Unfortunately, as a CLS we will all likely encounter patients who have been victims of familial child maltreatment. Child maltreatment can be broken down into two categories, abuse or neglect. Abuse is the act of commission by a parent or caregiver that results in harm, potential for harm, or threat of harm to a child, whereas neglect is the act of omission by a parent or caregiver that results in harm, potential for harm, or threat of harm to a child. In this specific scenario, I am the CLS working with a 10 year-old female who is in the hospital due to a non-accidental head injury sustained as a result of her biological father using physical punishment. The multidisciplinary healthcare team has just informed me that protective services will
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We all know that there are many risk factors that can affect outcomes for children of abuse and neglect, and that these risk factors are likely to be interrelated and accumulate. In this specific scenario, we are not fully aware of how long maltreatment has been occurring, but since the child is 10 there is potential that abuse/neglect also occurred during her first 4 years of her life—which is known as a critical period for brain development. The patient is considered school age, and it is common for children of this age group to show generalized physical, cognitive, and language delays as effects of maltreatment on child development. Developmentally speaking, there are likely a multitude of misconceptions that the child has surrounding the reasons for abuse and her father’s behaviors. As the CLS on the case, and with the accumulation of the above-stated knowledge of impacts of maltreatment on development, I would hypothesize that the child’s past history of abuse, and potential neglect, directly relates to her developmental delays. I would be hopeful that being placed in a nurturing environment through foster care and appropriate interventions could help to combat, or at least aid in reducing, these developmental delays—especially if there were no medical indicators for an additional cause of developmental …show more content…
Although I am not sure that I would ever discuss neurodevelopment, as it is a bit out of my scope of practice, the following is how I would feel comfortable discussing the effects that child adversity has on neurodevelopment: I would first mention that in 2009 the World Health Organization met to begin a collaborative effort to build a framework that can be used to define the burden of adverse childhood experiences (Anda, Butchart, Felitti, & Brown, 2010). I would then explain that this lead to the breakthroughs in neurobiology that indicates that adverse childhood experiences, such as child abuse/neglect, can disrupt neurodevelopment and have long term and long lasting effects on the function and the structure of the brain (Anda et al., 2010). I would also highlight that stressful and traumatic childhood experiences, such as child abuse/neglect, are “common pathways and predictors of social, emotional, and cognitive impairments” (Anda et al.,
We all know that there are many risk factors that can affect outcomes for children of abuse and neglect, and that these risk factors are likely to be interrelated and accumulate. In this specific scenario, we are not fully aware of how long maltreatment has been occurring, but since the child is 10 there is potential that abuse/neglect also occurred during her first 4 years of her life—which is known as a critical period for brain development. The patient is considered school age, and it is common for children of this age group to show generalized physical, cognitive, and language delays as effects of maltreatment on child development. Developmentally speaking, there are likely a multitude of misconceptions that the child has surrounding the reasons for abuse and her father’s behaviors. As the CLS on the case, and with the accumulation of the above-stated knowledge of impacts of maltreatment on development, I would hypothesize that the child’s past history of abuse, and potential neglect, directly relates to her developmental delays. I would be hopeful that being placed in a nurturing environment through foster care and appropriate interventions could help to combat, or at least aid in reducing, these developmental delays—especially if there were no medical indicators for an additional cause of developmental …show more content…
Although I am not sure that I would ever discuss neurodevelopment, as it is a bit out of my scope of practice, the following is how I would feel comfortable discussing the effects that child adversity has on neurodevelopment: I would first mention that in 2009 the World Health Organization met to begin a collaborative effort to build a framework that can be used to define the burden of adverse childhood experiences (Anda, Butchart, Felitti, & Brown, 2010). I would then explain that this lead to the breakthroughs in neurobiology that indicates that adverse childhood experiences, such as child abuse/neglect, can disrupt neurodevelopment and have long term and long lasting effects on the function and the structure of the brain (Anda et al., 2010). I would also highlight that stressful and traumatic childhood experiences, such as child abuse/neglect, are “common pathways and predictors of social, emotional, and cognitive impairments” (Anda et al.,