Child-Maltreatment-Research-L (CMRL) List Serve

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Welcome to the archive of past Child-Maltreatment-Research-L (CMRL) list serve messages (11,000+). The table below contains all past CMRL messages (text only, no attachments) from Nov. 20, 1996 - April 4, 2024 and is updated every two months.

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Message ID: 10603

Date: 2019-12-20

Author:Christine Wekerle

Subject:Re: The Boston Globe and ProPublica's CAPTA Series

Very valuable information, Emily. Thank you! On Thu, Dec 19, 2019 at 4:36 PM Palmer, Emily > wrote: Good afternoon! I'm a reporter with The Boston Globe, who contacted this listserv (and was provided with many valuable sources) for a long-term project looking at the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act. Four years and two national databases later, I wanted to reach back out to say thank you and provide you with information and links to the project. Please share! How many children die of abuse and neglect each year and which states follow the federal law designed to protect them? The answer: no one knows and no one does. This week The Boston Globe and ProPublica published an in-depth investigation looking at the state of child abuse in America, and the primary federal law, known as CAPTA, aimed at preventing it. In order to report the project (and determine the answers given above), a team of journalists spent four years collecting records to create two national databases. The first is the country's most comprehensive database of child death by abuse and neglect, capturing some 7,000 deaths over a five-year period. The second is the first state-by-state compliance assessment of CAPTA ever conducted, which looked at five provisions within the law and determined where all 50 states, D.C. and Puerto Rico came up short. Here is the project: * "The federal government has one main law to prevent child abuse. No state follows all of it. ": Some 700,000 American children experience abuse and neglect each year, but the law designed to prevent that has been broken for decades. This explanatory feature explores the weaknesses of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, the nation's primary child abuse prevention law, which is weakly written and poorly funded. The article dives into Mississippi's child welfare system , which is middle-of-the-pack compared to the rest of the country. The article also includes clickable maps with the database measuring state-by-state compliance with CAPTA. You can hover over your state to see how it measures up when looking at such provisions as: how state protect drug-affected infants, provide representation for abuse victims in court and produce public reports about the children who die there. (This survey explainer describes how states were measured.) * "How many children die from abuse? The Globe and ProPublica wanted to find out. ": There is no national definition of abuse or neglect, so every state defines it for themselves. As a result, it is impossible to know how many children die of abuse and neglect in the United States each year. Congress had a chance to fix this in a reauthorization of CAPTA, expected early this year, but earlier in December they chose not to do this. As a result, there is no complete national database of child deaths in the country - the federal government loosely looks at the issue through a database that states may voluntarily contribute to, but that database is inaccurate because it does not account for the difference in definitions across state lines. Therefore, The Globe and ProPublica requested five years of fatality data from every state and have produced the most detailed database of child fatalities in the country, including information about how individual children were harmed and who harmed them. Data is searchable by state and by county. Additionally, the database proves that the federal government's voluntary database undercounts deaths in the country, and that we fall far short in knowing who or how many of our children are dying of abuse and neglect each year. Thanks again! Best, Emily Palmer Spotlight Fellow emily.palmer@globe.com 919.601.7282 (cell) -- McMaster University sits on the traditional Territories of the Mississauga and Haudenosaunee Nations, and within the lands protected by the "Dish With One Spoon" wampum agreement. Mailing address: 3A, Pediatrics, Child Advocacy and Assessment Program (CAAP), Health Sciences Centre, 1280 Main Street West, Hamilton, Ontario, L8S 4L8 Christine Wekerle, Ph.D. Twitter @DrWekerle Associate Professor, Department of Pediatrics, McMaster University Editor-in-Chief, Child Abuse & Neglect (http://www.journals.elsevier.com/child-abuse-and-neglect/) Founding Editor, International Journal of Child and Adolescent Resilience (www.in-car.ca ) Email: wekerc@mcmaster.ca or chris.wekerle@gmail.com Webpage: http://fhs.mcmaster.ca/pediatrics/wekerle_christine.html CIHRTeamSV Video Talks 2017 Award Winner, Boys' and Men's Health: Child Sexual Abuse Prevention: https://youtu.be/k1qvzGhOWU4 CIHRTeamSV VideoTalks 2015 Award Winner, The Maltreatment and Adolescent Pathways Study: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Zes-PJi2OY CIHRTeamSV Project: https://www.researchgate.net/project/Understanding-health-risks-and-promoting-resilience-in-male-youth-with-sexual-violence-experience-CIHR-Team-Grant-TE3-138302

