Head Trauma
Abusive Head Trauma (AHT) is a severe head and/or neck injury from physical child abuse, often inflicted when an infant is shaken or thrown against a hard surface in response to continuous crying. AHT is the main cause of severe injury and death in children under the age of one from child abuse. Understanding AHT improves our ability to recognize and diagnose it, but there are multiple barriers to effective prosecution. Although preventing AHT is crucial, research on prevention has been limited. We provide resources to aid medical, legal, and social service professionals in navigating AHT and offer insights into prevention strategies.
Positive Parenting
Harmful parenting practices such as corporal punishment and psychological maltreatment have very detrimental effects on children. The philosophy of positive parenting provides an empirically supported framework for parenting practices that ensure nurturing, healthy growth and development, and nonviolent discipline. However, there is little consensus on its precise definition in either the academic or parenting practices literature, limiting our ability to make sound and consistent recommendations on parenting programs to replace harmful parenting. Our work aims to clarify the core elements of positive parenting and to develop a directory of parenting programs that are consistent with the positive parenting approach so professionals can provide families with safe and effective alternatives to ineffective and harmful parenting practices. We first investigated positive parenting in the academic literature (Brief #1), later followed by a review of the parenting practices literature (Brief #2).
