302 Social Service Review

The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act

Theodore J. Stein
New YorkUniversity

Does the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act augment the protection of
children? Difficulties in determining whether a condition is maltreatment, underre-
porting by professionals, reporting of conditions not involving serious risk, and low
confirmation rates for reports are not reasons for an affirmative answer. The act
sanctions community surveillance of family life, which reduces privacy and autonomy
in child rearing. If protection of children is not greatly increased, loss of privacy
and autonomy cannot be justified. Suggestions are made for revisions of the law.

More than a decade after Ray Helfer and C. Henry Kempe drew
public attention to the battered child syndrome,' the Child Abuse
Prevention and Treatment Act of 1974 (hereafter referred to as the
Act) was passed by Congress. Shortly after, all fifty states, the District
of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands enacted similar
legislation. Protective services emerged from the relative obscurity into
which they had fallen to become the most important service offered
to families by public child welfare agencies.2
The growth of protective services within the framework of the Act
is significant. Statutory provisions for mandatory reporting and in-
vestigations provide a mechanism for community monitoring of family
behavior and for coercive intervention into family life that is unprec-
edented in American history, thus jeopardizing the values that we
place on family privacy and on parental autonomy in raising children.
Reduction of privacy and restricted autonomy can be justified if the
social benefits outweigh the costs of intrusion.3 The benefit proposed
is the protection of children from undue harm. The questions addressed

Social Service Review (June 1984).

© 1984 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
0037-9761/84/5802-0008$01.00

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 Notes on Policy and Practice 303
here are, Do child abuse prevention and treatment laws in their current
form increase the protection of children? What are the costs? Does
the evidence support continuation of the laws in their current form,
or should laws be modified to better achieve their objectives?
This article begins with a brief overview of the purpose of the Child
Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act. Some of the conditions necessary
for attaining its goals are then discussed, as well as consequences of
the Act as implemented in many states.
The purpose of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act is
"to provide financial assistance for demonstration programs for the
prevention, identification and treatment of child abuse and neglect
and to establish a National Center on Child Abuse."4
The identification and reporting elements of the law are central to
the achievement of its objectives.5 When the law was drafted, it was
assumed that parents who abuse or neglect their children would not
pursue services on a voluntary basis and that physicians, the professional
group most likely to come into contact with battered children, would
be unlikely to file reports. The American Medical Association objected
to the singling out of physicians as the only professionals responsible
for reporting suspected child abuse. Others were then added to the
roster. Today, most states require any person in the helping professions
(educators, social service workers, law enforcement officers, and hospital
personnel, for example) to make reports. In twenty-two states, "any
person" with knowledge of abuse or neglect must file a report.6 All
states accept complaints from nonmandated sources such as relatives
or neighbors.7
The American Medical Association recommended that reporting be
discretionary. Thus, drafters of the 1974 Act used the language "shall
provide for the reporting of known and suspected instances of child
abuse and neglect"8 as a requirement for the states to qualify for
federal assistance. However, when the Office of Child Development
published rules and regulations for the Act, the wording was changed
to read that states "mustprovide for the reporting of known or suspected
instances of child abuse and neglect" to qualify for federal aid.9
Then Senator Walter E Mondale, author of the federal Act, wrote
to the secretary of HEW to express his concern over the rules and
regulations. "The intention of [the] act was to address the problems
of the most severely threatened and abused children in our country.
It was clear from the time the Senate first considered this legislation
that the resources it could provide would not be adequate to deal
effectively with the much more complicated and difficult problem of
child neglect .... It has come to my attention that the proposed model
statute would mandate reporting of suspected cases of child neglect
by a wide range of individuals to local and state agencies."'

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 304 Social Service Review
Mondale continued by expressing his concern that "the nature of
reporting outlined in this bill would require nonprofessionals to make
psycholgical and social judgements about children and families on the
basis of minimal information. These judgements could result in un-
warranted intrusion of the government into family life."" Despite his
concerns, the rules and regulations requiring mandatory reporting of
abuse and neglect went forward.

