Child Neglect

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Child Neglect
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Texas Definition

• Neglectful supervision is defined as "placing the
  child in or failing to remove the child from a
  situation that a reasonable person would realize
  requires judgment or actions beyond the child's
  level of maturity, physical condition or mental
  abilities and that results in bodily injury or
  substantial risk of immediate harm to the child."
  
• Neglectful Supervision is also defined as
  "placing a child in or failing to remove the
  child from a situation in which the child would
  be exposed to a substantial risk of sexual
  conduct harmful to the child." This policy is
  based on The Texas Family Code 261.001(4)
• In addition to the age of the child, the degree
  of risk to the child is determined based upon
  the
• emotional maturity and capability of the child
• the child's ability to respond to crisis and
• whether the child has a mental, physical, or
  medical disability.
• Other important factors include
• the behaviors and activities the child engages in
  while unsupervised
• whether a bodily injury or substantial risk of
  immediate harm has already occurred when the
  child was unsupervised and
• the overall safety of the child's surroundings.

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Case Study

• Lori Sue Samson sits in front of an old TV,
  rocking her frail body while sucking on two
  fingers and clutching a dirty, tattered blanket.
  The blanket, much loved and fiercely guarded, is
  her only memory of a time when her mother
  rewarded her with fervent attention. By the time
  Lori Sue was 18 months, Mama had another baby,
  and then another two years later, and the last
  six months ago. Now 5 year old Loris Sue is the
  caregiver while Mom shops, visits and meets
  friends. She is small for her age and twists
  dull, tangled hair around one finger. After
  occasional admonishments about not combing her
  hair, ,both mother and child have tired of the
  struggle. Lori Sue has not yet lost a tooth and
  her baby teeth are decayed. She retreats to the
  kitchen, searching for something to eat.
• In a crib at the far side of the kitchen is 6
  month old Franny, naked but for an undershirt.
  The baby is awake, but pays little attention to
  her older sister. She is listless and small. A
  full bottle of now-curdled milk lies beside her,
  but the infant makes no move to reach it. The
  mattress on which she lies is soiled and lacks a
  sheet. Lori Sue gazes at her baby sister and
  goes quickly into the next room to assure herself
  that her 3 year old brother is still asleep on
  his mattress.
• The children are alone and have been for several
  hours. Their mother cares, but didnt expect to
  be left by her boyfriends and feels she is a
  victim.

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Neglect

• Latin neglectus, the 'fact of taking no notice'
• Recorded as early as 1500s
• Concept of child neglect didnt emerge until
  1800s
• Often culturally defined
• When can you leave a child alone?
• Definition A condition in which a caretaker
  responsible for the child, either deliberately or
  by extraordinary inattentiveness, permits the
  child to experience avoidable present suffering
  and/or fails to provide one or more of the
  ingredients generally deemed essential for
  developing a person's physical, intellectual, and
  emotional capacities.
• Generally, child neglect means the failure of a
  parent or a caretaker responsible for the child's
  care to provide minimally adequate food,
  clothing, shelter, supervision, and/or medical
  care for the child.

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Types of Neglect

• Physical
• Educational
• Emotional
• Supervisory
• Medical
• Mental health
• Infant Neglect (not usually one of the listed
  types)

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Physical Neglect

• Refusal of Health Care
• Delay in Health Care
• Abandonment
• Expulsion
• Other Custody Issues
• Other Physical Neglect

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Emotional Neglect

• Inadequate Nurturance/Affection
• Chronic/Extreme Abuse or Domestic Violence
• Permitted Drug/Alcohol Abuse
• Permitted Other Maladaptive Behavior
• Refusal of Psychological Care
• Delay in Psychological Care
• Other Emotional Neglect

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Educational Neglect

• Permitted Chronic Truancy Habitual truancy
  averaging at least 5 days a month was
  classifiable under this form of maltreatment if
  the parent/guardian had been informed of the
  problem and had not attempted to intervene.
• Failure to Enroll/Other Truancy Failure to
  register or enroll a child of mandatory school
  age, causing the school-aged child to remain at
  home for non-legitimate reasons (e.g., to work,
  to care for siblings, etc.) an average of at
  least 3 days a month.
• Inattention to Special Education Need Refusal to
  allow or failure to obtain recommended remedial
  educational services, or neglect in obtaining or
  following through with treatment for a child's
  diagnosed learning disorder or other special
  education need without reasonable cause.

