A State Call To Action
Working to End Child Abuse and Neglect in Massachusetts

Press Release: April 3, 2001, 12:01 a.m. EST

Massachusetts Citizens for Children
Issues the Nation's First State Call To Action
to End Child Abuse and Neglect in Massachusetts

Contact:
Jetta Bernier or Nora Sjoblom Sanchez
617-742-8555, extensions 2 and 3
jetta@masskids.org

BOSTON, MA - Massachusetts Citizens for Children released the country's first comprehensive State Call To Action today, urging the Commonwealth and its citizens to support a broad scale effort to end child abuse and neglect in the state. The effort follows the lead of over 30 national organizations that have joined recently in a National Call To Action to push for federal policies aimed at ending child maltreatment in the United States. The detailed Massachusetts report was developed with input from over 200 experts in child welfare, health/mental heath, and law enforcement over a two-year period. It builds the case for an unprecedented state commitment to address a problem that results in staggering human and fiscal costs borne by child victims, communities, and the Commonwealth.

The Call To Action documents that:

Massachusetts saw a 98 percent increase (compared to 54% nationally) in reports of child abuse and neglect in the decade 1987 to 1997, even while the overall violent crime rate in the state has been decreasing (21% from 1993 to 1998).

97,432 reports were received by the Department of Social Services (DSS) in 1998 (latest year for which data is available). 72% of these reports were screened out immediately or after investigation, with no services provided to children and families involved.

Neglect was the most common type of maltreatment, totaling 68% of substantiated cases, followed by physical abuse (24%), sexual abuse (6 %), and emotional maltreatment (2%).

Domestic violence and parental alcohol and substance abuse are closely linked to child abuse and neglect and their effects are devastating to children's health, mental health and school performance. 43,000 Massachusetts children are exposed to domestic violence annually and 30% to 60% are also victims of abuse. 40% to 60% of DSS cases involve domestic violence. Parental alcohol or substance abuse is present in 50% to 75% of reported cases. Children in these homes are 3 times likelier to be abused and 4 times likelier to be neglected.

Homelessness for many children results in physical, medical and educational neglect. 20,000 Massachusetts children are homeless (an increase from 1,600 only a decade ago). They are hungry and in poor health twice as often as other children; newborns have higher rates of low birth weight and need special care after birth 4 times more often. Among 3 to 6 year olds, environmental stresses associated with homelessness result in more than 20% having emotional problems serious enough to require professional care. Among 6 to 17 year olds, one-third have at least one major mental disorder; nearly half suffer from anxiety, depression or withdrawal; over a third manifest delinquent or aggressive behavior. One fifth do not attend school.

The Call to Action details the following three-point strategy of "Protecting, Preventing, and Healing" to improve state child protection systems; expand local family support and child abuse prevention efforts; and heal child victims through effective interventions and treatment.

1. Protecting Our Children

The state's child protection system including DSS, law enforcement, health/mental health care, and the courts, has made some improvements that should be supported and expanded. In other areas, practice and policy changes are needed. Key proposals to address systemic issues include:

A multi-track system to respond differentially to reports of child abuse and neglect according to level of seriousness and risk to the child. Under the proposed model, both the "screened out" families who otherwise would receive no services and those deemed by DSS to be "low-risk" would be referred to community family support networks. This would allow DSS to target resources more efficiently and effectively on moderately serious and severe cases.

Quality child and family assessments through a coordinated and funded system of multidisciplinary teams including Children's Advocacy Centers (CACs) and Multidisciplinary Assessment Teams (MDATs) with clearly differentiated roles and functions to address the range of severe to moderately serious cases of child abuse and neglect.

Legislation to support a statewide system of hospital-based Child Protection Teams (CPT) within medical teaching institutions located regionally across the state and a statewide medical training program to recruit, train and support pediatricians and other medical providers to become child abuse and neglect specialists. An MCC survey found that statewide there are fewer than 10 physicians who identify themselves or are recognized by their peers as experts in child abuse and neglect.

A plan to address workforce and case workload issues within DSS including: raising salaries of DSS workers to reflect the responsibility and risks of the job; legislation to adopt the nationally recognized worker to caseload ratio; partnerships between DSS and state and private Schools of Social Work to expand the pool of Masters and BA level social workers for the child protection field; and development of the current DSS training program into a high quality, licensing Child Protective Services Institute.