Conditions for Realizing the Objectives

of the Act

In order to realize the objectives of the Act, abuse and neglect must
be defined, and persons required to report must be taught to identify
such situations and conditions and be knowledgeable of reporting
procedures. Funds for hiring and training of protective service staff
are necessary, as are resources to assist families.
Definingabuseand neglect.-There are two kinds of problems in defining
abuse and neglect: one concerns what conditions should be covered
by statute, for example, whether both physical and emotional neglect
and abuse should be included; the other concerns determining when
an existing injury or condition should be considered abuse or neglect.
The state should be concerned with severe physical injury to children;
with conditions that pose a threat to a child's health, such as the
absence of heat in a home during cold weather; with a child's physical
safety where it may be threatened by exposure to electrical wiring or
broken windows; and with physical conditions such as malnourishment.
Less certain are issues involving emotional neglect and abuse. It is
debatable whether parental failure to provide for the positive social
and psychological development of the child should constitute grounds
for statutory intervention in family life.12
Reportable conditions must be defined with a degree of precision
that permits independent observers to recognize their existence. As
we move from concern with a child's physical condition to matters of
emotional abuse or neglect, the likelihood of agreement on the presence
of these conditions decreases and the probability of indiscriminate
reporting and unnecessary intrusion in family life increases.
Whether existing conditions should be viewed as abuse or neglect
is problematic. Save for extreme cases-where, for example, the location
of an injury and the child's age preclude a hypothesis of accidental
cause--"it is difficult to say what is and what is not child maltreatment."'3

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 Notes on Policy and Practice 305
The most vexing questions involve the meaning of the acts of com-
mission that result in injury and those of omission that result in neglect.
When an infant is severely burned on her buttocks or when a parent
of a preschool age child must work, has no resources for child care,
and refuses child-care services when offered, we infer an intent to
harm in the first case, and a level of concern for the child's safety that
is below community standards in the second. Intervention occurs with
justification.
However, most cases of maltreatment fall in a "gray" area where
meaning is difficult to ascertain. Many parental behaviors that result
in injury to children or that pose danger may be the result of strongly
held convictions regarding child rearing (physical discipline of children
is a case in point), the result of ignorance in areas of child nutrition
and infant care, lack of resources to pay a child-care person, or cultural
differences in patterns of interaction that may cause persons to infer
emotional neglect.
Education of reporters.-In-service training for professional staff and
public education through the media are primary ways of educating
reporters. Federal grants made under the Act and Title XX funds
have been available for general education and in-service training." In
1979, thirteen states had mandated at least one statewide agency to
provide public education on the subject of child maltreatment.'"
Despite the importance of reporting, the Government Accounting
Office found that training of professionals to meet their reporting
responsibilities was not sufficient." And, from a national survey of
professionals, we learn that lack of training and deficits in knowledge
of reporting procedures are the main reasons for not filing complaints.17
Funding.-Federal funds for child protective services have been
available through the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act and
through Titles XX and IV-B of the Social Security Act. Funds allocated
under the former Act have never exceeded $22 million.'" Data from
California, New York, Texas, North Carolina, and Virginia show that
the use of Title XX and Title IV-B monies for child protective services
has rarely exceeded 8.1 percent of available funds."'
Monies available for child abuse prevention and treatment are
shrinking. In 1981 Congress capped Title XX (now the Social Services
Block Grant) at $2.5 billion. In 1982 funding for the Child Abuse
Prevention and Treatment Act was reduced from $23 million to about
$16.2 million.20 Shortages of protective service staff, which have been
typical,2 have been exacerbated since a number of states have reduced
staff as a response to cutbacks in federal funds.22
Services.-There has been a concerted effort to identify effective
services through funding of research and demonstration projects. Be-
tween 1974 and 1977, twenty-one projects were funded by the National

