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Poll shows agreement that abuse is preventable

Jim Camden  •  Staff writer
Published April 9, 2008

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If you think the problems of child abuse and neglect are preventable, you'd probably find most of your friends, neighbors and co-workers agree. So would child welfare experts who work with victims of abuse and neglect.

There might be some debate among the public, however, on what prevention is. Taking children out of an abusive home is not prevention, child welfare advocates say; it's protection.

Polls of Spokane and Kootenai county residents, conducted recently for The Spokesman-Review, KHQ, KSPS and KXLY, show they believe strongly that child abuse and neglect can be prevented.

Roughly seven out of 10 residents – regardless of age, gender or the presence of children in their home – told pollsters for the national polling firm Research 2000 that they believe that's possible.

"I think they're right," said Dorothy Roberts, an expert in family law at Northwestern University and the author of the book "Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare."

When trying to prevent child abuse and neglect, however, communities must help families overcome the underlying causes, said Roberts, who is also part of a panel overseeing reforms to Washington state's child welfare system.

Many of those causes are economic, so prevention of child abuse would include better jobs and higher pay scales, early childhood education, and better nutrition programs.

Removing children from dangerous homes and placing them in foster care may be necessary at times, but it's not prevention, said Roy Herrington, of Washington State University-Spokane's Area Health Education Center.

"Prevention happens before a child is accepted into the child (welfare) system," Harrington said. "There are very, very few prevention programs."

The public tends to view enforcement – the child welfare and foster care system – and child abuse prevention as the same thing, said Joan Sharp, executive director of the Children's Trust Fund of Washington. But they are different – and often compete for government dollars.

It is often an uneven competition: The child welfare system is large, entrenched and expensive. Prevention programs tend to be smaller and innovative, but they often lack reliable data that shows how spending on prevention today will result in enforcement savings tomorrow.

"There may be some cost savings, but we don't want to abandon children who have experienced child abuse" and are already in the welfare system, she said.

Dee Wilson, director of the Northwest Institute for Children and Families, said communities need a more balanced approach to prevention and enforcement, or what he calls "intervention."

"Perhaps for every dollar spent on intervention, you spend a dime on prevention," Wilson said.

"You still want some reason to believe that (a prevention program) is a good investment. So then the question is: Where would be the smartest place to spend this money?"