April has been deemed Child Abuse Prevention Month and state health and human services officials – along with elected leaders – would like to see a lot of people across North Carolina do what they can to advance the cause and call attention to it.
State officials are asking that, this year for the month of April, community organizations, government agencies, businesses, faith groups and other involved parties come together “to focus on creating partnerships to prevent child maltreatment from occurring and the importance of building hope for children and families.”
The official theme of the 2024 Child Abuse Prevention Month campaign is “Building A Hopeful Future Together.”
The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NCDHHS) – along with the Positive Childhood Alliance North Carolina (formerly known as Prevent Child Abuse North Carolina) argue that all North Carolinians are responsible for defending and nurturing children across the state.
“We want North Carolina families to have access to supports they need, when they need them, so children can grow up in nurturing environments with hope for the future,” said NCDHHS Deputy Secretary for Opportunity and Well-Being Susan Osborne. “Policies and programs that put families first are critical to ensuring parents and caregivers have the resources they need to keep children safe within their own communities.”
Guilford County has been doing its part: In Guilford County, over the last decade, there’s been a tremendous push against child abuse – as well as elder abuse and other types of familial abuse. The county has poured a lot of effort and money into its two Family Justice Centers, which have operated as models for many other places across the state and the country.
According to information from the NCDHHS: “Children who live in families with access to economic and social support are less likely to experience abuse and neglect. Too often, people think of raising healthy children as a parent or caregiver’s responsibility alone, but it takes community resources and partnerships to help lighten the burden of care and strengthen families. All North Carolinians share the responsibility of creating more positive outcomes for children by working together to address the underlying causes of health and social inequities in our communities.”
Here, according to state officials. are some of the ways people can help increase awareness…
- Attend a Pinwheel Planting hosted by NCDHHS and other organizations on Tuesday, April 2 at 11:30 a.m., at the NC State Farmer’s Market at 1201 Agriculture St. in Raleigh. The public and media are invited to attend. Speakers will include Lisa Tucker Cauley, Division Director, Human Services Child, Family, and Adult, Regional Support; Sharon Hirsch, President and CEO of Positive Childhood Alliance North Carolina; and Heather McAllister, Family First Prevention Services Manager in the Division of Social Services.
At the event, food and drink will be provided on a first come first serve basis.
- Wear blue on Friday, April 5 – which is “Wear Blue Day” – to show support for children and families. Post a photo or video on social media and include the #WearBlueDay2024 and #NC hashtags.
- Take part in digital advocacy day on Tuesday, April 16, to push for increased federal investment in “community-based child abuse prevention grants” that offer states and communities resources that can be used to implement solutions to child abuse and neglect.
- Follow the Positive Childhood Alliance North Carolina on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Threads and X (formerly known as Twitter) and share posts throughout April. Also, encourage your friends and family to do the same.
- Plant a pinwheel as a visual reminder of the world we want – for all children to grow up happy, healthy and prepared to succeed.
For more ways to get involved in Child Abuse Prevention Month, you can visit PositiveChildhoodAllianceNC.org.
As an Executive Board Member of Positive Childhood Alliance of NC (previously Prevent Child Abuse of NC) I encourage everyone to wear blue in April, attend as many events as possible and donate to Positive Childhood Alliance of NC at http://www.preventchildabusenc.org
Child abuse likely happens much more frequently than we, society, like to believe. And maybe some or many child-abusing parents feel entitled to do so, they having did their ‘part’ in creating their children.
If it’s physically survived, chronic abuse left prolongedly unhindered readily results in a helpless child’s brain improperly developing. The emotional and/or psychological trauma acts as a starting point into a life in which the brain uncontrollably releases potentially damaging levels of inflammation-promoting stress hormones and chemicals, even in non-stressful daily routines.
It can amount to non-physical-impact brain-damage abuse: It has been described as a continuous, discomforting anticipation of ‘the other shoe dropping’ and simultaneously being scared of how badly you will deal with the upsetting event, which usually never transpires.
