How culture and community impact on child abuse
How culture and community impact on and influence child maltreatment was the subject of a recent seminar presented by visiting American Professor Jill Korbin from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.
Speaking to staff from DoCS and the University of NSW in September, Professor Korbin said the intervention that works best for one cultural group may not be the best approach for another.
Interventions should be tailored to each community, she explained. For example, what works for mainstream middle-class America will not necessarily be effective for inner-city African-Americans.
In the US, the breakdown of maltreatment types is 60.9 per cent neglect, 18.9 per cent abuse, 9.9 per cent sexual abuse and 4.9 per cent emotional abuse.
Rates of maltreatment are much higher in minority groups than among white Americans. For example, the rates of report per 1,000 were 21.4 for American Indians, 21.3 for Native Alaskans, 20.4 for African-Americans and 11 for white Americans.
Professor Korbin said that over the course of their lives, almost half of African-American children less than 10 years old would have been the subject of at least one report for maltreatment.
Neighbourhood factors contributing to child maltreatment rates are impoverishment, child care burden (too many kids and too few mothers, not enough men or elders) and instability (re-locating). These factors also occur in areas where there is a higher incidence of crime, drug trafficking, juvenile delinquency, teen childbearing and low birth weights.
From Professor Korbin’s research, residents in Cleveland viewed the problem as relating to poverty and family structure, substance abuse, moral values and individual pathology (such as abuse in their own childhood).
One research participant said: “Before, neighbours treated all children like their own. Now no-one would step in. People don’t want to step on other people’s toes. And if they do step in, sometimes the kids or even the parents get nasty.”
The weakening of neighbourhood bonds is be-lieved to have contributed to child maltreatment. In communities where bonds are strong there is less intervention by child welfare agencies. For example, in Ohio’s Amish community, if a mother has post-natal depression, another member of the community, rather than intervention services, steps in and looks after the child.
The session was the seventh seminar hosted by DoCS Research, Funding and Business Analysis Division this year.
Jill Korbin is Co-Director of the Schubert Centre for Child Development and Co-Director of the Childhood Studies Program at Case Western Reserve University. She has published numerous articles on child maltreatment, including Child Abuse and Neglect: Cross-Cultural Perspectives.