PART 3: CHILDREN'S OUTCOMES - HEALTH

Abuse and Neglect

Child abuse and neglect both undermine child well-being in childhood and increase vulnerability to a wide range of problems in later life ³⁴ , such as mental health problems, low self-esteem and difficulties with interpersonal relationships, including parenting ^{35 36}

Measure

The number of children who had an initial assessment for child welfare and protection concerns.

Key findings

• In 2006, 12,520 children had an initial assessment for a child welfare and protection concern following a report to the Social Work Department in the Health Service Executive (HSE). This equates to an overall rate of 120.8 children per 10,000 (see Table 58).
• The lowest number of assessments were carried out in HSE Dublin North-East (1,868) and the highest number of assessments in HSE Dublin Mid-Leinster (4,952).

Differences by type of concern

• The highest number of reported cases that went to initial assessment for child welfare and protection concerns was for welfare cases (6,221 or 49.7%) and the lowest number was for cases of emotional abuse (1,100 or 8.8%) (see Table 59 and Figure 22).

Technical notes
Some caution should be adopted when comparing across HSE Regions because of differences in the way in which cases are recorded. Work is currently taking place on the development of consistent approaches across the HSE Regions.

The number of children who had an initial assessment for child welfare and protection concerns is an important measure of the incidence of child abuse and neglect in Ireland. It should be noted, however, that these rates are affected by a number of factors other than the actual incidence of abuse and neglect, and some caution is thus required in drawing conclusions concerning the overall prevalence of abuse and neglect for the following reasons. First, some cases of abuse and neglect are never reported. Secondly, some incidents are reported more than once and several reports may relate to a single family. Thirdly, reports tend to increase for reasons unrelated to the actual prevalence of abuse and neglect, such as a highly publicised case or public awareness campaign.

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