FROM THE FAMILY VIOLENCE BLOG
May 17, 2012 in Archive, Child Abuse, Domestic Violence, Events
Blogger Asks: What’s it going to take?
The new research report from Prevent Child Abuse America was recently released and puts the cost of toxic stress (or child abuse and neglect) experienced by children in this country at a staggering $80 billion dollars per year. Several studies have come out in recent years with numbers ranging from $80-124 billion dollars per year and are inclusive of paying for the consequential program costs associated with child abuse and neglect.
With child welfare reporting close to 3.5 million children per year for the maltreatment of children, what should our society’s response be? If a virus suddenly started taking the lives of children worldwide there would be a national outcry for a cure; money would be poured in to research; communities would mobilize in an effort to halt the spread of the disease.
And yet, there’s a child abuse pandemic right here in America that we could invest a fraction of that $80 billion dollars to create healthy environments for children but we keep diverting funds to intervention after the crisis has already hit.
We know it’s far more expensive to treat diseases after they occur rather than preventing them in the first place. The same dynamic exists here when it comes to child abuse and neglect. How many lives must be lost? How much money do we need to spend on emergency room health care? I wonder what, exactly, it’s going to take? Read the rest of this entry →