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Supervisory Neglect

• Inadequate Supervision Child left unsupervised
  or inadequately supervised for extended periods
  of time or allowed to remain away from home
  overnight without the parent/substitute knowing
  (or attempting to determine) the child's
  whereabouts.

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Infant Neglect

• Prenatal exposure to drugs
• Prenatal
• FAS
• HIV
• Stimulation
• Language
• Gross motor and fine motor
• Failure to Thrive

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Statistics

• Physical neglect is the most frequently occurring
  type. It accounts for 51 of the neglect cases
  and involved 507,000 children in 1988.
• Educational neglect is the second most frequent
  type occurring in 29 of the cases involving
  285,900 children.
• Emotional neglect is the least frequent type with
  203,000 children or 20 of the neglect cases.
• 44 of child fatality cases reported to DPS
  result of neglect

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Effects of Neglect

• InfantsFailure to thrive
• Psychosocial Dwarfism
• Lack of attachment
• Toddlers
• Two-year-olds demonstrated significant deficits
  in coping skills, more frustration, anger, and
  non-compliance
• Preschoolers
• lower self-esteem, poorer control over impulses,
  and expressed less positive and more negative
  affect than the non-maltreated children.
• lacked persistence and enthusiasm, and were
  negative and non-compliant in response to their
  mothers' efforts to teach them simple tasks.
• In a preschool classroom, were seen as more
  dependent and less able to control impulses

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Effects of Neglect

• Kindergarten
• Teachers have rated neglected children as
  extremely inattentive, uninvolved, reliant,
  lacking in creative initiative, and as having
  much difficulty in comprehending day-to-day
  schoolwork.
• They were described as lacking persistence,
  initiative, and confidence to work on their own.
  They were dependent on the teacher
• School Age
• serious learning deficits.
• They score significantly lower on measures of
  school performance than physically abused or
  non-maltreated children, particularly in the
  areas of reading and math.
• significant language deficits.
• Teachers report that neglected children work and
  learn at below average levels.
• Moderators
• Stability of the children's living environment
• multiple out-of-home placements, multiple life
  stresses, and parental depression contribute to
  more negative developmental effects of neglect
  and abuse on children.
• Children with higher I.Q.'s also appear to suffer
  less serious developmental effects.

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Characteristics

• Usually identified at poverty level, occurs but
  ignored in other SES
• If one child is neglected, usually all are
• Neglect usually occurs because of
• Lack of knowledge
• Lack of judgment
• Lack of motivation
• Lack of resources
• Substance abusing
• Mentally ill

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Characteristics of the Family and Child

• Child Characteristicsneglect causes child to
  develop patterns of either extremely passive,
  withdrawing behavior or random, undisciplined
  activity.
• Family CompositionMost neglectful families are
  single-parent families.. Neglectful families with
  fathers present in the household had
  significantly higher income and provided better
  physical care than the single-parent families,
  but not better emotional/cognitive care. The
  physical absence or emotional disengagement of
  the father has been seen in failure to thrive
  infants.
• Family SizeChronic neglectful families tend to
  be large families with fewer resources to meet
  basic needs The Study of National Incidence and
  Prevalence of Child Abuse and Neglect reported
  that the estimated rate of neglect among families
  with four or more children was almost double the
  rate among families with three or fewer children.
  

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Characteristics of the Family and Child

• Family Interaction PatternsPatterns of verbal
  and non-verbal communication between neglectful
  parents and children have been characterized as
  infrequent and predominantly negative.
• neglecting mothers offered so little stimulation
  and responded to so few infant signals that they
  left their infants socially powerless and largely
  responsible for their own stimulation.
• The neglecting parents are characterized as
  unresponsive and withdrawn.
• Toddlers in the neglectful homes, as soon as
  they were able to walk, sought out their own
  stimulation through uncontrolled exploratory
  activity. Neglectful mothers largely ignored
  these toddlers on the loose, only infrequently
  and ineffectively attempted to exercise some
  control by yelling at them, often without
  bothering to observe the results. The children
  merely imitated the parent's disregard.
• These different patterns of interaction in
  contrasting types of neglecting families
  reinforce the need to assess each neglectful
  family independently.

