April 2020Vol. 21, No. 3Print issueSpotlight on National Child Abuse Prevention Month

Issue Spotlight

• How Can Civil Legal Aid Help Keep Families Together and Kids Out of Foster Care?

  How Can Civil Legal Aid Help Keep Families Together and Kids Out of Foster Care?

  By Karlee M. Naylon, research associate, and Karen A. Lash, practitioner in residence, American University, Department of Justice, Law, and Criminology, The Justice in Government Project

  To answer the question posed in the title, there are many ways civil legal aid can keep families together. Legal interventions can offer often untapped tools to address abuse and neglect and reduce its prevalence in families at risk of child welfare involvement.

  See the law in the problem. The most common problems families face—such as eviction, domestic violence, barriers to employment, family law problems, and lack of access to or erroneous denials of public benefits or health care—often have legal solutions. But studies show that most people see these problems as personal problems or bad luck. They don't recognize the good that a lawyer's intervention could do. 

  A parent's inability to resolve complex legal issues associated with poverty too often presents as "failure to act" in the neglect context. When children are removed from their homes, studies show that legal representation can improve the rate of family reunification, double the speed to a child's adoption or legal guardianship, and result in better outcomes for children and families as well as substantial savings for government coffers. Studies also demonstrate how civil legal aid can prevent removal by proactively addressing families' underlying legal problems before they cascade into crises.

  Use legal help to prevent neglect. The Family First Prevention Services Act of 2018 aims to resolve issues that destabilize families in order to prevent children in those families from entering or remaining in foster care. In December 2018, the Children's Bureau clarified its support for state and local child welfare agencies opting to incorporate legal services alongside other supportive services. The new Question and Answer 30 found in the Child Welfare Policy Manual allows title IV-E state agencies to seek partial reimbursement for legal representation "for a child who is a candidate for title IV-E foster care or in foster care and his/her parent to prepare for and participate in all stages of foster care legal proceedings, such as court hearings related to a child's removal from the home." This revision can help ensure that reasonable efforts are made to prevent removal.

  What the researchers say. According to the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System report for fiscal year 2018, neglect (62 percent) was the top circumstance associated with children's removal from the home. Neglect generally refers to the inability of a parent or caregiver to meet a child's basic needs, putting them at risk of harm. The following are examples of studies and data showing how legal aid can help prevent or redress some legal problems that may otherwise lead to removal:

  • Many states have published reports documenting legal aid organizations' effectiveness in helping people access benefits by helping families apply for or appeal erroneous denials of services and benefits, such as the Children's Health Insurance Program, home energy assistance, Medicaid, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Social Security Disability Insurance, Supplemental Security Income, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).
  • Studies show the effectiveness of civil legal interventions to stabilize a family experiencing domestic violence, such as helping survivors file a protection order, secure child custody, finalize a divorce, and obtain employment and housing.
  • Effective reasonable efforts related to housing may include offering legal representation to parents at risk of eviction or foreclosure or pushing landlords to redress unlawful unsanitary conditions to improve a child's related health problems.
  • Research shows that legal help to open pathways to mental or behavioral health services can prevent removals due to behavioral problems and caretakers' inability to cope.
  • Studies show that lawyers can help parents with alcohol or substance use disorders access treatment through medical-legal partnerships or by challenging improper Medicaid denials.
  • Researchers found that providing legal aid to help people expunge or seal their criminal records increased employment rates and wages and reduced recidivism. It can also improve job prospects by helping to reinstate a suspended driver's license or prevent the need for wage garnishment by modifying a child support order to reflect an individual's actual ability to pay.

  Federal funds are available. Title IV-E funds can become a lifeline to legal representation that can help prevent removal, shorten a child's stay in foster or kinship care, and stabilize low-income families. Other federal funding options can also tackle legal needs related to health, education, employment, housing, and domestic violence that can trigger child welfare involvement.

  States receive a significant influx of federal grants from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Justice (DOJ), and the Department of Labor to implement particular policies and programs that allow states to fund civil legal aid. These state-administered "pass-through" funds are curated and collected in The Justice in Government Project's Grants Matrix.

