Family First & Child Neglect Studies and Reporting

Child neglect is not less damaging than abuse. Neglect is involved in most child maltreatment death. Neglect victims have profound lifelong problemsbecause they miss developmental milestones around language, self-control, and bonding with others.ACEs studies show that chronic illness, dangerous lifestyles, and early death are common to abused and neglected children. The recent Presidential order (read here) minimizing neglect and suggesting it is inappropriate in Child Protective Services is uninformed.

A constant dilemma in child neglect cases is whether to traumatize children by removing them from their family or leave them in situations where they are endangered or their brains aren’t developing normally.

Under Family First, only a small fraction of the hundreds of thousands of children in or near foster care are actually receiving the evidence-based prevention and parenting services the law envisioned, which means many parents never participate in the early-childhood and parent-skill programs offered to them. When parents do not or cannot engage in these opportunities, often because of stress, fear, logistics, or lack of support, the result is that children miss out on proven early-learning and parenting interventions that could stabilize their homes, prevent neglect, and reduce the need for removal.

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(Safe Passage For Children Reporting)

Quality Early Childhood Education (ECE) programs

can make it possible to leave children at home

while helping their parents improve parenting skills.

Neglect victims who receiving Early Childhood Education moved quickly from having a language deficit to the normal range. Language development is critical to academic success and positive interpersonal relationships. ECE can help many children avoid foster care and still obtain the baseline skills they need to thrive.

A large body of research shows that neglect can shorten children’s lives and cause profound, lifelong harm (for example, pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov).

Cohort studies in the U.S., U.K., and Australia find that people who were neglected as children face significantly higher risks of premature death in adolescence and adulthood, even after accounting for poverty and other adversities (BMJ Open cohort: bmjopen.bmj.com;

Lancet review: Fulltext (thelancet.com);

JAMA study: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov;

Australian study summary: Unisa study finds survivors of child abuse and neglect are dying young (unisa.edu.au)).

National child-welfare data also document the immediate danger: at least 2,000 U.S. children a year die from abuse or neglect, and roughly three-quarters of those deaths involve neglect, alone or combined with abuse (Child Maltreatment report PDF: acf.gov; CWLA summary: Child maltreatment 2023 report (cwla.org); example state fatality report: myflfamilies.com; national data brief: 20.07 QFF RFF Strengthening National data on child fatalities (casey.org)).

Read KARA’s November assembled

child neglect stories in the READ More Below.

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These are just a sampling of child neglect studies, stories, and articles compiled by KARA over the last few weeks. Child neglect is a primary cause of lifelong trauma and death in children. Most maltreatment death is suffered by children two years old and younger.