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Results of Child Safety Survey Announced |
The Garrett County Health Department has been conducting an automated telephone survey during the past few months as part of the Local Management Board's Personal Safety Initiative. A random list of telephone numbers was entered into the automatic dialer database. Out of 159 households contacted to date, 87 adults completed the 38-item questionnaire. The first part of the spring 1998 Child Safety Survey is designed to assess the community's perception of whether or not child abuse is a problem in Garrett County. There are some notable differences in the community's ranking of child abuse as a problem and the responses of seven Child Protective Service workers at the Department of Social Services who also answered the first set of survey questions.
Community respondents ranked the areas of
1) "domestic violence,"
2) "under-reporting of child abuse" and
3) "child neglect" as the "biggest" problems on a scale of 1 to 5.
However, 100% of the Child Protective Service workers rated domestic
violence and child neglect as big problems in Garrett County in comparison
with community rankings of only 52% and 40%, respectively, for these 2
areas. There was general agreement between the two groups on the topic
of physical child abuse as a less severe problem. 34% of community respondents
and 28% of CPS workers rated physical child abuse as a big problem.
Again, there was a difference in perceptions on the topic of child sexual abuse between the two groups. 86% of the CPS workers feel child sexual abuse is a big problem in Garrett County, while only 27% of the community respondents ranked sexual child abuse as a big problem in Garrett County.
The preliminary results of the Child Safety Survey were reviewed at a town meeting at on family violence prevention held at GCC on Monday night. Larry Bruch, Child Protective Services supervisor, was asked to explain why the community ranked child sexual abuse as the least severe problem out of seven areas of concern, while 6 out of 7 CPS workers feel child sexual abuse is a big problem in our community. Mr. Bruch offered the fact that child sexual abuse investigations (as well as all CPS cases) are kept confidential, so the general public may not realize the frequency of these types of investigations in Garrett County. In many child sexual abuse cases, there is not enough evidence to convict an alleged perpetrator, and the public only hears about the cases at the time of a trial or a conviction. Also, when an adult is not related to a child or is not responsible for the care of a minor, any cases of alleged sexual misconduct are charged as assault cases, and not as child sexual abuse cases.
The second part of the survey measures knowledge about child abuse and neglect reporting protocols. Twelve situations that may or may not warrant a report to authorities were presented to survey respondents. Survey results for these twelve situations and recommended protocols for reporting of child abuse and neglect will be summarized in a series of articles in The Republican, beginning next week.
Version II of the Child Safety Survey is designed to be self-administered and will be given to adults who attend a series of Safety Safaris on personal body safety for parents and their children. The hypothesis for the evaluation component of the Personal Safety Initiative is that adults who participate in the Safety Safaris will be better informed in comparison to the community baseline responses that were benchmarked in the spring 1998 round of the survey. The Safety Safari curriculum is based on the RAP curriculum developed by People Against Child Abuse (PACA). Safety Safari content is designed to be developmentally appropriate, and three separate versions of the Safaris are targeted for either elementary, middle or high school youth. To book a Safety Safari contact Lyz Biser, PSI Family Educator, at 301-334-8889.
The Personal Safety Initiative is funded by a grant from the MD Children's Trust Fund. Comments and questions about the Child Safety Survey may be directed to Susan Athey-Oxford, Coordinator of the Personal Safety Initiative, at the Garrett County Office for Children, Youth and Familes/LMB at 301-334-1189 or vial E-mail at ocyf@gcnet.net.
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