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 306 Social Service Review
Center on Child Abuse at a cost of $40 million. This does not take
into account projects funded by state governments, foundations, or
voluntary agencies.23
A number of research and demonstration efforts report successful
outcomes; others do not.24 The validity of the findings reported by
projects in the former category has been questioned because of meth-
odological limitations-most notably the lack of control groups.25 In
other instances, "weaknesses and limitations [in the project's evaluation
component] precluded the evaluations from providing meaningful
information for purposes of replication or policy formulation."26
Most projects have provided service packages such as homemakers,
crisis counseling, and day care rather than comparing the relative
effectiveness of single services for reducing or eliminating specific
problems. Thus, even those studies that have employed experimental
designs do not permit identification of the relative contribution of
each component of a package to outcomes reported.
We are left with equivocal, at times contradictory findings regarding
the current status of services. Anne Cohn and Frederick Collignon,
based on their evalution of eleven special projects funded by the National
Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, conclude that "with current tech-
nology, protective service workers should not expect to be effective
with more than about half of their clients."27Cecelia Sudia, based on
her review of research and demonstration efforts, reports that she has
not found any study that contradicts Cohn and Collignon's conclusion.28

Some Consequences of the Act as Currently

Implemented

Who reports?-Persons required to report face a dilemma. In thirty-

one states, under penalty of law,29 they are mandated to report a
variety of conditions and to make judgments whether the conditions
constitute neglect or abuse. Every state requires reporting of nonac-
cidental physical injury and neglect. Forty-six states include sexual
abuse/sexual molestation, and thirty-seven require that emotional abuse/
mental injury be reported."
Given the variety of conditions subject to reporting laws and the
problems inherent in determining whether a condition or situation is
maltreatment, it is not surprising that professionals, whether in public
employ or in private practice, are reluctant to file complaints.3 In
fact, professional sources account for no more than 50 percent of all

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 Notes on Policy and Practice 307
reports."2The majority of professionals who file complaints are employed
in the public sector. Private practitioners such as physicians and psy-
chologists account for only 5 percent of all reports."
Reasons given by professionals for not reporting include: (1) a lack
of knowledge of reporting responsibilities, including what types of
cases to report and to whom to report; (2) concerns about confidentiality;
(3) pressure from supervisors not to report; (4) concern about lawsuits
or reprisals by clients; (5) a reluctance to become involved; and (6) a
belief that reporting will not really help and might even aggravate the
situation.34
According to Patricia Levin, nonreporting by teachers reflects am-
biguity over parental use of punishment in disciplining children."5
Most teachers think that parents have a right to use corporal punishment
and that it is not abuse.
If this reasoning applies to other groups of reporters it has significance
for policy. Eighty-five to 97 percent of all parents in the United States
employ corporal methods to punish their children some of the time.36
Injuries suffered in the context of discipline account for a goodly
percentage of reported cases. Data compiled by the American Humane
Association show that in 25 percent of confirmed cases, "loss of control
during discipline"was reported as causal to the injuries. Alfred Kadushin,
in discussing a sample of abused children in Wisconsin and considering
the methods used to inflict injury, reports that "parents usually use
punitive methods more closely akin to forms of physical punishment
generally accepted for use in child rearing in our society.""37 David Gil
goes beyond these data to suggest that "wellover one-half of all instances
of child abuse appear to have developed out of disciplinary action
taken by parents.""38
Lay persons, when compared to professionals, rate acts of mistreat-
ment as more severe presumably because professionals make finer
distinctions regarding what to report.39 Thus, it is to be expected that
reports by nonprofessionals will embrace a diversity of phenomena,
including "false"reports. In fact, a third or more of the reports received
by most states do not involve any physical or sexual abuse, nor do
they involve "imminent risk of serious bodily harm."40Neglect accounts
for the greatest percentage of complaints, and 50 percent of all neglect
cases involve leaving children unattended.4"
Regardless of the source of reports, confirmation rates are relatively
low. Approximately 57 percent of reports made by professionals are
confirmed, compared to 35 percent of those made by lay persons.42
Increased reports.-Reports of maltreatment fluctuate over time.
Variations may result from actual increases in incidents of maltreat-
ment-for example, increased unemployment and subsequent financial
stress are said to be causing an increase in confirmed cases.43This may

