This study investigated decision making factors used by child caregivers to identify suspected child abuse and neglect and collected data on caregiver training in the recognition and reporting of suspected child abuse and neglect. Data was collected in July 1999 in fourteen north Texas childcare programs. One hundred twenty three teaching and administrative staff completed a survey based on Jacobson, A., Glass, J. and Ruggiere, P. (1998). Five teachers and five administrators chosen for convenience were read eleven vignettes describing possibly abusive situations to decide whether they were reportable or non-reportable, and to indicate factors used to make their decisions. Administrators (50%) and teachers (13.3%) reported being unfamiliar with child abuse and neglect definitions and reporting laws. Two thirds (66.7%) of the administrators and 39.8% of the teachers had received specific training in recognizing and reporting child abuse and neglect. Administrators were more likely than teachers to report suspected child abuse and neglect. Teachers often reported to program administrators rather than state designated authorities. All subjects relied on information about children, but administrators also used information about parents, with teachers more likely to make excuses for parental actions. With 110 reporting opportunities, training was cited as a factor only twice by administrators. No teachers made reports to anyone other than program administrators, a factor named deference in this study. Four of five administrators expected deference from teachers when reporting decisions were made. Present training in the recognition and reporting of suspected child abuse and neglect is inadequate. Caregivers need additional training in differences between accidental and intentional injuries, detection of child sexual abuse and emotional neglect, recognition and assessment of injuries among infants and toddlers, and mandated reporting procedures. Further research on optimal training for accurate reporting of suspected abuse and neglect is needed. A mandate to report to authorities outside the child care center should be clarified in state law. Licensing individuals as well as programs would strengthen reporting by caregivers.

Sixty teachers from the Ottawa-Carleton region of Canada were surveyed to measure their knowledge of child maltreatment risk indicators, knowledge of reporting procedures, and the frequency of reporting sexual abuse, physical abuse, and neglect. Correlations did not support the hypothesis of a significant relationship between knowledge and actual reporting frequency. Multiple Regression analyses demonstrated that the knowledge of child maltreatment risk factors and the knowledge of reporting procedures were not predictive of reporting. It was found that the teachers sampled were very knowledgeable of the basic risk indicators of child maltreatment and reporting procedures and policy. However, the findings did not support the hypotheses of a significant relationship between knowledge of child maltreatment risk factors and of reporting procedures and actual reporting frequency. These findings are discussed in consideration of the limitations of the current study, the implications for practice and the possibilities for further research.

No description available.

No description available.

Each state and territory within the United States is required by the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act [42 U.S.C. 5101 et seq.] to maintain a mandatory suspected child abuse and neglect reporting law, requiring certain professionals who regularly see children to report any suspicions of child maltreatment to child protective services. It is well documented that mandatory reporters fail to report each case of suspected child maltreatment they witness. This study sought to determine whether differences in three specific variables within the mandatory report laws had an effect on the frequency with which medical personnel report suspected child abuse and neglect. The three variables analyzed were: definitional scope of emotional abuse; standard of knowledge required for a report; and severity of penalty imposed on those who knowingly fail to report cases of child abuse and neglect. Data was obtained from the Child Maltreatment 2006 annual report printed by the Health and Human Services Administration of Children, Youth and Families. Of the three variables assessed, only severity of penalty yielded a significant association with report rate. States with lower report rates were significantly more likely to have lenient penalties for failure to report compared with those who had report rates above the national average (O.R. = 5.0, 95% C.I. = 1.165-21.465). It is recommended that states consider increasing the severity of the sanctions enforced for failure to report suspected child abuse and neglect. Although standard of knowledge requirements were not significantly associated with report rates, the literature suggests that standardization of this portion of the mandatory report laws could improve report rates, particularly among physicians.

The purpose of this research was first, to identify why males sexually abused as children under-report their experiences of child sexual abuse. Secondly, the disclosure experiences of males sexually abused as children were examined and analyzed, with a particular emphasis placed on exploring the links between low disclosure rates, gender role socialization, and homophobia. Qualitative data were gathered during semi-structured interviews of men sexually abused during childhood. Issues and themes arising during interviews were generally consistent with those identified in the literature. However, the sample size was small and additional research---employing larger samples---should be completed in order to collect further qualitative data regarding the disclosure experiences of males sexually abused as children. Despite its limitations, this research does provide valuable insight into the experience of disclosure for male victims of child sexual abuse.

Despite being mandated reporters by law, preschool teachers often fail to report suspicion of child abuse or neglect. Although research has been conducted regarding reasons why teachers do not report, no study has yet examined preschool teachers' thinking as decisions are being made. Therefore, the purpose of the study was to examine the in-the-moment decision-making process of preschool teachers to report or not report cases of suspected child abuse or neglect. Three research questions guided this exploration of teachers' responses to cases of possible child abuse or neglect, the reasons teachers give for their responses, and their confidence in the correctness of their decisions to report or not to report child abuse or neglect. The conceptual framework for this study was the ethical decision-making model of Meneghetti and Seel. The research was a phenomenological study using the think aloud protocol of van Someren, Barnard, and Sandberg. Three scenarios of possible child abuse cases were used as the basis for the face-to-face interviews in which 6 lead preschool teachers described their thought processes. The purposeful sample comprised 6 lead teachers in a major city in the United States with children aged 2 through 5. A thematic analysis method and coding strategy were used to answer the research questions. The findings in this study were consistent with the literature in that most of the teachers did not elect to report their suspicion of child abuse or neglect, but were inhibited by lack of clear understanding of what constitutes abuse and neglect, and by a desire for more information. This study contributes to positive social change by indicating a need for more training of preschool teachers in their mandated reporter role, which can result in more confident decision making and greater success in protecting young children.

