Archive for category Children
This chart below was developed using data from Case Western Reserve University’s NEOCANDO database. All the cities in Cuyahoga County are ranked by their 8 year average rate of child maltreatment (child abuse and neglect). As you can see, we have lots of room for improvement.
My plan is to involve all the non-profits in our area who have expertise in this topic to join with the city and create a taskforce to prevent child abuse in our community. The first steps are to raise consciousness about preventing child maltreatment and educate our community about what to do if they witness child maltreatment. This approach has been proven to be effective in other communities.
You can watch videos of me presenting about this topic to City Council on more than one occasion–the videos from 12/15/08 and 2/2/09 are posted on this website.
There is a strong correlation between child maltreatment and children acting out in school, school achievement and becoming delinquent. Preventing children from being maltreated is important for all of us—and we can easily do something about it if we work together.
Child maltreatment is a public health issue.
I spoke about this topic twice at City Council meetings and had a specific plan to address it. (See videos posted on this website dated 12/15/08 and 2/2/09.)
Cleveland Heights has a higher rate of child maltreatment than the suburbs of: South Euclid, Shaker Heights, University Heights, and Lyndhurst. Here is a chart that I developed using the Social and Economic Indicators database provided by NEOCANDO at Case Western Reserve University.
How many children are we talking about?
The numbers of cases of substantiated or indicated child maltreatment in Cleveland Heights from 2000-2007 are listed below.
Each case represents a child in our community:
Year Number of cases with substantiated/indicated child maltreatment.
2000 171
2001 164
2002 172
2003 102
2004 105
2005 122
2006 80
2007 77
If you would like more information about how communities can prevent child maltreatment, visit the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation’s project to prevent child abuse here. The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation commissioned a Rand Report on preventing child maltreatment called ”If you had $5 million to spend each year for the next five years to prevent child abuse and neglect in the U.S., how would you spend it?”. You can read the full report of the opinions of 6 experts online.
An example of a community project to prevent child maltreatment is the project in Pittsburgh, developed with Family Communications-Mr. Rogers’ organization. It is called One Kind Word.
We already have everything needed to implement a child abuse prevention program in our city. What are we waiting for?
Other communities have decreased their rates of child maltreatment and so can we.
