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.
