Re: Assessment of Workers' Beliefs About Abuse

[Sharon Carnahan <scarnahan@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I tend to judge abuse based upon its impact or potential impact on the child.
For example, culturally sanctioned discipline that does not appear to upset the
child may not fit a definition of abuse.  By contrast, leaving young children
alone in the US is neglectful, because even if it was sanctioned in the person's
home country, it IS dangerous here.

Rob Newell wrote:

> So, should the construct of "child abuse" be operationalized based on an
> action (i.e., what one person does to another), or based on the impact
> (i.e., the emotional or physcial consequence) on the recipient of the act?
>
> Years ago I worked in the child protection dept. of a large, regional
> children's hospital.  One interesting phenomenon that I encountered from
> time to time was parent discipline behavior that was culturally sanctioned
> by several non dominant ethnic groups (e.g., African American, Pacific
> Islander American, etc.) that most member of the Western-Anglo (i.e.,
> "white") culture would define as abusive.  However, there was little
> evidence of trauma by the children, and the parents did not percieve their
> acts as abusive nor harsh.  It made things a little tricky when doing a
> forensic eval and having to make appropriate recommendations the court.
>
> A couple of questions for you: Is your construct of "self-awareness"
> culturally biased?  That is, who gets to decide who is "aware" and who isn't
> aware?  To what extent is "abuse" culturally determined?  If the parent does
> not perceive his/her behavior as "abusive" (i.e., he/she has low
> "self-awareness") and if the child does not appear to be traumatized or
> otherwise negatively impacted, was the act abusive?
>
> Robert M. Newell, Ph.D.
> Seattle, Washington
>
> Subject: Assessment of Workers' Beliefs About Abuse
> Date: Mon, 05 Nov 2001 17:03:41 -0500
>
> I am looking for a simple, "self awareness" raising measure of one's
> personal history of discipline styles or abuse, or of one's beliefs
> about discipline and abuse.
>
> I want to use it during a workshop on personal beliefs about discipline
> that I am conducting with family support workers.  The participants are
> 90% African American or Haitian American, and most have several years'
> experience in working with children at risk.  The workshop focuses on
> world wide variations in definitions of abuse, and then leads workers to
> develop a consensus based definition of what is "never OK" in
> disciplining children.  The purpose is to take the focus off of spanking
> and on to neglect plus emotional and physical abuse.
>
> Suggestions and sources, please?
>
> Sharon Carnahan, Ph.D.
>
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