Improvements in court responses to abused and neglected children, including: information sharing among the several Courts involved with children's cases; reporting of suspected child abuse by the Courts to DSS; multidisciplinary child protection teams available to the Court; child-friendly Court practices for child victim witnesses; and accountability within the state's Guardian Ad Litem (GAL) program.

2. Preventing The Hurt

The Call To Action proposes building a strong infrastructure of family supports across the state to address family needs early on so that state intervention can be avoided or reduced. It calls for:

Statewide expansion of local family support coalitions (known as "Community Connections" and currently operating with limited federal funds administered by DSS), and building their capacity to serve families that seek support directly or those referred by community agencies, or DSS.

Establishment of local Family Support Teams to help assess families known to DSS that are deemed to be at low-risk of abuse or neglect, families screened out by DSS before or after investigations, and families seeking voluntary help in their communities.

Funding to expand newborn home visiting (currently available to parents 20 and under) so that all new parents, irrespective of their age, will have access to this effective support.

Expansion of specific family support services that have documented their effectiveness in preventing child abuse and neglect and reducing stresses associated with child maltreatment, e.g. parent aides, the Family Nurturing Program, and the self-help Parents Helping Parents.

Expansion of Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS) prevention efforts to reduce infant death and disability due to SBS. Initiatives to educate new parents within birthing hospitals, and special outreach to young men - the most frequent perpetrators of SBS - are proposed.

Development of a comprehensive statewide strategy to effectively reduce sexual assaults against children and to address the critical lack of effective evaluation and treatment resources for both child victims and for child, youth, and adult offenders.

Collaboration among state and private family support and service providers, coordinated through a specific state mandate, backed with sufficient resources and quality assurance. One proposal to accomplish this is the creation of a Governor's Cabinet on Families and Children.

3. Healing Our Children

To succeed in ending child maltreatment, abused, neglected and traumatized children must receive the appropriate treatment and supports they need to heal. Among recommendations proposed:

Establishing an entitlement that ensures every child victim of abuse, neglect or trauma in Massachusetts the full complement of services needed to recover as fully as possible from the effects of their maltreatment; changes in the current managed mental health care system that would result in waivers for trauma-recovering children to end current limitations in the type, duration and frequency of clinical services for this special population; expanding support for treatment approaches with documented effective outcomes; piloting of new treatments based on research findings regarding the impact of trauma on brain development.

Supporting schools as healing places for abused, neglected and traumatized children including: training educators to identify the symptoms of traumatized children; creating clinical support systems for teachers to help them develop classroom strategies for addressing these children's needs; reevaluating school policies on confidentiality, curricula, and discipline in light of the needs of traumatized children; developing protocols for early identification and services before these children are at risk for discipline or school failure.

MCC Executive Director Jetta Bernier reports: "According to recent UMass/MCC polling, citizens overwhelmingly recognize that child abuse is a significant problem in our state, they believe reforms are needed, and they are willing to pay to reduce the enormous human and fiscal costs associated with its effects. The work of advocates now is to use this documented public will to build a strong, bi-partisan political will to get the job done." MCC and its colleagues are working to implement the Call To Action by identifying needed funding and legislation, and by mobilizing a broad constituency of concerned citizens from the public and private sectors. MCC will be updating the public regularly on progress towards achieving the Call To Action recommendations.

Visit our website at www.masskids.org for the complete State Call To Action with Executive Summary and 300 references, a list of the 200 contributors to the report, and child abuse reporting rates for specific cities and towns. For more information about the National Call To Action visit www.nationalcalltoaction.com.

Massachusetts Citizens for Children (MCC) is a 40-year old independent child advocacy organization of concerned citizens. Its program Prevent Child Abuse Massachusetts serves as this state's chapter of the national Prevent Child Abuse America based in Chicago.

The State Call To Action is one of a series of KIDS COUNT reports produced regularly by MCC to educate citizens about the well-being of Massachusetts children. A project of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, KIDS COUNT is a national and state-by-state effort to track the status of children in the United States.

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