Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act

The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act was enacted in 2010 with amendments and reauthorization to the former act of the same name. A research paper on the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) will want to look at the most recent amendments and discuss the changes that have taken place. It is often a good idea to put in a chart or outline of the changes so that they can be attractively illustrated. If you have trouble with writing on CAPTA, get help from the experts at Paper Masters and we can give you a sample project so that you can see exactly how to write a paper on CAPTA.

One way to approach a project on the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act is to look at the history of the Act.

• This current version was signed into reauthorization by President Obama.
• It is noteworthy for the fact that it ensures that every case of abuse or neglect is handed over to a guardian ad litem while investigated. This is radical and significant and you may be able to focus most of your project on just this point.
• The new version also introduces a new concept into child abuse legislation called differential response.
• There are many ways to formulate your research paper on CAPTA. Get more topic suggestions from Paper Masters or have us help you write your Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act research project.

If you wish to branch out to other topics, there are certainly many interesting aspects of child abuse policy. For example, Differential response calls for child protective services to respond in various ways and not always remove a child from the home when abuse has been reported. It calls for creativity in the system.

Child abuse remains an alarming public health and social problem today.Reports published in 2004 by the U.S. government indicate that there are three million child abuse cases nationally with an approximate one million confirmed. Preventing child abuse is possibly our greatest social responsibility. While politicians, government agencies, school employees and private citizens work together to prevent child maltreatment, the burden of this task lies heaviest on the shoulders of health care workers.

While certainly there is no culture that affirms child abuse, a dichotomy exists between legal definitions of child abuse and cultural practices of child rearing. Figures on child abuse show that percentages of child abuse are greater within minority communities. Though there may be validity in these numbers, cultural misconceptions pervade between certain ethnic cultures and the healthcare community. These misconceptions, in turn, lead to inaccurate reports of child maltreatment. In assessing child abuse, particularly within ethnic communities, healthcare practitioners must take a culturally congruent approach when dealing with suspected child maltreatment.

The Federal Child Abuse and Treatment Act (CAPTA) of 1974 identify a foundation for state legislation on child abuse and neglect. Under this act, each state is charged with the task of providing its own definitions of child maltreatment. Within the limits of this particular paper, it is impossible and unnecessary to present each state's legal definition of child abuse. However, general guidelines exist outlining the different categories of child maltreatment.