Child Maltreatment

Child maltreatment includes all types of abuse and neglect of a child, and it is preventable. Public health agencies play a critical role in child maltreatment prevention. For instance, public health can bring together diverse stakeholders and leadership, leveraging resources, and bringing focus to upstream strategies focused on factors and not simply outcomes.

Social Norms

  • Family resource centers in Colorado are encouraging parents to ask for help and seek assistance when they need it, destigmatizing help-seeking in their communities.

  • Local communities are working to foster norms of collective prosperity, helping businesses and policymakers understand their roles in preventing child maltreatment.

Economic Stability and Supports

  • Increasing access to concrete financial supports for families is known to help prevent child maltreatment.

  • Public health agencies can partner with employers and policy advocates at the local- and state-level to inform employment policies that are supportive of families (e.g., livable wages, flexible scheduling, and paid leave).

  • Supported by the Essentials for Childhood program, local public health agencies are enhancing access to economic supports for families by addressing systemic barriers to food assistance and child care assistance.

  • Local public health agencies can collaborate with human services departments to strategically reduce barriers to assistance programs such as WIC, SNAP, and the Colorado Child Care Assistance Program.

Connectedness

  • By improving help-seeking norms and reducing systemic barriers to assistance programs, coordinated cross-sector partnerships can improve the degree to which families are connected to concrete supports and tangible resources when they need them. As an example, the Essentials for Childhood program is funding the Family Resource Center Association to partner with local public health in Kiowa and Prowers Counties to start a family resource center where one has previously not existed. When families are connected and have access to the supports they need, families are healthier and child maltreatment is prevented.

Child maltreatment is associated with many outcomes including mental health, social development, and risk-taking behavior into adolescence and adulthood. Childhood violence increases the risks of injury, sexually transmitted infections, including HIV, mental health problems, delayed cognitive development, reproductive health problems, involvement in sex trafficking, and noncommunicable diseases leading to damage to the nervous, endocrine, circulatory, musculo-skeletal, reproductive, respiratory, and immune systems. Research consistently demonstrates an association between child maltreatment and drug use problems in later life, including prescription opioid misuse. Child maltreatment prevention strategies like the ones above impact other forms of violence and injury at once.

Child abuse and neglect can also affect broader health outcomes:

  • In 2017, 11,578 children were victims of child abuse and neglect in Colorado.

  • In 2017, Colorado ranked 48th in the country for affordable child care, with the average cost comprising 16.1% of a two-parent family income.

  • Colorado ranks 48th in the US for enrollment in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) and 43rd for enrollment in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

  • According to the Colorado Child Fatality Prevention System, 62 children in Colorado died from child abuse or neglect in 2017.

  • 15.8% of adults say they get the emotional support they need only sometimes, rarely, or never.

  • 35.9% of respondents said they were handling the day-to-day demands of raising children either “somewhat well”, “not very well”, or “not very well at all.”

  • Paid leave in Colorado is not accessible to all families. Data from the Health eMoms survey indicate that non-hispanic white moms with more than a high school education living in the Denver Metro area are the most likely to have access to any paid leave. However, the most common type of leave accessed by families in Colorado is unpaid leave.


Resources for Community Partners:

Examples of State and Local Child Maltreatment Prevention Partners: