Abstract
In Part One I have analysed the way in which the problem of child abuse emerged in Britain and the implications this has had for policy and practice. Throughout a number of assumptions about how the problem can be explained have had considerable influence on the nature of the societal response. More particularly, it has been assumed that the use of registers, case conferences, area review committees and improved interprofessional coordination will enhance the central aims of prevention, prediction and early identification. However, because of the pervading anxiety and the speed at which these changes were introduced, little attempt has been made to evaluate either the new policies and practices or the research and explanations on which they were based.
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Notes and References
Revd. A. Morton, Foreword to R. L. Castle and A. M. Kerr, A Study of Suspected Child Abuse (NSPCC, 1972) p. 1.
R. E. Heifer, ‘Basic issues concerning prediction’, in R. E. Heifer and C. H. Kempe (eds), Child Abuse and Neglect: The Family and the Community (Ballinger, 1976).
For an interesting critical analysis see S. Montgomery, ‘Problems in the Perinatal Prediction of Child Abuse’, British Journal of Social Work, vol. 12, no. 2, 1982, pp. 189–96.
See also the discussion between Ray Heifer and Stuart Montgomery in ‘Correspondence’, British Journal of Social Work, vol. 12, no. 6, 1982, pp. 669–672.
Heifer, ‘Basic issues concerning prediction’, p. 364.
J. M. Giovannoni, ‘Prevention of child abuse and neglect: research and policy issues’, Social Work Research and Abstracts, vol. 18, part 3, 1982, pp. 23–31, p. 24.
D. G. Gil, Foreword to R. Volpe, M. Breton and J. Mitton, The Maltreatment of the School-Aged Child (Lexington Books, 1980) p. ix.
J. M. Giovannoni and R. M. Becerra, Defining Child Abuse (The Free Press, 1979) ch. 1.
E. Zigler, ‘Controlling Child Abuse in America: An effort doomed to failure’, in R. Bourne and E. H. Newberger, Critical Perspectives on Child Abuse (Lexington Books, 1979).
R. Gelles, Family Violence (Saga, 1979) ch. 10.
R. Dingwall, J. Eekelaar and T. Murray, The Protection of Children: State Intervention and Family Life (Basil Blackwell, 1983); Giovannoni and Beccera, Defining Child Abuse.
R. E. Heifer and C. H. Kempe, Child Abuse and Neglect: The Family and the Community (Ballinger, 1976) introduction.
H. Martin, ‘A child-oriented approach to prevention of abuse’, in A. W. Franklin (ed.), Child Abuse: Prediction, Prevention and Follow-up (Churchill -Livingstone, 1978) p. 12.
A. W. Franklin, ‘Present pre-occupations’, in Franklin (ed.), Child Abuse: Prediction, Prevention and Follow-up, p. 4.
This section draws heavily upon L. J. Allan, ‘Child Abuse; A Critical Review of the Research and Theory’, in J. P. Martin (ed.), Violence in the Family (Wiley, 1978);
J. J. Spinetta and D. Rigler, ‘The Child Abusing Parent: A Psychological Review’, Psychological Bulletin, vol. 77, no. 4, 1972, pp. 296–304;
R. D. Parke and C. W. Collmer, ‘Child Abuse, an interdisciplinary analysis’, in E. Mavis Hetherington (ed.), Review of Child Development Research vol. 5 (University of Chicago Press, 1975);
M. Sheppard, Perceptions of Child Abuse: A Critique of Individualism (Social Work Today and University of East Anglia, 1982);
R.J. Gelles, ‘Violence in the Family: A Review of Research in the Seventies’, Journal of Marriage and the Family, vol. 42, 1980, pp. 873–85;
W. N. Friedrich and K. K. Wheeler, ‘The Abusing Parent Revisited: A Decade of Psychological Research’, The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, vol. 170, no. 10, 1982, pp. 577–87;
J. Vesterdal, ‘Etiological Factors and Long Term Consequences of Child Abuse’, International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, vol. 27, no. 1, 1983, pp. 21–54.
B. F. Steele and C. B. Pollack, ‘A psychiatric study of parents who abuse infants and small children’, in R. E. Heifer and C. H. Kempe (eds), The Battered Child Syndrome (University of Chicago Press, 1968).
M. Borland (ed.), Violence in the Family (Manchester University Press, 1976);
E. Baher, C. Hyman, C. Jones, R. Jones, A. Kerr and R. Mitchell, At Risk: An Account of the Work of the Battered Child Research Department, NSPCC (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976).
But see also S. M. Smith, R. Hanson and S. Noble, ‘Parents of battered babies: a controlled study’, British Medical Journal, no. 4, 1973, pp. 388–91.
C. Ounsted, R. Oppenheimer and J. Lindsay, ‘The psychopathology and psychotherapy of the families: aspects of bonding failure’ in A. W. Franklin (ed.), Concerning Child Abuse (Churchill Livingstone, 1975).
Baher, Hyman, Jones, Jones, Kerr and Mitchell, At Risk; A. E. Skinner and R. C. Castle, 78 Battered Children: a retrospective study (NSPCC, 1969).
