Location: Convention Center
Time: Afternoon around 3 o’clock or so
Purpose: Raise Awareness of Child Maltreatment
Health Care Providers of New Mexico…..speaking at the forum of child welfare.

Good afternoon, and I’d like to thank everyone for attending today’s meetings. I know its been a long day of speeches for everyone…….I’ve noticed the heavy eyes and the occasional bobbing heads. But I am pleased to say that I am the last speaker, so bear with me!
• I am here today to talk to you about child maltreatment. Aka: abuse or neglect……however it’s seen thru your eyes. Even though just about every term has its different meaning. I will cover different types of maltreatment, different cultural values, consequences, and most importantly…..prevention.
• Child maltreatment is defined as all intentional harm to, or avoidable endangerment of, anyone under 18 years of age. This includes both child abuse, and child neglect with abuse being a deliberate action of harm and neglect being a failure to appropriately meet a child’s basic needs.

But who’s to define child abuse? Here in America, if a child is acting out of manner and the mother or father pops him on the rear-end in public, it could be pretty typical that some witness may consider it child abuse.

Yet the other day I was watching a program from National Geographic (or something like) that showed a tribe in Africa “initiating” a 10 year old boy into a “man” by weaving these bullet ants into a glove made by plant reeds and making him wear it for 10 minutes without showing any sign of pain or discomfort. It was ridiculous, the ants were name “bullet ants” because the pain from the sting of one ant is said to be equivalent to the pain of getting shot. When the child took his hand out, it was black and most likely to be paralyzed and shake uncontrollably for days.
• This just goes to show how “culturally” different and diverse cultures are……what they perceive.

What is the relationship between cultural values and child maltreatment?
• Four cultural values appear to result in a Protection of Children Against Maltreatment throughout the world. They are:
 Value of children
 Who is responsible for their care?
 Young children are not responsible for their actions
 And violence is disapproved of. (which I kind of question in that video I saw).
• Most of us remember this incident. This is Madelyn Toogood looking around to make sure that no one is watching before she slaps and shakes her 4-year-old daughter who is inside the car. Obviously………a case of child abuse.

There are four main “agreed upon” types of child maltreatment:
• Physical making up 25%
• Emotional @ 6%
• Sexual @ 17%
• And neglect @ 50% as the most common. Since 1975, the number of reported abuse and neglect has at least tripled from 1 million to 3.7 million and seems likely to move up another step and quadruple.

A maltreated child is likely to be a difficult member of any group, often a bully or a victim or both.
As adolescents and adults, people who where severely maltreated in childhood (either physically or emotionally) often use drugs or alcohol to numb their emotions, choose unsupportive relationships, become victims or aggressors, sabotage their own careers, eat too much or too little, and generally engage in self-destructive behavior.

There are three levels of prevention of child maltreatment. The ultimate goal of child-care policy is to keep all maltreatment from ever beginning. This is called primary prevention.
• Designed to prevent maltreatment from ever occurring
• Must be community based and include a strong stand against violence
• Must include measures aimed at strengthening families.
Next:
Secondary prevention:
• Early response to first signs of risk
• Universal home visiting programs
• Modeling positive parenting techniques
• Family therapy
• Interventions must be culturally appropriate
 Secondary prevention includes measures such as home visits by a social worker, high-quality day care, and preventive medical treatment.
And finally:
Tertiary prevention
• Aimed at minimizing damage after abuse has already occurred
• Family prevention unit
• Foster care
• Jailing the perpetrators
• Permanent removal
• Intervention to reduce the harm done by actual abuse---which sometimes comes too late.

Please, let’s not let child abuse come to this level……….it should never be too late! I have included the child abuse hotline for New Mexico and strongly encourage you to use it and pass it on to others. Child maltreatment is preventable…..lets prevent it. The most valuable resource that New Mexico has is its children. Thank you for your time.

Child abuse hotline in (your state) is .........#

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