April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month. This month and throughout the year, Every Child encourages all individuals and organizations to play a role in making Western, PA a better place for children and families. By ensuring that parents have the knowledge, skills, and resources they need to care for their children, we can help prevent child abuse and neglect by creating strong and thriving children, youth, and families in our communities. Research shows that protective factors are present in healthy families. Protective factors are conditions or attributes of individuals, families, communities, or the larger society that mitigate risk and promote healthy development and well being.
Promoting the following protective factors is one of the most effective ways to reduce the risk of child abuse and neglect:
• Nurturing and attachment
• Knowledge of parenting and of child and youth development
• Parental resilience
• Social connections
• Concrete supports for parents
• Social and emotional competence of children
In support of these efforts, the Children's Bureau, within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in collaboration with its information service, Child Welfare Information Gateway, the Office on Child Abuse and Neglect, the FRIENDS National Center for Community-Based Child Abuse Prevention, and over 30 national prevention partners, has created the 2019/2020 Prevention Resource Guide: Strong and Thriving Families.
The Resource Guide, designed for service providers who work throughout the community to support families, is available online at https://childwelfare.gov/topics/preventing/preventionmonth/resources/resource-guide/.
“The way a society functions is a reflection of the childrearing practices of that society. Today we reap what we have sown. Despite the well-documented critical nature of early life experiences, we dedicate few resources to this time of life. We do not educate our children about child development, parenting, or the impact of neglect and trauma on children.”
—Dr. Bruce D. Perry, Ph.D. & Dr. John Marcellus
“This is the most important job we have to do as humans and as citizens … If we offer classes in auto mechanics and civics, why not parenting? A lot of what happens to children that’s bad derives from ignorance … Parents go by folklore, or by what they’ve heard, or by…