Supporting Children’s Rights and Entitlements

Outcomes
• Identify a range of signs and indicators which might be an indication of abuse or neglect.
• Describe ways of responding positively to signs of possible abuse.

Child Abuse
A child is someone under the age of
16 and child abuse includes such things as:
• the misuse of power
• an adult deliberately hurting a child
• not attending to a child’s needs
• an adult putting their own needs and desires before a child’s
• not caring for a child properly
• using a child for sexual gratification

Types of Child Abuse
Physical Abuse
Sexual Abuse
Emotional Abuse
Physical Neglect

Types of Child Abuse
Physical Abuse
• Is when a child is physically injured by any person caring for them.
• It is also when a person caring for the child knowingly fails to prevent an injury.

Types of Child Abuse
Sexual Abuse
• Is when a person involves a child under the age of consent in any activity that leads to the sexual gratification of that adult.
• This often includes physical contact such as rape but can also include taking pornographic photographs.

Types of Child Abuse
Emotional Abuse
• Is when a child’s basic emotional needs are not being met and this has an effect on their behaviour and development.
• This can include being constantly ridiculed, criticised or threatened.

Types of Child Abuse
Physical Neglect
• Is when someone caring for a child persistently exposes that child to danger or persistently fails to fulfil the child’s basic needs and results in health or developmental problems.

Types of Child Abuse
• Neglect also includes non-organic
failure to thrive. This is a medical diagnosis of lack of development in a child where there is no physical or organic cause, such as illness, to account for it.

Child Abuse
• Any act of commission or omission by individuals, institutions or society as a whole which deprives children of equal rights, or liberties, and/or interferes with their optimal development, constitutes by definition abuses or neglectful acts or conditions.