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 308 Social Service Review
be due to the media reporting sensational cases that sensitize the public
to their reporting responsibility but that do not necessarily represent
an increase in actual incidents, and from changes in the rules and
regulations of schools and other agencies that cause more staff to
report.
We know that the number of cases of maltreatment reported has
increased over the last decade.44 It is troublesome that "the probabilities
of confirming reports of suspected cases [of abuse or neglect] drop
sharply as the rates of reporting increase.""45 This may be caused by
an increase in false reports or by problems that confront investigative
staff when the volume of reports goes up. Increases in investigative
staff have not kept pace with the increased number of reports."46It
would, in fact, be almost impossible for the number of staff available
to conduct investigations to fluctuate in response to the number of
reports. For example, in the state of Illinois, reports of abuse and
neglect increased from 11,384 in FY 1980 to 20,475 in FY 1981.47

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 Notes on Policy and Practice 309
with this argument. First, there is no basis for assuming that protective
service investigators can identify the chain of events that preceded an
incident, unless parents and children disclose these events or there
are witnesses who are willing to testify, much less infer, intention. The
legal nature of a protective service investigation is not conducive to
full disclosure by family members.
The second problem stems from the complexity of establishing proof
to sustain an allegation of maltreatment. This task often requires workers
to gather evidence from a variety of sources-social service records,
relatives, neighbors, friends of the family, medical and psychological
consultants-and to manipulate a great quantity of information to
reach a decision. Available evidence suggests that child welfare workers
are not skilled decision makers.48 Because of a high volume of inves-
tigations, shortages of staff, lack of prescriptive guidelines for manip-
ulation of information for decision making, and deficits in training,
it is unlikely that workers will become proficient in decision making.
Thus, to the extent that the broad coverage of the law contributes to
a high volume of reports, reporting statutes may be self-defeating.
Rather than increasing the protection of children, reporting laws in
their present form may decrease the likelihood of this outcome.
The provision of services to abusive and neglecting families provides
the balance that offsets the costs of intrusion in family life. The ef-
fectiveness of services provides a yardstick against which the legitimacy
of child abuse laws must be evaluated.49
Recidivism rates provide one measure of program effectiveness. The
average recidivism rate is 50 percent.50 This is high, but should not
come as a surprise since there is little evidence to suggest that current
technologies are effective in dealing with the problems to which they
are applied. But there are difficulties in relying on these data as an
indicator of child protection. Recidivism rates may be underestimated
or overestimated since they are not based on a systematic follow-up
of a random sample of families served by protective service programs.
Whether clients acquire skills or demonstrate new knowledge provides
other dependent-variable measures."5 The equivocal and at times con-
tradictory results reported for research and demonstration projects
preclude drawing definitive conclusions about program effectiveness
on dimensions of skill or knowledge acquisition.
The question of whether child abuse laws have resulted in actions
that increase the protection of children cannot be answered in a sat-
isfactory manner. Doubtless some and perhaps many children have
been protected because of the attention families receive subsequent
to filing of a complaint. But we must recognize that some children at
serious risk may have suffered because limited resources have been
spread thinly across a great many cases-cases that the evidence suggests

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 310 Social Service Review
should not have come to the attention of protective services in the
first place. The low confirmation rate (professional reports: 57 percent;
lay reports: 35 percent) highlights problems in case identification. It
is an inevitable outcome of the broad conditions covered by statute,
of the difficulty in determining when an injury is abuse or neglect, of
the underrepresentation of professionals - especially physicians as re-
porters -and of the acceptance of reports from nonmandated sources.
The costs.-Whether funds allocated for child protection have been
put to good use depends on one's definition of benefits. Defined in
terms of numbers of children protected from ongoing abuse, it is not
possible to determine benefits using extant data. The evidence does
not provide reason for optimism. From her review of selected programs
servicing abusive and neglecting families, Sudia concludes that "Current
intervention modes with abusive and neglecting or maltreating parents
are not very effective and do not meet even the first criterion, that of
ensuring the child's safety."52
It is unfortunate that the evaluation component of many research
and demonstration projects funded under the Act was not more rigorous.
We have lost a valuable opportunity to acquire precision data describing
the strengths and limitations of our ability to work with the families
of concern.
The present and future cost of family surveillance sanctioned by
the Act merits more attention than it has received. The acceptance of
legislation that severely undermines the value that we place on family
privacy and autonomy in child rearing has gone unchallenged, its
implications undebated except in small professional circles.
The lack of public controversy may be due, in part, to the fact that
the overwhelming majority of reports made by professionals (64 percent)
come from persons in public sector employment.53 But for the schools,
poor and/or minority families are the major constituents of publicly
sponsored services and are, therefore, at greatest risk of being reported.
Doubtless, the public outcry would be great if reporting across social
classes was significant.
In light of what has been discussed thus far, it is reasonable to
suggest that the intentions of the Act, if they are being realized, are
being attained at tremendous cost. Goldstein, Freud, and Solnit, re-
marking on the increased volume of cases, the fact that so many do
not involve imminent danger to children, the reduction in family
privacy, and deficits in service to assist families, go so far as to say that
"Laws requiring physicians, nurses, social workers and educators to
report suspected cases have contributed little to protecting children."54
Whatshould be done?-Serious consideration should be given to nar-
rowing the conditions covered by abuse and neglect reporting laws so
that proof of intent to harm or unwillingness to provide can be es-
tablished in instances of severe maltreatment.55 Further education of

