Addressing maltreatment

Action Plan 3

Addressing Maltreatment—the Role of Early Childhood Professionals

As an early childhood professional you are a mandated reporter of neglect and abuse in the state you are employed. Many states have policies and procedures that early childhood professionals must follow if they suspect neglect or abuse happening. In my state of Maryland, early childhood professional who suspect maltreatment must follow the following policies and procedures. According to Maryland Abuse and Neglect laws only applies to a parent, any person who has permanent or temporary custody, household or family member, or responsible for supervision. All professional who work with children, need to know that to protect themselves they need to report any suspected maltreatment, because if they fail to report they can sanctioned by the licensing board. When a early childhood professional suspects maltreatment they must follow these following procedures.

• With in 48 hours of suspecting abuse, it must be reported both verbally and written to child protective services.
• Must have the following information when reporting the suspected behavior.
  • Names, ages, and addresses of all the family members where the abused child lives.
  • The present location of the maltreated child
  • any information on the maltreatment
  • who is being accused of this maltreatment

After you have reported the suspected abuse you need to support the needs of the children and non abusive family members. This is a difficult thing to do for many childhood professionals because they may not want to get involved anymore then they have to. One way you can support the family is to have information about community services, like counseling, and other services to help the child and family understand what is going on. Also educate the family of the victim of the wide range of emotions, behaviors, and how to cope with them. Another way is that you can be the positive, and emotionally stable person in their lives and hope they can trust you enough to express themselves to you. How could you show your support with out getting to involved with the family? As and educator you should keep your emotions in check and only supply the family with the information needed, but be supportive as much as possible. As the educator you spend most of the child's day with them and see if there may be change in their behavior and emotion, write all of this down and give the parent a copy so they know what maybe going on, and can tell the doctor, or counselors. The only thing that you can control is how your classroom is run, keep the child's daily routine as similar as possible, and reassure the child that everything will be ok and give lots of TLC.

How to present the information to the non-abusive parent in a supportive non-judgmental way? One way is to wait for them to approach you for the information, and when they do keep your opinions out of it, but be supportive emotionally. On the other hand, you can inform the parent of any change you may have noticed in their child, and maybe suggest things that you use in your classroom to help the child deal with their emotions, Like journal writing, creative arts, role playing, and open conversations. Another way to present the information to the non-abusive parent is maybe fliers or brochures with information about child development and how children deal with maltreatment, and community services that may be helpful sitting in the lobby for the parents to grab if they want too.

References

Maryland Department of Human Resources, (n.d) Reporting Suspected Child Abuse and Neglect, retrieved on February 2, 2014 from www.dhr.state.md.us