Child Abuse Prevention Techniques Essay

Prevention Techniques for Child Maltreatment Combating child maltreatment is a complicated task that requires a vast variety of techniques that each requires extensive consideration. Across the United States different levels of prevention methods have been developed and put into action. These levels are primary prevention, secondary prevention, and tertiary prevention. Each level is based on how the techniques reach the public or target families. Primary prevention consists of public advertisements and campaigns that target the general public. For example, Pinwheels for Prevention is a campaign that raises awareness about child abuse by creating a giant pinwheel out of individual pinwheels in a public space in order to catch people's attention. Other primary prevention examples would be advertisements on billboards or television.
Secondary prevention includes programs that strictly target high-risk families. Home visiting has become the most common type of secondary prevention program. Home visits consist of a nurse coming to the home and offering childcare advice and tips …show more content…
It is certainly true that many of these techniques are able to reach a large majority of high-risk families through either level of prevention type; it is still necessary to consider the fact that there are likely families who slip through the cracks of these programs and are not reached. Achieving full awareness from every family in the United States would be nearly impossible as every family is different. For example, some high-risk families might not be able to afford television services so they are less likely to be reached by television advertisements about child abuse. Other families might have barriers like this that stop them from being able to receive the opportunities offered to