Child Abuse

Since 1972, Prevent Child Abuse America has led the way in building awareness, providing education and inspiring hope to everyone involved in the effort to prevent the abuse and neglect of our nation's children. Working with chapters in 39 states and the District of Columbia, we provide leadership to promote and implement prevention efforts at both the national and local levels. With the help of our state chapters - and concerned individuals like you - we're strengthening families and engaging communities nationwide.

Our many local programs, prevention initiatives and events help spread the word in your community, creating awareness that prevention is possible. We are a family of friends, professionals, volunteers, donors and parents who are preventing child abuse and neglect before it ever starts.

Together, we can make a difference. Remember, a child is helpless - you are not.

There are four forms of child maltreatment: emotional abuse, neglect, physical abuse and ual abuse.

Emotional Abuse: (also known as: verbal abuse, mental abuse, and psychological maltreatment) Includes acts or the failures to act by parents or caretakers that have caused or could cause, serious behavioral, cognitive, emotional, or mental disorders. This can include parents/caretakers using extreme and/or bizarre forms of punishment, such as confinement in a closet or dark room or being tied to a chair for long periods of time or threatening or izing a child. Less severe acts, but no less damaging are belittling or rejecting treatment, using derogatory terms to describe the child, habitual scapegoating or blaming.

Neglect: The failure to provide for the child's basic needs. Neglect can be physical, educational, or emotional. Physical neglect can include not providing adequate food or clothing, appropriate medical care, supervision, or proper weather protection (heat or coats). It may include abandonment. Educational neglect includes failure to provide appropriate schooling or special educational needs, allowing excessive truancies. Psychological neglect includes the lack of any emotional support and love, never attending to the child, spousal abuse, and alcohol abuse including allowing the child to participate in and alcohol use.

Physical Abuse: The inflicting of physical injury upon