A Response to "Reframing the Issue: A New Child Maltreatment Prevention Message"

Becky Wrisely, Director of Communications for Prevent Child Abuse North Carolina, comments on campaigns that bring issues around child abuse and neglect to the awareness to the public. Since the 70's increased efforts have been made towards securing the safety of children. These early efforts and public campaigns have served well to illustrate the harm and devastation caused by child abuse and neglect. Unfortunately, these campaigns to raise awareness around CAN typically limited public education to the importance of reporting, representation of the most traumatic cases, and the general idea that child abuse and neglect "is a bad thing." These public campaigns have done well to raise awareness of the issues as well as have led to increased public systems and resources designed to support victims and families. However, the frame from which this awareness has developed has left little room for belief in prevention efforts; indeed, theses campaigns have hindered prevention efforts overall.

In this commentary Ms. Wrisely outlines the results of six focus groups and interviews that "were conducted to help determine the public’s frame of reference on child maltreatment
and neglect."

I have cut and pasted the results of this research:
"■ Americans picture the worse case scenario when asked to
describe child maltreatment. They believe child maltreatment
is intentional, extreme, perpetual, and most often done by a
parent dealing with issues such as substance abuse.
■ Most Americans perceive children and teens as rude, wild,
and without a strong sense of right and wrong. They believe
being a parent today is much harder than in years past;
however, most also believe that parents are doing a poor job
at raising their children.
■ A significant proportion of the public is misinformed about
child development, and many adults define appropriate
parental behaviors (e.g., picking up a three-month-old every
time they cry) as “spoiling.”
■ Americans believe that parenting is an extremely important
responsibility. However, the public believes few parents are
prepared for the responsibilities of raising children.
■ The public understands and believes that there are severe
consequences of child maltreatment and believes that children
who experience maltreatment will grow up to become abusive
parents themselves.7
■ Americans see child maltreatment as a very serious problem,
and they believe implementing prevention activities is
extremely important. However, they cannot clearly define
prevention, nor do they believe they can do anything to
truly affect child maltreatment."

Also, in partnership with the FrameWorks Institute the Prevent Child Abuse Organization cited research results that indicated that the majority of people's knowledge of child and abuse issues is based on media coverage. Unfortunately, what the media typically focuses on are again reports of the most heinous crimes against children involving disciplining, sexual misconduct, and failures of child protective service agencies. The frames established through this focus of the issue creates a considerable challenge for prevention.

The author suggests that concerned citizens and professionals developing materials and furthering campaign efforts have ineffectually worked from the idea that with enough information people will automatically change their behavior patterns. This belief is set forth despite that fact that a clear action steps have not been clearly mapped out.

The author outlines some general outlines that public campaign authors need to address to better prevent child abuse and neglect:

• educate the public about child abuse and neglect
• increase parent support in communities
• provide information campaigns to all types of parents, not just those likely to abuse
• focus on short term benefits e.g. stress management techniques
• build community responsibility for kids
• focus on the importance of families raising children
• raise awareness that parenting is a tough job that does not come naturally
• connect parent education and family support to situations that many families find themselves in (e.g. divorce, unemployment, stress)

(these bulleted points have been summarized from the authors writing and more closely reflect her wordage rather than my own).

http://ncmedicaljournal.com/sept-oct-05/Wrisley.pdf