The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act is a historic achievement in the fight against child abuse and neglect. This is an important policy when it comes to social work for many different reasons. As a social worker, the role is to help ensure the safety and well-being of people, helping ensure that their needs are being met and helping them through the trauma they have experienced. CAPTA in particular is set in place to help reduce the child abuse. Child abuse has a lifetime impact and often leads to the child becoming an abuser. If we can work with the families through this act, we can continue to minimize the abuse and provide proper tools and skills to potentially prevent further abuse.
Although CAPTA is in place and has helped with decreasing some abuse, there do need to be some changes made for continued improvement. CAPTA offers an important framework, but reform is necessary in order to achieve more equitable and effective outcomes for children and families. Reform should focus on amendments that shift funding towards community-based prevention programs that follow an anti-poverty approach and work toward early intervention and education of families.
Although there have been changes to the process of reporting and removal as discussed below, there are still changes that need to be made for continued improvement of protecting children. When filing a mandated DCF report, the questions and process have changed over the last two years. DCF includes a portion where they now ask about poverty and if poverty were not an issue for the family would the concerns still be there. This change has helped reduce the number of children who are removed from the home due to poverty as it is now assessed through the reporting process in the form of questions.
DCF has made a change to their practice model, which now includes asking four different questions before the removal of a child. These four questions include: 1.) What can we do to remove the danger instead of the child? 2.) Can someone the child or family know move into the home to remove the danger? 3.) Can the caregiver and the child go live with a family member or friend? 4.) Could the child temporarily move with a friend or family member?
The trauma surrounding removal has been proven to be significant to children and with these added questions in place it allows for additional support and protection for the child/children without the extreme trauma of removal. With DCF working towards a more family-centered approach it opens up more options for prevention services to help support families. Within this model the goal is to also help support parents and teach parents as that better helps them support their children. This is done by connecting families to community resources, mental health services and supports within the community or their families.
There needs to be a shift in funding to support more preventive services, there also needs to be a continued shift in mindset about removal of children being a last resort and only done if truly needed. This change needs to be made at a federal level to include changes with the court system, as they often are the ones who make the final decision on if the child/children go home or stay out of home.
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