Online Class: Child Abuse Recognition, Investigation, and Protection

Child labor laws and children's rights that developed along with human rights activities around the world have increasingly sought to protect children from harmful situations, labor, and familial abuse. Unfortunately, there still are people who take advantage of and abuse children physically, sexually, and emotionally.

Many people are uncomfortable with the topic of child abuse, but that will not make it go away.  Whose responsibility is it to fight child abuse? Everyone is responsible for fighting child abuse in any manner or form. Reporting suspected child abuse and neglect is the first step in a process to protect children. Many people hesitate to cast suspicion without undeniable proof; however, sometimes that proof may be elusive.

Adults have no problem going to the authorities for protection or to express complaints or grievances against other parties, but children do not have that luxury. Children are too young, and may be too frightened to protect themselves, to ask for protection, or know that they can.  It is up to the adults to protect the innocents and recognize the dangers that harm them, as well as report such conditions to the proper authorities.

This course is designed to teach others to recognize the multiple signs of child abuse, as well as the different types of child abuse.  Different types of child abuse may present themselves in different behaviors and physical appearance in children. This course also covers methods of reporting, identifies the professionals required by law to report suspected child abuse, and reviews the responsibilities of medical, school, and law enforcement personnel in all avenues of society. 

The investigative process, including obtaining facts and creating reports, has been developed through decades of trial and error by child protective services and law enforcement agencies around the United States.

Children of all races and ethnicities can be victims of child abuse.

It is not just a matter of burying one's head in the sand and ignoring the issue. Child abuse was and still is a matter of ignorance for many citizens. The topic was not discussed in schools, nor was consideration of child neglect or abuse addressed in police procedure manuals, medical schools' curriculum, or hospital procedure materials. 

Today, many people remain frustrated by the necessity of dealing with various agencies' handling of reports involving child abuse and neglect, and many feel that the legal process moves too slowly to have a direct impact on the benefit of reporting cases of child abuse or neglect without adequate proof.

There is no doubt that the procedure and requirements involved in filing reports are only the beginning of the problem. Continuing through the process and preparing a case for trial involve major hurdles not only to child protective service agencies and personnel but law enforcement departments as well.

By the mid-1970s, hundreds of thousands of children suspected of being abused were brought to the attention of public authorities, and by the late 1980s, this number rose to more than 2 million. To date, that number is alarmingly and shamefully high, but the fact that the cases are numbered shows the progress in reporting cases of child abuse and neglect, which is of great benefit to the children.