Purpose. Youth suicide and child abuse are major societal problems of the late twentieth century, with alarming rates of occurrence and significant negative effects. Prevention and treatment programs exist for students once they are identified as abuse victims or at high risk for suicide. However, the identification process is made difficult by the lack of discriminating signs and symptoms. Peers are often the first to hear about a friend's abuse or intent to suicide, but may not share that information with an adult. The purpose of this study was to determine whether exposure to information on reporting personal knowledge of abuse or suicidal intention affects the inclination of middle school students to report such knowledge to adults. Procedures. Three hundred and twenty three middle school students in public school classes in San Joaquin County (California) were included in the sample. A total of 14 classes (seven control and seven experimental) were used. A questionnaire (Peer Confidant Survey) developed to measure students' inclination to report peer disclosures was used in the study. During the study the questionnaire was administered three times to each classroom: pre-training, immediately following training and one month after completion of the training. The Peer Confidant training for the experimental group consisted of information on discrimination of disclosures, listening skills, training on whom to tell and what to tell, and discussion of what constitutes being a friend (not betraying a confidence versus reporting). Findings. Results of the study suggested that middle school students are already inclined to report knowledge of abuse and suicidal intent among their peers to adults. They also demonstrated the ability to discriminate between reportable and non-reportable disclosures. After exposure to the training program designed to increase inclination to report knowledge of abuse and suicidal intent, students appeared to temporarily increase their inclination to report knowledge of suicidal intent but not knowledge of abuse. No significant group differences were found among sixth grade, eighth grade, special education and gifted students. Implications of the study and areas for further research are discussed.

Leung, Wai Shun. / "April 2008." / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 137-148). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Chapter Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.8 / Chapter Chapter 2 --- Background --- p.16 / Attitudes towards child abuse among doctors --- p.17 / Doctors' reporting behaviours --- p.20 / Factors associated with doctors' reporting behaviours --- p.21 / Reporting systems in foreign countries --- p.29 / Effectiveness of mandatory reporting system --- p.32 / Summary --- p.36 / Chapter Chapter 3 --- Child Abuse in Hong Kong --- p.37 / Prevalence of child abuse in Hong Kong --- p.37 / Child abuse management in Hong Kong --- p.41 / Summary --- p.46 / Chapter Chapter 4 --- Aims and hypotheses --- p.47 / Aims and objectives --- p.49 / Hypotheses --- p.50 / Chapter Chapter 5 --- Methods --- p.52 / Participants --- p.52 / Procedure --- p.55 / Measures --- p.56 / Ethical considerations --- p.60 / Data analysis --- p.61 / Chapter Chapter 6 --- Results --- p.63 / Characteristics of responding doctors --- p.63 / Definition of child abuse --- p.64 / Attitudes towards corporal punishment and opinions on child abuse issues --- p.67 / Reporting behaviours among doctors --- p.70 / Doctors' perceived importance of barriers and their relationships with reporting behaviours --- p.72 / Doctors' attitudes towards local reporting system --- p.74 / Tables 1-12 --- p.78 / Chapter Chapter 7 --- Discussion --- p.92 / Strengths of the study --- p.93 / Limitations of the study --- p.94 / Discussions on the findings --- p.97 / Chapter Chapter 8 --- Implications and recommendations --- p.110 / Implications of the present study --- p.110 / Suggestions to improve the management of child abuse in Hong Kong --- p.111 / Conclusions --- p.124 / Appendix 1-9 --- p.128 / Bibliography --- p.137

My research investigates three questions: How do we customize protocols and implementations to account for the unique requirement of each setting and its target community, what are necessary steps that we can take to transition secure computation tools into practice, and how can we promote their adoption for users at large? In this dissertation I present several of my works that address these three questions with a particular focus on one of them. First my work on "Hecate: Abuse Reporting in Secure Messengers with Sealed Sender" designs a customized protocol to protect people from abuse and surveillance in online end to end encrypted messaging. Our key insight is to add pre-processing to asymmetric message franking, where the moderating entity can generate batches of tokens per user during off-peak hours that can later be deposited when reporting abuse. This thesis then demonstrates that by carefully tailoring our cryptographic protocols for real world use cases, we can achieve orders of magnitude improvements over prior works with minimal assumptions over the resources available to people. Second, my work on "Batched Differentially Private Information Retrieval" contributes a novel Private Information Retrieval (PIR) protocol called DP-PIR that is designed to provide high throughput at high query rates. It does so by pushing all public key operations into an offline stage, batching queries from multiple clients via techniques similar to mixnets, and maintain differential privacy guarantees over the access patterns of the database. Finally, I provide three case studies showing that we cannot hope to further the adoption of cryptographic tools in practice without collaborating with the very people we are trying to protect. I discuss a pilot deployment of secure multi-party computation (MPC) that I have done with the Department of Education, deployments of MPC I have done for the Boston Women’s Workforce Council and the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, and ongoing work in developing tool chain support for MPC via an automated resource estimation tool called Carousels.