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Lucas County Children Services Recognizes Child Abuse Prevention Month
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Lucas County Children Services Recognizes Child Abuse Prevention Month
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New data from Lucas County Children Services (LCCS) reveals that child abuse and neglect continue to occur in our community, even as the agency marks April 2008 as the 25th anniversary of National Child Abuse Prevention Month.
According to data in its just-released 2007 Annual Report, LCCS investigated 4,426 allegations of abuse or neglect in 2007, involving 7,200 alleged child victims. Agency investigations confirmed that 2,358 Lucas County children were abused or neglected in 2007. The statistics reflect an across-the-board decline in investigations, as well as both alleged and confirmed child victims when compared to 2006.
"Problems like child abuse and neglect, poor parenting skills and poverty continue to affect the children in Lucas County," said Dean Sparks, Executive Director of Lucas County Children Services. "Even though our statistics indicate that our agency investigated fewer allegations of abuse and neglect, we can only investigate cases that Lucas County residents report to us, and even one child hurt is one child too many," he added.
Other key findings from the LCCS Annual Report include:
- The largest percentage of referrals (39%) relate to allegations of child neglect, followed by physical abuse (30%), emotional abuse (16%) and sexual abuse (15%)
- Across all abuse cases, nearly half of all alleged perpetrators (47%) were mother figures to their child victims, and more than a quarter (29%) were father figures.
- Twenty-seven percent (27%) of alleged child victims were between the ages of 2 and 5 years, followed by 6 to 9-year-olds (25%). Children in the 10 to 12 and 13 to 15 years old each represented 13% of victims, while infants and teens older than 16 years each represented 11% of alleged victims.
- Boys and girls are equally as likely to be victims of abuse or neglect.
In 2005, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimated that 899,000 children were confirmed victims of abuse, and that 1,460 children nationwide died as a result of abuse and neglect. That's nearly two out of every 100,000 children. More than three-quarters of these children were not even old enough to go to school, much less defend themselves.
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