Abstract
Reducing Child Abuse: Tackling Challenges in High Violence Societies
A review of 12,000 cases in the Philippine General Hospital Child Protection Management Information database on the factors leading to both abuse and risk for re-abuse in the last 14 years consistently came up with 4 factors: poverty, disability, poor parenting, drugs and alcohol. Risks are cumulative and critical periods are spread across the lifespan. The presentation will discuss why the prenatal period should be treated separately from early childhood. There are two life courses to consider; the mother and her child and they are intertwined. Life is a cycle and adolescence is critical for catch-up interventions. The Adolescent can be a chimera victim/perpetrator. The girl/children and the young men are missing the bus. A prevention framework for a developing country high in violence will be presented that will feature overlapping pyramids of individual and societal needs that will locate government actions, international cooperation and individual efforts in a specific context. There is a minimum threshold for life to be livable but there must be a life beyond survival for violence to be reduced. Endeavors need to be multi-sectoral and integrated, some for short-term goals and others long-term. They need to happen at the same time and in a big enough scale to make a difference. However, there is also need for people on the edge that develop new insights and knowledge, teaming up with government for innovations that can change the core. With the new technology, people anywhere in the world can team up and create flows of knowledge, leveraging each other’s strengths. At no time in the world’s history is the individual more powerful than now.