Very valuable information, Emily. Thank you! On Thu, Dec 19, 2019 at 4:36 PM Palmer, Emily > wrote: Good afternoon! I'm a reporter with The Boston Globe, who contacted this listserv (and was provided with many valuable sources) for a long-term project looking at the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act. Four years and two national databases later, I wanted to reach back out to say thank you and provide you with information and links to the project. Please share! How many children die of abuse and neglect each year and which states follow the federal law designed to protect them? The answer: no one knows and no one does. This week The Boston Globe and ProPublica published an in-depth investigation looking at the state of child abuse in America, and the primary federal law, known as CAPTA, aimed at preventing it. In order to report the project (and determine the answers given above), a team of journalists spent four years collecting records to create two national databases. The first is the country's most comprehensive database of child death by abuse and neglect, capturing some 7,000 deaths over a five-year period. The second is the first state-by-state compliance assessment of CAPTA ever conducted, which looked at five provisions within the law and determined where all 50 states, D.C. and Puerto Rico came up short. Here is the project: * "The federal government has one main law to prevent child abuse. No state follows all of it. ": Some 700,000 American children experience abuse and neglect each year, but the law designed to prevent that has been broken for decades. This explanatory feature explores the weaknesses of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, the nation's primary child abuse prevention law, which is weakly written and poorly funded. The article dives into Mississippi's child welfare system , which is middle-of-the-pack compared to the rest of the country. The article also includes clickable maps with the database measuring state-by-state compliance with CAPTA. You can hover over your state to see how it measures up when looking at such provisions as: how state protect drug-affected infants, provide representation for abuse victims in court and produce public reports about the children who die there. (This survey explainer describes how states were measured.) * "How many children die from abuse? The Globe and ProPublica wanted to find out. ": There is no national definition of abuse or neglect, so every state defines it for themselves. As a result, it is impossible to know how many children die of abuse and neglect in the United States each year. Congress had a chance to fix this in a reauthorization of CAPTA, expected early this year, but earlier in December they chose not to do this. As a result, there is no complete national database of child deaths in the country - the federal government loosely looks at the issue through a database that states may voluntarily contribute to, but that database is inaccurate because it does not account for the difference in definitions across state lines. Therefore, The Globe and ProPublica requested five years of fatality data from every state and have produced the most detailed database of child fatalities in the country, including information about how individual children were harmed and who harmed them. Data is searchable by state and by county. Additionally, the database proves that the federal government's voluntary database undercounts deaths in the country, and that we fall far short in knowing who or how many of our children are dying of abuse and neglect each year. Thanks again! Best, Emily Palmer Spotlight Fellow emily.palmerglobe.com 919.601.7282 (cell) -- McMaster University sits on the traditional Territories of the Mississauga and Haudenosaunee Nations, and within the lands protected by the "Dish With One Spoon" wampum agreement. Mailing address: 3A, Pediatrics, Child Advocacy and Assessment Program (CAAP), Health Sciences Centre, 1280 Main Street West, Hamilton, Ontario, L8S 4L8 Christine Wekerle, Ph.D. Twitter DrWekerle Associate Professor, Department of Pediatrics, McMaster University Editor-in-Chief, Child Abuse & Neglect (http://www.journals.elsevier.com/child-abuse-and-neglect/) Founding Editor, International Journal of Child and Adolescent Resilience (www.in-car.ca ) Email: wekercmcmaster.ca or chris.wekerlegmail.com Webpage: http://fhs.mcmaster.ca/pediatrics/wekerle_christine.html CIHRTeamSV Video Talks 2017 Award Winner, Boys' and Men's Health: Child Sexual Abuse Prevention: https://youtu.be/k1qvzGhOWU4 CIHRTeamSV VideoTalks 2015 Award Winner, The Maltreatment and Adolescent Pathways Study: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Zes-PJi2OY CIHRTeamSV Project: https://www.researchgate.net/project/Understanding-health-risks-and-promoting-resilience-in-male-youth-with-sexual-violence-experience-CIHR-Team-Grant-TE3-138302