Child Abuse and Neglect in Australia

This essay discusses the problem of child abuse and neglect in Australia, including statistics, causes, and consequences. Learn more about this social issue and its impact on children.

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

This essay brings out discussion on a social issue that prevails in high degree in Australia.
Although, the country`s economy suffers various social issues such as domestic violence,
child abuse and negligence, ageing population, homelessness, and unemployment. This paper
carries the discussion on the problem of child abuse and neglect with the help of given reports
of the government and renowned institution (Jud, Fegert, & Finkelhor, 2016).
Growing concern in regards to child abuse has been perceived as an increasing part for
government regulations because of child protection policy. Recently, it is seen that in order to
remove the concern, government is trying to translate in systematic strategies and other
programs that considers the eradication of issue through an appropriate program (Australian
government, 2019). Child abuse and neglect has different meaning to different people, which
depends on what context is used. It is generally interpreted as occurrence of action that can
lead to physical, sexual actions, and emotional tortures that further affect and harm the
children in a negative way. In another way, it can be said that situation as the protective
issues for a child as people believes to be responsible for abuse and neglect is family and
parents. It is important to consider that there is huge data, which is not even published
regarding the negligence of children. A major problem related to child abuse is that it faces
problem related to protective policies that can be measured in terms of education strategy and
early intervention. A greater recognition of complex natures causes child abuse and undue
advantages of the children that is, opposed holistic approaches. A more holistic approach that
is being gradually developed considers several range of areas such as employment, health,
education, and family relations especially children protection policies are undertaken
(Australian government, 2019).

(Source: Australian Institute of Family Studies, 2017)
According to Australian institute of health and welfare, it is reported that there is an increase
in the number of children abuse and neglect of nearly 8% in 2014-2015. Out of these reported
cases, 45% of the reported claims are of emotional abuses, 25% of the reported claims were
due to negligence, 18% abuse was related to physical abuses and sexual abuses are about
12%. While evaluating these all the reports, it has been seen that girls suffered 51% of the
reported claims and boys suffered remaining 49% (Australian Institute of Family Studies,
2017). Apart from this, Australian girls are more likely to be victim of sexual abuses
especially among Torres islander and aboriginals natives. In addition to this, it has been
claimed that out of six women, one is physical and sexual abuse for the girls who are under
15 (Parliament of Australia, 2017). Some of the common reasons of children abuses suffered
by almost every victim are sex of the child, age and nurturing age of the kid, whether the
child have ever experienced any abuse on the part of society. Moreover, disability among the

children is one of the major inducements that motivates the society to take undue advantage
of such people, which further leads to occurrence of family problems. Other institutional
reasons can be involvement in other settings related to construction projects, physical traits of
the child, social isolation, understanding level in regards to sexuality, and safety issues. There
are many consequences of child negligence that has been derived from the website of Abused
child trust, a Queensland that is based on professionalism, which further specialised in
treatment programs for the victims and their families. The sustainable impact on children
abuse and negligence cannot be easily predicted (Wright, Swain, & McPhillips, 2017). Other
factors that can be taken into consideration which further includes the degree and time of
abuse, family structure and their support, resiliency factors and types of intervenes. The
research tends to conceptual maltreatment in the development framework are hindered by
various personal and interpersonal circumstances. Subsequent growth is hindered by personal
reasons such as poor development of self, poor language skills, destroyed verbal skills, low
self-esteem (Parliament of Australia, 2017). Other than this, after children who has suffered a
lot from the interpersonal relationships such as inability to form meaningful relations, lower
social maturity, and diminishing coping skills. Other more reasons related to increasing
likelihood is poor health conditions, future delinquency, personal abnormalities, youth
committing suicide, adult crime, homeless and depression. Furthermore, some old natives of
Australia renowned as “Torres islanders” and aboriginal people suffer from severe water
sanitation problems because they are the victim of social determinants and social issues such
as unemployment, lack of health facilities, lack of basic facilities, lack of education, lack of
nutritional food, and amenities. Children belonging to such deprived community will suffer
from such social determinants (Parliament of Australia, 2017). As a result of these social
issues and child abuse, according to researches, almost half of the children suffering from
sexual abuses are either depressed or sad, suffer from high level of anxiety, low self-esteem,

several behavioural problems, and also lead to other adverting life experiences (Moore et al.,
2015).
In order to reduce the child abuse and neglect, there are many resolutions undertaken by the
government institutions. However, it has been reported from the result of resolutions taken by
Royal commission is that 1 out of 32 Australian children receives services related to child
protection. Whereas, among the reported claims, 75% of the victims are repeated clients that
further reflects the perpetual failure of parent and family care and also the failure of these
resolutions made by the government. Although, royal commission has formed over 30
recommendations in order to improve the children condition who are out of their home care
especially for young Australians (The conversation, 2016).
According to above discussion, it can be concluded that child sexual abuse is not distributed
among the population. It occurs more often in a child who belongs to disorganised family
structures, unhygienic environment, high level of abusing sexually, parental separation, and
domestic violence. It is important to understand that overlaying of tortures such as physical,
social, and emotional abuses. These reasons are subject to establish such as critique thinking
of the entire society. Australian government and other community organisations will further
reduce the risk of violence so that work done by organisations can ensure that fewer children
suffer from protection issues. Parental separation, domestic violence, and family issues are
highly associated huge risk of child sex abuse.

References
Australian government, (2019). Social issues. Retrieved from:
https://www.australia.gov.au/information-and-services/family-and-community/social-
issues
Parliament of Australia, (2017). Who's Looking after the Kids? An Overview of Child Abuse
and Child Protection in Australia. Retrieved from:
https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/
Parliamentary_Library/Publications_Archive/archive/ChildAbuse
Australian Institute of Family Studies, (2017). Child abuse and neglect statistics. Retrieved
from: https://aifs.gov.au/cfca/publications/child-abuse-and-neglect-statistics
The conversation, (2016). Emotional abuse of children is a growing problem in Australia.
Retrieved from: https://theconversation.com/emotional-abuse-of-children-is-a-
growing-problem-in-australia-59235
Moore, S. E., Scott, J. G., Ferrari, A. J., Mills, R., Dunne, M. P., Erskine, H. E., ... &
McCarthy, M. (2015). Burden attributable to child maltreatment in Australia. Child
Abuse & Neglect, 48, 208-220.
Jud, A., Fegert, J. M., & Finkelhor, D. (2016). On the incidence and prevalence of child
maltreatment: a research agenda. Child and adolescent psychiatry and mental
health, 10(1), 17.
Wright, K., Swain, S., & McPhillips, K. (2017). The Australian Royal Commission into
Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Child abuse & neglect, 74, 1-9.