  Funding that intersects with the needs of families involved with or at risk of entering the child welfare system include the following:

  • HHS says state and local TANF administrators can use funds for legal aid for low-income families in ways that further TANF's goals.
  • HHS's State Opioid Response grants, Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment Block Grant program, and Community Mental Health Services Block Grant program have all been used to support legal aid that facilitates prevention and treatment services, as well as to support children who have a parent with a substance use disorder.
  • The rule for DOJ's Victims of Crime Act Victim Assistance Formula Grant Program clarifies that state administrators can use funds for legal assistance for victims of child abuse and neglect and their kinship caregivers, as well as for elder abuse, domestic violence, and other crimes that may precipitate removal.

  Bottom line: You can do this. Passage of the Family First Prevention Services Act and the Children's Bureau's landmark allowance for legal representation reimbursement signal transformational change for parents, children, and the child welfare professionals who serve them. They bring child welfare financing into alignment with research-informed practices to keep children in their homes whenever safe and possible. If a child must be removed from their home, these policies keep reunification and permanency within reach by supporting legal representation. We must now ensure that all states rise to the Children's Bureau's challenge and take full advantage of title IV-E legal representation reimbursement and other federal funding opportunities so that every family in need of high-quality legal representation can get it.

  This article was adapted from "Using Legal Aid to Keep Families Together and Prevent Child Welfare Involvement," published in the spring 2020 edition of The Guardian, the National Association of Counsel for Children's quarterly law journal.
   

• Choose Compassion When Supporting Parents

  Choose Compassion When Supporting Parents

  Written by Shrounda Selivanoff, social service specialist and birth parent advocate, Washington State Office of Public Defense, Seattle, WA

  Keeping families together should be of paramount importance to us all. The old way of thinking that children do better in out-of-home care has shifted. Now we recognize that the majority of families do far better when children stay in their homes rather than enter foster care, which can lead to additional trauma.

  The latest Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System statistics show a downward trend in children entering care from fiscal year 2016 to fiscal year 2018 (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Children's Bureau, 2019). This may be attributed to the availability of federal funding assistance that can help make resources, such as substance use and mental health treatments, more accessible to families that need them. While various supports and services may be more accessible, some parents are hesitant to access them, as they may find it difficult to trust a system that historically removes children and find the contact they have with it lacks the compassion and empathy they seek.

  Based on my experience, the hardest thing for anyone to do in life is ask for help. For many, asking for help feels like there is an implicit admission that you have failed or are otherwise lacking in some way. We must recognize the imperative need for a complete overhaul of the way we interact with people who find themselves in a state of crisis and in need of assistance. Families are resilient, and with the proper assistance, a vast majority can recover without crisis-driven interventions that produce and exasperate trauma.

  Families involved with child welfare do not need to be fixed; they need to be healed. A healing approach recognizes that people are often overwhelmed by their circumstances and prioritizes their emotional stability. Crucial to this approach is acknowledging that circumstances are often out of a family's control and refusing to shame or blame parents in need. By granting dignity to a parent, we avoid creating more stressors and trauma for people who are already in crisis.

  Although it can be easy to focus on addressing a family in crisis by presenting concrete resources, it is also essential to fulfill their basic human need to experience compassion, understanding, and positive engagement. Recognizing and tending to families' emotional needs, in my opinion, is more effective than providing concrete goods or funds. The people families encounter on their journey—such as providers, clinicians, and other professionals—should be viewed as valuable resources in helping improve well-being.

  During my journey through the child welfare system, clinicians and professionals were the change agents that produced a permanent alteration in my beliefs and behaviors. Their tireless efforts in helping me see my value transformed the way I saw myself as a mother and as a significant and valuable contributor to the world around me. I learned to see myself as a purposeful mother, grandmother, employee, community member, and advocate. These professionals helped me end a generational cycle of abandonment, poverty, neglect, and abuse and prevented the next generation from enduring such conditions. The cycle ended because I was able to access treatment and, in doing so, encounter those who would provide me with the connections I had been missing for a substantial part of my life. 

