Risk Factors - Page 1
Risk Factors and Determinants
of Child Maltreatment
Dr. Tamar Cohen (Israel)
Presented at WHO Meeting
Geneva, Switzerland
March 1999
Bio: The International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (ISPCAN) is a multidisciplinary professional organization working to combat child maltreatment through the exchange of research and professional education worldwide. ISPCAN publishes the monthly Child Abuse & Neglect: The International Journal compiling research on all forms of child maltreatment, and the Link newsletter highlighting developments in practice and including case studies compared across regions. In addition, ISPCAN provides a membership directory for professional networking and sponsors a variety of training events, conferences and biennial Congresses. For more information, please visit www.ispcan.org.
Bio: Dr. Tamar Cohen is an active member of ISPCAN since 1992. She has participated in many of it's conferences and congresses presenting scientific papers, and serving as a sessions' chairperson, and was recently elected to serve a 6 year term on ISPCAN's Council. In 1998 she was invited by World Health Organization to present a lecture on Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect. In 1999 she was invited again by WHO, and this article is based on her invited lecture.
For the purpose of this presentation I would like to focus on child maltreatment within the family. My presentation rests on three premises:
- Child maltreatment can be viewed on a continuum of child-rearing practices, practices which are culturally defined.
- Child development is a result of a complex process of interplays and shifting influences on physical, emotional, sexual, social and cognitive development
- Child maltreatment is a multifaceted phenomenon which cannot be explained by one or two factors.
The findings from empirical research which exist today, can be organized and conceptualized into an ecological model suggested by Belsky and others. According to such a model there are four dimensions of risk factors which constitute the interplay pre-conditions for child maltreatment. It is the interplay, the dynamics between them which will determine whether child maltreatment will occur.
They are 1) parental pre-disposition, 2) sources of stress, 3) characteristics of child and 4) social and cultural environmental milieu.
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