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Identifying Neglect

• Child Neglect Index
• Teacher or Adult Report
• Child Self Report Scale

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Child Self Report Neglect Scale

• Measures cognitive, emotional, supervision, and
  physical neglect
• Includes subscales on Child Endangerment
  exposure to parental conflict violence,
  abandonment, and parental alcohol abuse
• Includes subscale on childs general feelings or
  appraisals of each domain

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Emotional Neglect Sample Item
Which girl is most like you?
This girls father makes her feel better when she
is sad or scared
This girls father doesnt make her feel better
when she is sad or scared
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Emotional Neglect Sample Item Cont.
Is this
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Cognitive Neglect Sample Item
Which girl is most like you?
This girls mother does not talk to her about
what she is learning in school
This girls mother talks to her about what she is
learning in school
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Supervision Neglect Sample Item(age 6-9)
Which boy is most like you?
This boys mother doesnt know where hes playing
outdoors
This boys mother knows where hes playing
outdoors
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Supervision Neglect Sample Item(age 10-15)
Which boy is most like you?
This boys father does not find out where he is
going after school
This boys father finds out where he is going
after school
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Hasnt left alone for a couple of days without
grown-ups
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Physical Neglect Sample Item
Which boy is most like you?
This boys mother makes sure he takes a bath
This boys mother does not make sure he takes a
bath
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Sees grown-ups in the house hitting each other
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Causes of Neglect

• Economic Which comes first, the poverty or
  deficits in personality and ability to cope that
  make poverty inevitable?
• Ecological unfriendly, poorly kept neighborhoods
• Societal Welfare reform that requires parents to
  leave children for work? Conversion of low
  income housing to condos?
• Individual how they process info, cognitive
  ability, psychological ability, substance abuse

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Which are neglectful?

• A Vietnamese family frequents a large gambling
  casino once a week. Children 4,5, and 6 dressed
  in pajamas. Children with their bedrolls sleep
  in the locked car until parents are ready to go
  home at about 1130.
• A couple owns a prosperous art dealership. Their
  8 year old daughter comes home from school, fixes
  her dinner and puts herself to bed. Her parents
  usually get home at 1 or 200 a.m.
• A young Hispanic woman began prostitution when
  she was 13. She has a manager to protect her.
  At 7 pm she leave her 5 6 year old with a snack
  and instructions to go to bed, then leaves for a
  nearby hotel where she works. She is home about
  midnight. A neighbor has been asked to keep an
  ear open for the children.
• Neglect Minimally adequate care

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Prevention

• Early Childhood Education
• Numerous studies have documented the significant
  and enduring improvements in intelligence,
  cognitive development, academic achievement,
  child health, and social emotional development
  for children who were enrolled in full-year Head
  Start preschool programs. Children who
  participated were clearly more successful and
  manifested less problem behavior in school. At
  age 19, the children who participated were more
  likely to be employed, less likely to be on
  welfare, and were less likely to be involved in
  delinquency or criminal behavior.
• Home Health Visitation
• Early intervention with parents identified as
  high risk for neglect, using lay or professional
  home health visitation, has proven to be an
  effective prevention strategy.
• Family Planning
• Chronically neglectful families tend to be large
  families with more than the average number of
  children.
• Parent Skills Training
• Parent education programs that are structured and
  designed to focus on specific parenting skills
  have been successful in improving the adequacy of
  childcare provided by high-risk parents. In
  selecting a parent education program, the
  professional must always consider the program's
  cultural/ethnic appropriateness for the target
  family or group. Parent education programs and
  materials must be developed and written in
  language that is understandable by parents with
  limited education and literacy levels.
• Strengthening Social Network Supports
• Parents benefit from strong supportive networks
  of neighbors, friends, and relatives, and from
  involvement with churches and other supportive
  organizations.