Home Visiting for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect, Essay Example

Early childhood home visitation program establishes direct support and integration of services for at risk households who are deemed to be abusive to children. Nurses and other trained professionals conduct home visitations to ensure the well-being of children who are vulnerable to abuse and neglect, according to CEBC, professionals who handles home visitations aspect of child well-being focus on how parents are properly educated for an effective child care through their development, health, safety, and nutrition, also helping parents for their educational attainment, job referrals, and assisting them to receive social services in their communities.

Based on research, parents usually get visitation from child welfare agencies within the first two years of the child’s birth to provide an essential information on child care, education, and training on how parents or care givers can keep the child healthy throughout his or her developmental process and with guidance of proper care (Bilukha et al., 2005). Child abuse is a worldwide problem and more than twenty five percent of children around the world are impacted with abuse, which has severe health, social, and economic consequences. Through their effort, social service agencies and government are working to bring awareness of child abuse to communities and according to Segal and Dalziel (2011), there is an increasing interest and effort by government and other social service agencies to create a cost saving strategy and intervention programs to avert child abuse, and home visitation program can be an effective intervention strategy considering its involvement at the early stages of at risk child’s life.

According to The California Evidenced-Based Clearinghouse for Child Welfare, home visitation for child abuse and neglect has a promising research evidence and it is often used by child welfare agencies as a strategic plan to intervene at the early stages of children deemed to be vulnerable to abuse and neglect from their birth until they reach their fifth birthday. Depending on the particular model of early childhood home visitations being used, the visitors are often specially trained nurses or other professional and according Stoltzfus and Lynch (2009), home visits which usually occur every week, may begin before the child is born or after the child is born and may continue until the child is two years or enters kindergarten, participation of families is voluntary unless a child has been abused and court ordered the home visitation.

Reference

Bilukha, O., Hahn R. A., Crosby, A., Fullilove, M. T., Liberman A., Moscicki, E., Snyder, S., Tuma, F., Corso, P., Schofield, A., Briss, P. A., & Task Force on Community Preventive Services. (2005). The effectiveness of early childhood home visitation in preventing violence: A Systematic Review. American Journal of Preventive Medicine Vol 28, Number 2S1 Elsevier Inc. Publications.

California Evidence-Based Clearinghouse for Child Welfare. (2013). Home Visiting for Child Well-Being. Retrieved from www.cebc4cw.org/topic/home-visiting

Segal, L., & Dalziel, K. (2011). Investing to protect our children: Using economics to derive an evidence-based strategy. Child Abuse Review; Vol. 20 Issue 4, p274-289, 16p.

Stoltzfus E. & Lynch K. E. (2009). Home Visitation for Families with Young Children. CRS Report for Congress. Congressional Research Services. 7-5700.