  When families seek resources, let us remove punitive barriers and challenges in favor of accessibility that takes into consideration the hardships of the individuals seeking help. Let us change the way we see and talk about helping families and ensure that our efforts build their capacity for hope. If a child asked for support, we would comply without any hesitation. Why does our activation change so drastically when asked by the child's mother or father? Let us be as motivated for parents as we are for children and acknowledge the importance of keeping families together.

  Reference

  U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Children's Bureau. (2019). The AFCARS report: Preliminary FY 2018 estimates as of August 22, 2019 (No. 26). https://www.acf.hhs.gov/cb/resource/afcars-report-26
  
   

• The Need for a Prevention Throughline in Family Policy

  The Need for a Prevention Throughline in Family Policy

  Written by Melissa D. Carter, Emory Law School, Barton Child Law and Policy Center
  
  Child maltreatment is preventable. Yet, according to the Children's Bureau, an estimated 4.3 million reports of suspected child abuse and neglect were made to state child protective services agencies across the United States in 2018, and more than 437,000 children are in foster care across the country. The Family First Prevention Services Act (Family First Act) attempts to change the child welfare narrative by inviting state governments to take a more robust prevention role, but that law alone will not guarantee different results. The Family First Act is celebrated for its targeted focus on some of the leading drivers for removal and entry into foster care—parental substance use, lack of parenting skills and child development knowledge, and child and parent mental health. The act does not, however, offer a strategy for combating poverty-related child neglect. Parents will still need financial support, child care, and affordable housing. So, as advocates for parents, children, and families, we cannot be content with the Family First Act. To improve outcomes for children and families, the overall strategic direction for preventing maltreatment must carry through all policies affecting vulnerable families, particularly those that address economic security.

  Economic security policies positively impact the health and functioning of families by offsetting poverty and financial stress. This impact may be the greatest for young children, as demonstrated by the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study and work exploring the long-term effects of early adversity on lifelong health conducted by the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University and others. Put simply, increasing families' incomes helps them meet their basic needs and promotes child health and well-being into adulthood. Economic security policies can change the broad social conditions that affect the susceptibility of children and families to the stressors of poverty. And, when those environmental conditions improve, so too does the quality and health of relationships between parents and children.  Children's needs for basic necessities, supervision, and nurturance are better able to be met.

  As it turns out, 62 percent of children in foster care were removed for neglect. That data point has remained relatively consistent over time. Because of the breadth and vagueness of the neglect category, we may not know how much of that neglect is related to poverty, but we do know, more often than not, that the inability of parents to meet the basic needs of their children has a financial dimension. Yet, while the Family First Act is opening up federal funding to support certain evidence-based strategies for prevention for children at imminent risk of entering the foster care system, family economic security programs are becoming more restricted. A leading example is the Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF) program. 

  In 1996, the Personal Responsibility and Opportunity Reconciliation Act (popularly referred to as "welfare reform") replaced the former Aid to Families With Dependent Children with the TANF block grant. The aim of the program is to help families achieve self-sufficiency, and it provides direct benefits to families in financial need. Because of the program's design, states have significant control over certain implementation aspects, including work requirements, work waivers, eligibility criteria, and time limits.  Thus, state regulation affects the percentage of people who qualify and receive benefits, as well as the services available. As you might imagine, some states are more restrictive than others. Even accounting for those differences, benefits in every state are at or below 60 percent of the poverty line, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Over time, TANF's reach has declined, providing benefits to fewer families in poverty due to state-imposed restrictions and loss of purchasing power due to inflation.  And additional cuts and further programmatic restrictions have been proposed at the federal level. As this and other critical pieces of the economic safety net for families have been shrinking, more of the burden to support families falls to the child welfare system. 

  In its formation, all public policy is ultimately about people, perspectives, and politics. It is about how evidence, data, reason, and values translate to the knowledge that informs expectations for behavioral and social norms. For stakeholders of the child welfare system, public policy sets the parameters for outcomes for families and children, the capacity and functionality of service-delivery systems, and the integrity of the court process. The present outcomes of the child welfare system are not inevitable, and the families served by the child welfare system are not loopholes to be closed. A growing body of evidence is available to inform strategies and practices to prevent child abuse and neglect, but our results will continue to be limited by our policy pathways without a consistent prevention throughline. 

