Phillip Cooper

There exists CAPIT program, which is, in fact, the Child Abuse Prevention, Intervention and Treatment Program, which is designed to treat a child abuse in California. Similar programs exist in many other states all over the country. The prevention is done by identifying children at risk. Special attention is paid to isolated families with young children of about 5 years of age. Home visiting programs are very useful for prevention. The following services are provided with the aim of prevention and intervention of child abuse: day care, respite services, transportation, mental health services, reporting child abuse and neglect, services provided through home visiting programs, parent education, etc. These services are also required in case the abuse took place and an appropriate treatment is required. It is especially referred to mental health services and domestic violence services or parent education, etc. Concerning the detection of child abuse, the most appropriate person to identify the case of the child abuse is the family physician. Usually, physical types of abuse may be visible. Emotional abuse may be as harmful as physical. Everyone can be involved in child abuse, i.e. people of any race or social status can be considered. It is important to ask a child about the last conversations with adults to learn who a child was talking to, while the abuser should not necessarily be a stranger. Usually, the symptoms or signs of child abuse are the feelings of shame, confusion or guilt (emotional); changes in behaviour, mood, anxiety, depression, fear, attempt to run away, etc. (behavioural). Physical symptoms, such as bruises, broken parts of the body, blood, etc. are easily noticed. Child treatment should include several conversations with the abused child to understand the context or the neighbourhood to make a child feel less pain due to the situation, which happened; to identify the dysfunctional behaviour of a child; to address the problem. The treatment should foster interpersonal and intrapersonal development, physical and sexual development as well as behavioural conduct development. In California, there exists the organisation named CASAT, i.e. Child and Adolescent Services for Abuse and Trauma dealing with treatment of the abused children. Nurses’ role in child abuse prevention At the primary level of prevention, the nurses or family physicians should find out all the risk factors and possible interventions. Home visiting programs with nurses involved may be very effective at the secondary level of prevention designed for families “at risk”. Tertiary level of prevention takes place in case the maltreatment in the family already occurred. Tertiary interventions are aimed to prevent the maltreatment recurring in the families. The risk factors in abuse may be individual (lack of communication between parents and children, maltreatment cases in the family, the presence of step-father, etc.), family factors (negative atmosphere or violence, stress in the family), community risk factors, family and community protective factors. There are some environmental indicators of child neglect, such as drowning, falling hazards, the presence of dangerous animals, lack of food or clean water, etc. Moreover, there may also exist disparities in early childhood education and care due to that fact that it’s impossible to track the teaching process of every teacher. Anyone can report child abuse or neglect in California and many other states. A special form is required to be filled in to report the child abuse. A reporting party must indicate his or her name, business or agency name or address, number and date of the incident as well as whether he or she was a witness to the incident, the report notification, the victim’s details, the involved parties and the information about the incident. The report can be made to any police or sheriff’s department, country probation department or the country’s welfare department. Collaborative resources build collaborative relationships between children and parents, increase children’s comprehensiveness, support their ongoing recovery and are more effective in comparison to individual treatment or intervention. Phillip Cooper, writer at https://writer-elite.com/ and a blogger