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 Notes on Policy and Practice 311

reporters and hiring more protective service staff will not make a
difference unless we have a method of determining how to classify
the various conditions covered by statute as instances of abuse or
neglect.
The low confirmation rate for reports by lay persons raises serious
questions about continuing to accept complaints from the general
public. Lay persons may be the group most likely to report a series
of observations -a child who is unattended or a physical injury-with
no understanding that reporting of such observations is not the intent
of the law. William Adams and his colleagues report that only sixty-
one cases out of 1,037 reported by anonymous sources were confirmed.56
Data from Illinois and West Virginia show that lay persons generally
complain of neglect (professionals are far more likely to report abuse),
and that most reports filed by nonprofessionals are categorized as
instances of nonsupervision.57 It is distressing to consider that some
percentage of lay reports may reflect efforts to harass neighbors whose
behavior is distasteful to the community.
Reports of nonsupervision account for 50 percent of all neglect
cases.58 These data, plus the evidence that a significant number of
injuries are sustained in the context of physical discipline, force us to
recognize that child abuse laws are at variance with public behaviors
regarding child rearing. There are a great many latchkey children in
our society, and a majority of families use physical methods to discipline
youngsters. We do not have child-care alternatives to offer even a
small percentage of working parents who cannot afford child-care
services, and we sanction the use of physical discipline of children."59
When the laws and public behavior are at such variance, something
has to change or the law becomes a mockery. It is unlikely that we
will sanction placement of all nonsupervised children (assuming that
such action would ensure their safety), nor does it seem probable that
funds for child care for working parents will increase. Likewise, our
society does not seem prepared to proscribe physical discipline, or to
teach alternatives to corporal punishment.
In some ways, passage and implementation of the Child Abuse
Prevention and Treatment Act represent a form of "overkill" that is
reminiscent of early "child saving movements" and, in more recent
history, of the 1960s when social casework services were touted as a
method for preventing and reducing poverty.60Then, as now, legislation
was passed and implemented where good intentions were confused
with knowledge of how to ameliorate the problem at hand; where a
complex social phenomenon was oversimplified and reduced to a
problem involving a handful of people whose individual pathology
caused them to mistreat their children.6 Then, as now, society's com-
mitment, expressed in a willingness to fund programs, has waned over
time.