M. Lynch, D. Steinberg and C. Ounsted, ‘Family Unit in a Children’s Hospital’, British Medical Journal, no. 2, 1975, pp. 127–9.
S. M. Smith, The Battered Child Syndrome (Butterworth, 1975).
C. A. Hyman, ‘IQ of parents of battered babies’, British Medical Journal, no. 4, 1973, p. 739; Baher, Hyman, Jones, Jones, Kerr and Mitchell, At Risk.
E. J. Merril, ‘Physical abuse of children: an agency study’, in V. de Francis, Protecting the Battered Child (Children’s Division, American Humane Association, 1962);
H. D. Bryant, ‘Physical Abuse of Children: an agency study’, Child Welfare, no. 42, 1963, pp. 125–30;
M.J. Boisvert, ‘The Battered Child Syndrome’, Social Casework, vol. 53, 1972, pp. 475–78; Skinner and Castle, 78 Battered Children.
Baher, Hyman, Jones, Jones, Kerr and Mitchell, At Risk.
R. J. Gelles, ‘Child Abuse as Psychopathology: A Sociological Critique and Reformulation’, American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, no. 43, July 1973, pp. 611–21.
R. Bourne, ‘Child Abuse and Neglect: An Overview’, in Bourne and Newberger, Critical Perspectives on Child Abuse, pp. 8–9.
Skinner and Castle, 78 Battered Children; J. E. Oliver, J. Cox, A. Taylor and J. A. Baldwin, ‘Severely ill-treated children in North East Wiltshire’, Research Report No. 4 Oxford Record Linkage Study (Oxford Area Health Authority, 1974);
D. Gil, Violence Against Children (Harvard University Press, 1970); Smith, The Battered Child Syndrome.
Steele and Pollock, ‘A psychiatric study of parents who abuse infants and small children’.
Baher, Hyman, Jones, Kerr and Mitchell, At Risk.
J. C. Hotter and S. B. Friedman, ‘Child Abuse: early case findings in the emergency department’, Paediatrics, no. 42, July 1968, pp. 128–38;
B. Simons, ‘Child Abuse: Epidemiological Study of Medically Reported Cases’, New York State Journal of Medicine, no. 66 1966, pp. 2783–8.
Skinner and Castle, 78 Battered Children; A. H. Green, ‘Child Abuse — Pathological Syndrome of Family Interaction’, American Journal of Psychiatry, no. 131, 1974, pp. 882–6.
S. M. Smith and R. Hanson, ‘134 Battered Children: a medical and psychological study’, British Medical Journal, no. 3, 1974, pp. 666–70; Gil, Violence Against Children.
E. Elmer and G. Gregg, ‘Developmental Characteristics of Abused Children’, Paediatrics, no. 40, 1967, pp. 596–602;
M. Klein and C. Stern, ‘Low Birth Weight and the Battered Child Syndrome’, American Journal of Diseases of Children, no. 122, 1971, pp. 15–18;
M. A. Lynch, ‘Ill-health and Child Abuse’, Lancet, 17 August 1975, pp. 317–19.
M. Richards, ‘Non-Accidental Injury in an Ecological Perspective’, in DHSS Non-Accidental Injury to Children (HMSO, 1975);
N. Rose, Registers of Suspected Non-Accidental Injury (NSPCC, 1976);
M. Rutter, ‘A Child’s Life’, New Scientist, no. 62, 1975, pp. 763–6.
Skinner and Castle, 78 Battered Children; Smith, The Battered Child Syndrome; E. Elmer, Children in Jeopardy (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1967); Baher, Hyman, Jones, Jones, Kerr and Mitchell, At Risk.
Smith, The Battered Child Syndrome.
Spinetta and Rigler, ‘The Child Abusing Parent: A Psychological Review’.
Gelles, ‘Child Abuse as Psychopathology: A Sociological Critique and Reformulation’.
Spinetta and Rigler, ‘The Child Abusing Parent: A Psychological Review’.
Allan, ‘Child Abuse: A Critical Review of the Research and Theory’, p. 59.
See in particular Friedrich and Wheeler, ‘The Abusing Parent Revisited: A Decade of Psychological Research’.
See in particular S. Wasserman, ‘The abused parent of the abused child’, Children, no. 14, 1967, pp. 175–9;
J. E. Oliver and A. Taylor, ‘Five generations of ill-treated children in one family pedigree’, British Journal of Psychiatry, 1971, pp. 473–80.
S. Jayarantne, ‘Child Abusers as parents and children: A review’, Social Work, January 1977, pp. 5–9;
A. Kadushin, Child Welfare Services (Macmillan, 1974);
M. Benjamin, ‘Abused as a Child, Abusive as a Parent: Practitioners Beware’, in R. Volpe, M. Bretton and J. Mitton, The Maltreatment of the School-Aged Child (Lexington, 1980).
Friedrich and Wheeler, ‘The Abusing Parent Revisited: A Decade of Psychological Research’, p. 585.
Giovannoni, ‘Prevention of Child abuse and neglect: research and policy issues’, p. 26.
