Contemporary Issue in Health: Child Abuse and Maltreatment in the UK

Running head: CONTEMPORARY ISSUE IN HEALTH
CONTEMPORARY ISSUE IN HEALTH
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1CONTEMPORARY ISSUE IN HEALTH
Table of Contents
Introduction:....................................................................................................................................2
Case study:.......................................................................................................................................3
Issues:..............................................................................................................................................4
Prevalence:...................................................................................................................................4
Causes:.........................................................................................................................................5
Theories/ concept:........................................................................................................................6
Ethical issues and principles:.......................................................................................................7
Criticality:........................................................................................................................................8
Conclusion:....................................................................................................................................11
Reference:......................................................................................................................................13

2CONTEMPORARY ISSUE IN HEALTH
Introduction:
The incident of child abuse or child treatment is defined as the psychological, physical
and sexual abuse, neglect or maltreatment of children especially by the intimate partner or by the
care giver. The event of child abuse also includes failure to act properly by the parents or the
care giver that leads to the actual harm to the children. Such incident could occur in the home,
school, organization or in the community to which the child is associated with (Kleinman 2015).
The causes of child abuse may include poverty, common social and family problem, poor mental
health and substance abuse. However, such causes has shown similar trend in order to correlate
with the case of child abuse around the world. Beside such factors that contribute to the incident
of child abuse, there are some cultural prospective that play an important role in the maltreatment
of children (McCoy and Keen 2013). Due to such event of child abuse the children suffer from
emotional distress, physical assault affects the health of the children and it disrupts the
educational ability of the children thus affects their future in an effective manner. Due to such
childhood trauma most of the children face psychological problem as well. Thus, it can be said
that, such maltreatment affects both the physical and mental health condition of the children and
even in some severe cases it could leads to death as well (Young and Widom 2014). According
to the World Health Organization the prevalence of child abuse differs according to the country
(World Health Organization 2018). It is difficult to study the case of child abuse as the incident
is usually hidden from the view of others and the children are too young and frightened to share
such event. According to the statistics of 2017, there are more than 58000 children that are the
victim of child abuse (NSPCC 2018). Many acts and legislations are also present in order to
reduce the incident of child abuse; however they are not effective enough (Sperry and Widom

3CONTEMPORARY ISSUE IN HEALTH
2013). Thus it is important to focus on the study of child abuse in order to understand the central
cause and effects of such incident so that effective steps could be taken by the government to
resolve such issue.
The focus of the assignment is the incident of child abuse. The following paper will
provide a brief case study regarding intimate partner abuse and the prevalence, cause, theories
and ethical issues related with intimate partner violence. The paper will also provide critiques
regarding the legislation and acts related to the child abuse and will discuss the criticality of the
situation.
Case study:
The case study is about Wilson Fred a two years old boy who had suffered from child
abuse and was found dead by the staffs of emergency service in the home after being alerted by
Julia Wilson the mother of the little boy. Julia was living with her companion Monica Smith at
that time. The abuse of Wilson Fred was started one year ago from the time of his death when
they have shifted to the new residential place. Julia and her companion Monica have got a civil
partnership very soon. The couple desperately wanted to get rid of the little boy in order to work
without any impediment. The couple usually locked the two years old boy in a filthy room.
Monica and Julia often abused the little boy physically by using a metal frame, ropes, cable ties
and chains as well. Wilson Fred was caned and beaten almost every day without any apparent
reason. After that the couple locked him up in a birdcage for the whole night with tied up his
hands. The child was forced to rake cold baths that has lead to deterioration of health condition.
The nursery of the Fred Wilson has notified the staffs of social service as they have recognized a
tremendous change in the behaviour of the child for example; the child became dull and silent