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 312 Social Service Review

Notes

1. C. Henry Kempe, "Child Abuse and Neglect," in Raising Childrenin ModernAmerica,

ed. Nathan B. Talbot (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1974), p. 175.
2. In 1961, protective services were the principal service provided for 15 percent of
the children served by public and voluntary agencies (see Helen R. Jeter, Children,
Problems,and Servicesin Child WelfarePrograms[Washington, D.C.: Department of Health,
Education, and Welfare, 1963], p. 73). By 1975, this figure had more than doubled to
33 percent of all services provided by public agencies alone. There are no comparable
data for voluntary agencies (see Ann W. Shyne and Anita G. Schroeder, National Study
of Social Servicesto Childrenand TheirFamilies, DHEW publication No. [OHDS] 78-30150
[Washington, D.C.: Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1978], p. 62). In
the fifteen years between 1961 and 1975, protective services moved from third to first
place in importance.
3. Robert H. Mnookin, Child, Family and State: Problemsand Materials on Childrenand
the Law (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1978), p. 9.
4. RichardJ. Light, "Abused and Neglected Children in America: A Study of Alternative
Policies," Harvard Educational Review, Reprint Ser. no. 9 (1974), p. 46.
5. The subject of prevention of child abuse is discussed in H. John Staulcup and
Terry D. Royer, "The Development of Preventive Methods in Child Welfare," Children
and YouthServicesReview 5 (1983): 31-48; Jeanne M. Giovannoni, "Prevention of Child
Abuse and Neglect: Research and Policy Issues," Social WorkResearchand Abstracts 18
(Fall 1982): 23-31.
6. Trendsin ChildProtectionLaws-1977 (Denver: Education Commission of the States,
1978), pp. 18-19.
7. William Adams, Neil Barone, and Patrick Tooman, "The Dilemma of Anonymous
Reporting in Child Protective Services," Child Welfare61 (January 1982): 3-14.
8. Children'sRights Report, vol. 1, no. 7 (New York: Juvenile Rights Project of the
American Civil Liberties Union, April 1977), p. 4, emphasis added.
9. Ibid., emphasis added.
10. Ibid., p. 5.
11. Ibid.
12. See Robert L. Walker, "A Functional Approach to the Representation of Parents
and Children in Dependency and Neglect Proceedings," in Protecting Children through
the Legal System,ed. Young Lawyers of the American Bar Association (Washington, D.C.:
National Resource Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, 1981), pp. 136-40; Albert J.
Solnit, "Too Much Reporting, Too Little Service: Roots and Prevention of Child Abuse,"
in ChildAbuse:An Agendafor Action, ed. George Gerbner, Catherine J. Ross, and Edward
Zigler (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 135-46.
13. Saad Z. Nagi, ChildMaltreatmentin the United States:A Challengeto Social Institutions
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), p. 15.
14. The Comptroller General, IncreasedFederal EffortsNeeded to Better Identify, Treat,
and Prevent ChildAbuseand Neglect (Washington, D.C.: General Accounting Office, HRD-
80-66, April 29, 1980), p. 6.
15. Trends in Child ProtectionLaws, p. 10.
16. Comptroller General, p. 16.
17. Nagi, p. 19.
18. MaryLee Allen and Jane Knitzer, "ChildWelfare: Examining the Policy Framework,"
in ChildWelfare:CurrentDilemmas-Future Directions,ed. Brenda G. McGowan and William
Meezan (Itasca, Ill.: F. E. Peacock Publishers, 1983), p. 99.
19. Comptroller General, p. 81.
20. A Children'sDefenseBudget: An Analysisof thePresident'sFY 1984 Budgetand Children
(Washington, D.C.: Children's Defense Fund, 1983), p. 96.
21. Comptroller General, p. 33; Illinois Department of Children and Family Services,
Human ServicesData Report:Fiscal Years1981-1983 Plan: Phase I and PhaseII (Springfield,
Ill., August 1982), p. 38.
22. A Children'sDefense Fund Budget, p. 100.