  Research points to particular characteristics of individuals and families and certain conditions of community and society that, when strengthened, reduce the likelihood of child abuse and neglect. These protective factors, as they are called, correspond to and counteract the individual, relational, community, and societal factors that are known to create risk of harm for children. Parents and children need supportive family environments and social connections that foster resilience, provide emotional and informational support, and help them manage stress and navigate adversity. Parents also need some understanding of child development and strategies for supporting their children to grow, communicate, and form healthy relationships. They also need concrete supports and access to services to help them meet the needs of their family. In a way, this growing body of research offers no new insight. We are all parents, partners, and members of families, and lived experience has taught us the same truths. Those truths are what power the prevention narrative, and to achieve the prevention goal, those truths must resound in all policies impacting families. 
  
   

• My Community Cares: A Multitiered, Multidisciplinary, and Neighborhood-Driven Approach to Preventing

  My Community Cares: A Multitiered, Multidisciplinary, and Neighborhood-Driven Approach to Preventing

  Written by the Honorable John C. Davidson, 9th Judicial District Court, Alexandria, LA, and Michelle Gros, J.D., special projects coordinator, Pelican Center for Children and Families and Louisiana Court Improvement Program

  Parents with lived experience with the child welfare system are informing and codesigning prevention efforts in four Louisiana parishes (Caddo, East Baton Rouge, Livingston, and Rapides). They are being asked, "What would have helped prevent the child welfare agency from getting involved with your family?"

  Two parents replied with the following:

  • "Before they went and just took my kids, I just needed someone to sit down with me and help me problem solve how to get out of the cycle of poverty, substance abuse, and depending on the government and get my life on track so that I could care for my kids."
  • "Resources are hidden in the community even though there seems to be a lot out there. If you're lucky enough to find one, you either don't have transportation to get there or aren't bad enough off yet to be eligible. I wish I would have had something like a CASA for parents before my kids were taken from me. Someone who could relate to me and help me find what I needed to have a good home for my kids."

  
  When setting out to prevent child abuse and neglect, it's tempting to choose a one-size-fits-all prevention program that works in one place or pile on the services communities appear to lack. But in Louisiana, local judges, the court improvement program (CIP), the Department of Children and Families (DCFS), and child welfare stakeholders decided to take a different approach through an initiative called My Community Cares (MCC). MCC allows parents with lived experience with the child welfare system, foster parents, youth formerly in foster care, and residents of neighborhoods with the highest concentration of entries into foster care to inform and codesign strategies to prevent child abuse and neglect in their community.

  MCC is one of Louisiana's innovative program improvement program strategies created in response to the Children's Bureau's challenge to shift from a child welfare system that is reactive to one that is proactive in addressing child abuse and neglect. The overall mission of MCC is to prevent child abuse and neglect and the entry of children into foster care by partnering with communities to build their capacity to connect Louisiana's most vulnerable children and families to the supports and services they need to be safe, stable, and self-sufficient.

  MCC is a multitiered, multidisciplinary, and neighborhood-driven approach designed to give equal power and decision-making to all community members at neighborhood, parish, and state levels. Evidence shows that the safety, permanency, and well-being of families is improved when the community itself becomes a resource, and community members are stakeholders in prevention efforts and child welfare system improvement. MCC is premised on assumptions that communities know the best solutions to their unmet needs and problems, each community has unique barriers to accessing services and supports, and one prevention approach will not work for all communities.

