Are Caseworkers Responsible For Child Abuse

Abuse and Responsibility Child abuse has been and continues to be a problem in the United States. What exactly is child abuse? There are five main types of abuse: emotional, neglect, physical, sexual, and child endangerment. Emotional abuse entails actions such as “verbally assaulting and over pressuring children” (“Preventing Child Emotional Abuse”). Abuse through neglect occurs when “a child’s basic needs, such as clothes, food and shelter, are not met” (“Child Abuse”). Physical abuse is “intentionally or knowingly causing death or serious bodily injury to a child” (“Death Penalty”). Sexual abuse entails “virtually all sexual interactions between children … and significantly older persons” (Rind et. al.). Child endangerment consists of
Those opposed to holding child services caseworkers responsible claim that “the caseworkers are doing their best under adverse conditions and should not be punished when tragedy occurs” (“Child Abuse”). They blame budget cuts, which cause a problem of understaffed child welfare agencies.
This problem of too few personnel causes some child abuse to be overlooked as caseworkers are trying to take care of more children than they can feasibly handle. With laws that hold caseworkers responsible for child abuse, that just adds to the understaffing problem by putting caseworkers behind bars for something that they were doing their best to prevent. They also argue that this causes other caseworkers to be filled with fear at potentially being arrested for child abuse and makes them even less able to take on the huge amount of work they already have to deal with.
This argument isn’t without merit. The situation of budget cuts causing loss of personnel causing a greater likelihood of a case of child abuse being overlooked makes sense. Also the fear of being arrested creating an even greater strain on remaining caseworkers makes sense. However, their job is to protect the children under their care. It doesn’t really seem likely that less accountability would make caseworkers with more children to look after than they are used to want to work even
There is a very large likelihood of sounding a false alarm. According to Debra Schilling Wolfe, “an executive director of the Field Center for Children’s policy, Practice & Research at the University of Pennsylvania” (“Child Abuse”), “Child abuse and neglect reports made by professionals are substantiated 27.4% of the time, while only 14.4% of nonprofessional reports are substantiated” (“Child Abuse”). Also, with a law requiring people to report suspected abuse with serious consequences for failing to do so, people could end up reporting even less accurately out of fear of the