The lasting emotional/psychological pain from such trauma is very formidable yet invisibly confined to inside one’s head. It is solitarily suffered, unlike an openly visible physical disability or condition, which tends to elicit sympathy/empathy from others. It can make every day a mental ordeal, unless the turmoil is prescription and/or illicitly medicated. To a significant degree, I know such self-medicating from personal experience. …
Actually, parental failure can occur as soon as their decision to conceive and carry a baby to term. By this I mean that too many people will procreate regardless of not being sufficiently knowledgeable of child development to ensure parenting in a psychologically functional/healthy manner.
Many seem to perceive thus treat human procreative ‘rights’ as though they (potential parents) will somehow, in blind anticipation, be innately inclined to sufficiently understand and appropriately nurture their children’s naturally developing minds and needs.
As liberal democracies, we cannot prevent anyone from bearing children, including the incompetent and reckless procreators. We can, however, educate all young people for the most important job ever, even those high-schoolers who plan to remain childless.
If nothing else, such child-development curriculum could offer students an idea/clue as to whether they’re emotionally suited for the immense responsibility and strains of parenthood. Given what is at stake, should they not at least be equipped with such valuable science-based knowledge?
As a moral rule, a physically and mentally sound future should be every child’s fundamental right — along with air, water, food and shelter — especially considering the very troubled world into which they never asked to enter.
Yet clearly ‘Child Abuse Prevention Month’ [every April] needs to run 365 days of the year in this world.
Unfortunately, people will procreate regardless of their inability to parent their children in a psychologically functional/healthy manner. Many people seem to perceive thus treat human procreative ‘rights’ as though they [people] will somehow, in blind anticipation, be innately inclined to sufficiently understand and appropriately nurture our children’s naturally developing minds and needs.
One wonders how much child abuse and long-term suffering might have been prevented had some crucial child-development science via mandatory high-school curriculum been taught. After all, dysfunctional and/or abusive parents, for example, may not have had the chance to be anything else due to their lack of such education and their own dysfunctional/abusive rearing as children.
Still, in the book Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology and How You Can Heal it’s written that “[even] well-meaning and loving parents can unintentionally do harm to a child if they are not well informed about human development” (pg.24).
Regarding early life or adverse childhood experience trauma, people tend to know (perhaps commonsensically) that they should not loudly quarrel when, for instance, a baby is in the next room; however, do they know about the intricacies of why not?
Since it cannot fight or flight, a baby stuck in a crib on its back hearing parental discord in the next room can only “move into a third neurological state, known as a ‘freeze’ state … This freeze state is a trauma state” (pg.123).
This causes its brain to improperly develop. It’s like a form of non-physical-impact brain damage.
Also, it is the unpredictability of a stressor, and not the intensity, that does the most harm. When the stressor “is completely predictable, even if it is more traumatic — such as giving a [laboratory] rat a regularly scheduled foot shock accompanied by a sharp, loud sound — the stress does not create these exact same [negative] brain changes” (pg.42).
Furthermore, how many of us were aware that, since young children completely rely on their parents for protection and sustenance, they will understandably stress over having their parents angry at them for prolonged periods of time? It makes me question the wisdom of punishing children by sending them to their room without dinner.
But general society perceives and treats human procreative ‘rights’ as though we’ll somehow, in blind anticipation, be innately inclined to sufficiently understand and appropriately nurture our children’s naturally developing minds and needs.
No one wants children to be reared in an abusive home. The community would probably want to help the Children, disabled persons living in unforeseen dire circumstances. But people should not get pregnant if they are not prepared to take proper care of the responsibilities that accompany the situation.
There are MANY responsible, caring individuals who are quick, or would be, if we could stop so many selfish, irresponsible people from abusing physically, emotionally, those whom they should have been prepared to be responsible.