An expert on child abuse said in a Cook Auditorium speech last night that incidents of child neglect and abuse have more than quadrupled since 1979, and called for an overhaul of the country's child protection system.
Dr. Richard Krugman, chairman of the U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect and the Dean of the Colorado School of Medicine, criticized the current social welfare system for not doing enough to protect abused or neglected children.
Krugman said that there is a growing trend of child abuse in this country, fueled by the increasing problems of poverty, ethnicity, mental health problems, and substance abuse.
Reported cases have risen from 669,000 in 1979 to 3 million in 1992, he said.
An overload of cases, an absence of foster care parents, and inadequate knowledge of child care issues contribute to what Krugman calls the "child abuse crisis."
Protection agencies are not doing enough to curb the growing problem of child abuse, Krugman said, because their focus on prosecuting abusers rather than on protecting children.
The protection agencies themselves have had a hard time keeping up with the dramatic increase in child abuse reports, according to Krugman.
But he said the dilemma is solvable. The challenge before the government is to "literally rebuild the child protection system in this country."
Krugman proposed a system that is neighborhood-based, focused on the family and centered around the child.
He said such a system must be augmented by national and state child protection policies and programs in schools to reorient social values.
Krugman said there also needs to be a mechanism to inform and help families before actual abuse occurs, such as voluntary programs that would teach parenting skills to new parents.
But, he feels that progress lies in "not just caring for ourselves, but creating caring communities" which provide a "tertiary level of support" for children and parents.
Before any new mechanism for helping abused children is created, Krugman said "we must give them the basics--a society that is not based in fear".
