ABSTRACT
Child abuse is unfortunately a common phenomenon: the 2016 Crime Survey for England and Wales found the following rates for self-reported experience of childhood abuse:
… 9% of adults aged 16 to 59 had experienced psychological abuse, 7% physical abuse, 7% sexual assault and 8% witnessed domestic violence or abuse in the home. With the exception of physical abuse, women were significantly more likely to report that they had suffered any form of abuse during childhood than men. This was most marked with regard to any form of sexual assault, where women were 4 times as likely as men to be a survivor of such abuse during childhood (11% compared with 3%).
(Office for National Statistics, 2016, p 1) These high rates of self-reported abuse suggest that as many as one child in ten may experience some form of abuse during their childhood. Society has developed greater awareness of different types of harm and increased requirements on those in contact with children in a professional capacity to identify it. There are demanding expectations that specialist practitioners will ‘diagnose and treat’ abuse: progressing through assessment of level of risk and type of harm to finding solutions to keep children safe and providing or signposting helpful therapeutic interventions. Increasingly complex thinking about what constitutes abuse and what we should do about it is a feature of this area of work. Safeguarding children progressed from a primary focus on physical abuse in the 1960s (Kempe, Silverman, Steele, Droegemueller, & Silver, 1962; Helfer, Kempe, & Krugman, 1968) to include contemporary awareness of sexual abuse, neglect, and abuse linked to coercive and controlling behaviour towards children and young people. A contemporary working definition of child abuse will reflect our developing understanding of exploitative behaviour targeting children, forced marriage, female genital mutilation and fabricated illness (UK Government, 2017; Rights of Women (n.d.); NHS (n.d.); UK Government, 2008). Any definition is a working definition and must be viewed as provisional because no definitive and lasting definition is possible. ‘Child abuse’ is a socially constructed idea, albeit one based on very real hurt and harm, and changes in our use of the term reflect changes in society. Greater 396cultural diversity and globalization have also impacted on safeguarding children as children move between countries and cultures, sometimes under duress. Social work practitioners have to be aware of a wider range of indicators of harm than ever before and have a wider range of strategies for assessment, intervention and support.