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 Notes on Policy and Practice 313
23. Comptroller General.
24. Steven Magura, "Are Services to Prevent Foster Care Effective?" Children and
YouthServices Review 3 (1981): 193-212; Cecelia E. Sudia, "What Services Do Abusive
and Neglecting Families Need?" in The Social Contextof ChildAbuseand Neglect, ed. Leroy
H. Pelton (New York: Human Sciences Press, 1981), pp. 268-90.
25. These limitations are reviewed in depth in Magura; see also Betty J. Blythe, "A
Critique of Outcome Evaluation in Child Abuse Treatment," Child Welfare 62 (July/
August 1983): 325-36.
26. Comptroller General, p. 62.
27. Sudia, p. 274.
28. Ibid.
29. Trends in Child ProtectionLaws-1977 (n. 6 above).
30. Trends in Child Protection Laws-1979 (Denver: Education Commission of the
States, 1979), p. 5.
31. Nagi, p. 14; Comptroller General, p. 15.
32. The American Humane Association, National Analysis of OfficialChild Neglect and
AbuseReporting:An ExecutiveSummary,1978, cited in Jeanne M. Giovannoni and Rosina
M. Becerra, Defining Child Abuse (New York: Free Press, 1979), footnote on p. 214;
Giovannoni and Becerra report similar data (p. 213), as does the Comptroller General
(p. 14).
33. Nagi, p. 61.
34. Comptroller General, p. 15; Nagi, pp. 15-16; Patricia G. Levin, "Teacher's Per-
ceptions, Attitudes, and Reporting of Child Abuse/Neglect," Child Welfare62 (January/
February 1983): 14-20.
35. Levin.
36. Richard J. Gelles, "A Profile of Violence toward Children in The United States"
(paper presented at the Annenberg School of Communications Conference on Child
Abuse, Philadelphia, November 1978), p. 6.
37. Alfred Kadushin and Judith A. Martin, Child Abuse: an InteractionalEvent (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1981), p. 108.
38. Cited in Edward Zigler, "Controlling Child Abuse: Do We Have the Knowledge
and/or the Will?" in Child Abuse: An Agendafor Action, ed. George Gerbner, Catherine
J. Ross, and Edward Zigler (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 28.
39. Giovannoni and Becerra, p. 199.
40. Solnit, pp. 143-44; Kadushin and Martin, p. 9; Giovannoni and Becerra, p. 244.
41. Leroy H. Pelton, "Child Abuse and Neglect: The Myth of Classlessness," in The
Social Contextof ChildAbuseand Neglect, ed. Leroy H. Pelton (New York: Human Sciences
Press, 1981), p. 35.
42. Comptroller General, p. 14.
43. A Children'sDefense Budget, pp. 98-99.
44. Zigler, pp. 11-12; A Children'sDefense Budget, pp. 98-99.
45. Nagi, p. 39.
46. Comptroller General.
47. Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, p. 38.
48. Literature reviews on the subject of worker skill in decision making appear in
Theodore J. Stein, Eileen D. Gambrill, and Kermit T. Wiltse, Childrenin FosterHomes:
Achieving Continuityin Care (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1978), chap. 1; Theodore
J. Stein and Tina L. Rzepnicki, Decision Making in Child WelfareServices: Intake and
Planning (Boston: Kluwer-Nijhoff Publishers, 1984), chap. 2.
49. Failure to rehabilitate families undermines the rationale for reduction of privacy
and restricted autonomy in child rearing. The situation is analogous to the failure of
the juvenile court to rehabilitate offenders, which has resulted in increased due-process
protections for youngsters in delinquency and neglect hearings. For a discussion of this
issue, see Theodore J. Stein, Social WorkPracticein Child Welfare(Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:
Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1981), chap. 10.
50. James Garbarino and Susan McHale, "Introduction," Childrenand YouthServices
Review 5 (1983): 5.
51. For a review of studies, see Blythe.
52. Sudia, p. 274.
53. Nagi, p. 61.

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 314 Social Service Review
54. Joseph Goldstein,Anna Freud, and AlbertJ. Solnit,BeforetheBestInterestsof the
Child(New York:Free Press, 1979), p. 71.
55. Proceduresfor establishingproof are presented in Theodore J. Stein and Tina
L. Rzepnicki, Decision Making at Child WelfareIntake: A Handbookfor Practitioners(New
York:Child WelfareLeague of America, 1983).
56. Adams et al. (n. 7 above), p. 12.
57. See Stein and Rzepnicki, Decision Making in Child WelfareServices.
58. Pelton, p. 35.
59. For a discussion of the U.S. Supreme Court decision sanctioning the use of
corporal discipline of children in school, see Carol M. Rose, SomeEmergingIssuesin
Legal Liabilityof Children'sAgencies (New York: Child Welfare League of America, 1978),
p. 4.
60. GilbertY. Steiner, TheStateof Welfare(Washington,D.C.: BrookingsInstitution,
1971), pp. 36-40.
61. See Pelton, p. 31.

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