A. H. Cohn and J. Garbarino, ‘Toward a Refined Approach to Preventing Child Abuse’, National Committee for Prevention of Child Abuse (mimeographed 1981) quoted in Giovannoni, ‘Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect: research and policy issues’.
Particularly see J. W. Hinton (ed.), Dangerousness: Problems of Assessment and Prediction (Allen & Unwin, 1981);
J. R. Hamilton and H. Freeman (eds), Dangerousness: Psychiatry, Assessment and Management (Gaskell, 1982);
A. E. Bottoms, ‘Reflections on the Renaissance of Dangerousness’, The Howard Journal of Penology and Crime Prevention, vol. XVI, no. 2, 1977, pp. 70–96.
S. J. Pfohl, ‘Deciding on Dangerousness: Predictions of Violence as Social Control’, Crime and Social Justice, vol. 11, spring/summer, 1979, pp. 28–40, p. 28.
R. Hanson, W. McCulloch and S. Hartley, ‘Key characteristics of child abuse’, in Franklin (ed.), Child Abuse: Prediction, Prevention and Follow-up.
Smith, The Battered Child Syndrome.
Hanson, McCulloch and Hartley, ‘Key characteristics of child abuse’, p. 49, my italics.
Hanson, McCulloch and Hartley, ‘Key characteristics of child abuse’, p. 49, my italics.
Hanson, McCulloch and Hartley, ‘Key characteristics of child abuse’, p. 52, my italics.
R. S. Kempe and C. H. Kempe, Child Abuse (Open Books, 1978).
See also J. D. Gray, C. A. Cutler, J. G. Dean and C. H. Kempe, ‘Prediction and Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect’, Child Abuse and Neglect, vol. 1, no. 1, 1977, pp. 45–58.
Kempe and Kempe, Child Abuse, pp. 80–1.
Kempe and Kempe, Child Abuse, p. 85.
Kempe and Kempe, Child Abuse, p. 85.
G. T. Lealman, D. Haigh, J. M. Phillips, J. Stoan and C. Ord-Smith, ‘Prediction and Prevention of Child Abuse — an Empty Hope?’, Lancet, no. 8339, 25 June 1983, pp. 1423–4.
Drawing on previous published work which drew upon retrospective studies a checklist of predictions was drawn up. The major factors were: mother under 20 years at birth of first born; mother booked at antenatal clinic after 20 weeks; mother other than married at delivery. The minor factors were: step-children in the family; psychiatric history; previous referral to social worker; termination of pregnancy requested but refused; complications of pregnancy or delivery; baby admitted to special care baby unit; mother took own or infant’s discharge against advice. The studies used were M. A. Lynch and J. Roberts, ‘Predicting child abuse: signs of bonding failure in the maternity hospital’, British Medical Journal, vol. 1, 1977, pp. 624–6;
R. R. Gordon, ‘Predicting child abuse’, British Medical Journal, vol. 1, 1977, p. 841.
Lealman, Haigh, Phillips, Stoan and Ord-Smith, ‘Prediction and Prevention of Child Abuse — an Empty Hope?’, p. 1424.
See Gray, Cutler, Dean and Kempe, ‘Prediction and Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect’, pp. 47–8 for a more detailed description of what this entailed.
Kempe and Kempe, Child Abuse, p. 86.
See note 59.
See note 59.
A. H. Cohn and M. K. Miller, ‘Evaluating New Modes of Treatment for Child Abusers and Neglectors: The Experience of Federally Funded Demonstration Projects in the USA’, Child Abuse and Neglect, The International Journal, vol. 1, no. 2, 1977, p. 453.
See note 59.
See I. Taylor, P. Walton and J. Young, The New Criminology: for a Social Theory of Deviance (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973) chs 2 and 3.
J. Young, ‘Thinking seriously about crime: some models of criminology’ and R. J. Sapsford, ‘Individual Deviance: the search for the criminal personality’, both in M. Fitzgerald, G. McLennan and J. Pawson (eds), Crime and Society: Readings in History and Theory (Routledge & Kegan Paul and Open University Press, 1981).
J. Newson and E. Newson, Four Tears Old in an Urban Community (Allen & Unwin, 1968).
W. Ryan, Blaming the Victim (Vintage, 1971).
S. K. Steinmetz and M. A. Straus (eds), Violence in the Family (Harper & Row, 1974);
M. A. Straus, ‘A Sociological Perspective on the Causes of Family Violence’, in M. R. Green (ed.), Violence in the Family (Boulder, 1980).
C. Brewer and J. Lait, Can Social Work Survive? (Temple Smith, 1980) p. 79.
Brewer and Lait, Can Social Work Survive?, pp. 82–3.
E. H. Newberger and J. H. Daniel, ‘Knowledge and Epidemiology of Child Abuse: A Critical Review of Concepts’, Pediatrics Annals, vol. 5, part 3, pp. 140–4.
E. Elmer, ‘Traumatized Children, Chronic Illness and Poverty’, in L. H. Pelton (ed.), The Social Context of Child Abuse and Neglect (Human Sciences Press, 1981) p. 212.
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© 1985 Nigel Parton
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Parton, N. (1985). Child Abuse as Disease. In: The Politics of Child Abuse. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17830-8_6
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