April is Child Abuse Prevention Month and as our partners at the Face It Movement like to say, we ALL play a role in preventing child maltreatment.
Child maltreatment is a serious and pervasive problem in the Commonwealth. In 2022, Kentucky had 12,340 children in substantiated investigations of child abuse and neglect. The most recent Child Maltreatment report shows Kentucky is 14th in the nation with a child abuse/neglect rate of 12.3 victims per 1,000 children.
Child maltreatment is also considered a serious childhood adversity. Of the ten items in the original Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) questionnaire, five of those adversities were related to childhood abuse and neglect. The original ACEs study examined the impact of such experiences on health outcomes in adulthood. They found a significant connection between ACEs and chronic illness, mental health problems, and high-risk behaviors in adulthood. These experiences can increase the risks of a wide range of chronic diseases and leading causes of death, such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and suicide. Toxic stress from ACEs can also negatively affect children’s brain development, immune systems, and stress-response systems. These changes can affect children’s attention, decision-making, and learning.
As a coalition, we know that Bounce has an important role to play in the prevention of child maltreatment. The Strengthening Families framework, a research-informed approach to increase family strengths, enhance child development, and reduce the likelihood of child abuse and neglect, stresses the importance of parental resilience and social emotional competence of kids.
Bounce provides programming that seeks to increase these strengths in families across the state.
Parental Resilience – Being a parent can be a very rewarding and joyful experience. But being a parent can also have its share of stress. Numerous researchers have concluded that how parents respond to stressors is much more important than the stressor itself in determining the outcomes for themselves and their children. Parents, and by extension, their families, are more likely to achieve healthy, favorable outcomes if they are resilient.
Bounce provides parent and caregiver training opportunities to build family engagement in youth serving organizations and teach caregivers the skills/tools they need to build resilience in themselves and their families.
Social Emotional Competence of Children – A growing body of research has demonstrated the strong link between young children’s social-emotional competence and their cognitive development, language skills, mental health, and school success. The dimensions of social-emotional competence in early childhood include self-esteem, confidence, self-regulation, conflict resolution, communication and social skills, and empathy. These dimensions of social-emotional competence do not evolve naturally and require consistent cultivation to develop.
Thanks to funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Bounce has spent the past year piloting a program with the YMCA of Greater Louisville’s School Age Childcare (SACC) Program that brings social emotional learning programming directly to kids in their after school programs. Anecdotally, we’ve seen positive outcomes thus far and are eager to share our findings later this year.
Be sure to follow Face It on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram throughout the month for safety tips, event highlights, parenting inspiration, and more!
