Child Maltreatment Fatalities in the United States Four Decades of Policy, Program, and Professional Responses

This book focuses on the deaths of children in the U.S. due to maltreatment. In 2010 1,560 children died from maltreatment in the U.S. In spite of increased attention to child maltreatment fatalities (CMFs), through research, better identification, prevention efforts, and policy, the CMF rate continues to grow while other forms of maltreatment have declined or stayed steady. There are many unanswered questions about risk factors for CMFs and we know little about the effectiveness of our prevention efforts. This book defines CMFs and discusses the prevalence in the U.S. and other nations over the last 30 years. It addresses the known risk factors for victimization and perpetration: age, gender, race, parent-child relationship, parental mental health problems, and household composition. The book then focuses on the responses and interventions that have been put in place in order to prevent CMFs: the intersection of the child welfare profession and CMFs, child fatality review teams, safe haven laws, public education campaigns, criminal prosecution, and new, federal efforts in the U.S. to reduce CMFs in the U.S. It ends by making a series of recommendations for researchers, practitioners, and decision-makers.