There are many organizations world-wide that are acting as advocates to children in regard to abuse and neglect and attempting to mitigate the worst effects of these issues to children in the most effective way possible. The range of assistance to children and adolescents occurs on a wide spectrum from research to shelter and counseling. Although the field is somewhat fragmented, there are many opportunities for better coordination and cooperation in the field. As the scientific understanding of abuse and neglect on children and adolescence increases rapidly, including physical aspects, this will ultimately lead to more effective interventions from practitioners.
Child Abuse and Neglect Analysis
The placement agency that I am personally affiliated with is Operation Safehouse which is a transitional living facility for at risk homeless youth ages eighteen to twenty one. There are two primary locations. One is in Riverside, CA and the other is in Thousand Palms, CA (SafeHouse, N.d.). Both locations offer services that include offer education, employment, case management, therapy, and life skills for our clients that have entered into our program. It is extremely likely that a high percentage of the individuals who enter into the program have encountered abuse or neglect at some point in their development or recent past. I would personally estimate that roughly one-half to three-fourths of clients meet the criteria for abuse and neglect. Most of these individuals come from environments that are too toxic for them to stay so they seek help from outside resources. For many of these individuals, the transition into a treatment or counseling program can be difficult and many are hesitant to leave an abusive relationship even if there is help available. This analysis will look at three different types of organizations that offer similar or complementary service for abused or neglected adolescents.
The Future of Children
The Future of Children is a collaboration of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and the Brookings Institution and the mission of the Future of Children is to translate the best social science research about children and youth into information that is useful to policymakers, practitioners, grant-makers, advocates, the media, and students of public policy (The Future of Children, N.d.). The special target area for the organization actually focuses on the dissemination of information. The organization publishes at least two journal articles a year and attempts to keep any technical rhetoric out of these so that the research presented is more accessible to a broader audience.
The organization's main route in which they disseminate information is undoubtedly through their website. On the site there are links that allow the user to access all of the different publications that have been produced by the organization over the years. The topics of these publications range greatly from military children and families to postsecondary education to children with disabilities among others. The only clear link between these topics is that they focus on childhood development through adolescence and cover a broad array of topics on these research areas. There are also webcasts and other resources that are made available to users.
Child Trauma Academy
CTA is a not-for-profit organization based in Houston, Texas working to improve the lives of high-risk children through direct service, research and education (Academy, N.d.). The organization believes that there is a crucial importance of childhood experience in shaping the health of the individual, and ultimately, society and furthermore, by creating biologically-informed child and family respectful practice, programs and policy, CTA seeks to help maltreated and traumatized children. A major activity of the CTA is to translate emerging findings about the human brain and child development into practical implications for the ways we nurture, protect, enrich, educate and heal children. The "translational neuroscience" work of the CTA has resulted in a range of innovative programs in therapeutic, child protection and educational systems (CTA, N.d.).
The work that the CTA conducts seems to be geared towards more of an academic and/or high level practitioner audience. They have many resources available that focus on physical, biological, and neurological changes in a child's body that occur due to abuse and neglect. Understanding the mechanistic changes that occur in a body can ultimately help practitioners design interventions that work on several different levels. The physical changes that occur in a child as the result of abuse or neglect are often a factor that are not considered by most child advocates and this specific research area may provide many insights that can help programs improve the quality of services that they offer their clients.
The Kempe Foundation
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