  Judicial leadership is critical to the success of MCC. Judges are in unique positions of authority to convene and rally the communities they serve. The following is an account of  MCC's impact in Rapides Parish from the Honorable John C. Davidson of the 9th Judicial District Court:
   
  Even though the support of DCFS and the CIP is essential, in Rapides Parish, we are taking personal ownership of MCC to prevent child abuse and neglect from the ground up. Too many of our children are removed from their homes for abuse or neglect, and we are tired of not having the resources in place to address the true needs of the families that end up in our court. Once families are in court, the choices to help them are more restricted, and, in many cases, our best efforts are too late. For these reasons, our main focus is primary prevention. While foster care proceedings are confidential, MCC allows judges to bring the safety and health of children to the forefront of the community. It allows them to raise awareness around the root causes of child abuse and neglect seen over and over again in court and to do something about it.

  MCC provides a structure for anyone to partner with us. Our partners have included DCFS, local government, mayors, police, parish and city council members, the Rapides Parish School System, the Louisiana Department of Health, service and health-care providers, nonprofits, district attorney's offices and other legal partners, the faith-based community, court-appointed special advocates, service providers, community members, and many more. MCC is impacting our discussions in court and in the community and changing our philosophy around how to truly serve and help preserve families before they hit that critical point that results in child abuse or neglect.

  We are identifying needs by listening to people in neighborhoods where children are most vulnerable to child abuse and neglect. We ask them about the gaps in services and accessibility barriers they face; the unmet needs they have; and what they know families in their neighborhoods need to be safe, stable, and self-sufficient. We do this by conducting family needs assessments with residents and hosting block parties and community events and conversations in these neighborhoods.

  From there, we identify service providers and community partners who can partner with the neighborhood residents to connect the needs of the community to the services, resources, and supports that can fill those gaps. We are also focusing on and codesigning one to two strategies and solutions with neighborhood residents and community partners to address gaps in services and accessibility barriers. In essence, we are starting small so that the community can look back and confidently say, "Yes, we did that together." At the same time, we set up a centralized and shared online platform to provide a resource directory, helping us identify gaps and providing collaborative space for community partners to organize teams, plan activities together, and communicate with one another.

  Part of the success of MCC is the commitment of numerous partners to step up to the plate. A nonprofit called Fostering Community volunteered to help coordinate MCC, and the Rapides Parish District Attorney's Office and United Way of Central Louisiana volunteered to lead in implementing MCC in our priority neighborhoods. The superintendent of the Rapides Parish School System opened up the schools for the project to conduct family needs assessments and facilitate community conversations and events and started piloting a program in schools so that services and supports are readily available onsite for children and parents.

  The most rewarding part of MCC is listening to the needs of the community—asking, "what can we do to help you?"—instead of telling them what they need. While preventing child abuse and neglect is an enormous goal, our efforts cannot fail because we are building trusting relationships with community partners and residents from the ground up, breaking down silos, and working more collaboratively and strategically than ever before to prevent child abuse and neglect in Rapides Parish.
  
  If you haven't yet, it's time for you and your community to partner together and start somewhere.
  
  
  
  
   

• Buying a Bracelet Will Not Prevent Child Abuse

  Buying a Bracelet Will Not Prevent Child Abuse

  Written by Jerry Milner and David Kelly

  Designating a day or a month to draw attention to a cause has become a trend over the course of recent years. These days or months can be celebratory or somber. Depending on the intention and thoughtfulness of how such observances are designed, they can serve as important public service announcements that educate the public and inspire people to volunteer for a cause—or, yes, buy something to demonstrate their commitment. It's a strange merger of commerce and cause.

  Rubber bracelets lead the way—one for each color of the rainbow, each representing something that somebody believes in or wishes to fight against. There are also days when we ask people to wear a certain color to demonstrate solidarity with an issue. These efforts make us feel good, and we congratulate ourselves for doing them. So, who or what, then, are we really helping?

  Efforts such as these can lead to something valuable if they are accompanied with clear messaging of how to help or if they generate income that can go to making a difference in the lives of children and families. However, unless carefully constructed, such efforts can also lead to further demonization of poor families as well as the furthering of unhelpful narratives driven by emotion instead of data. These narratives can generate continued judgement and othering of vulnerable families and may impede the likelihood of moving our child welfare system in a new direction. 

  There is no question that awareness days or months can spark temporary action. We have seen studies that show marked increases in visits to websites following events or campaigns. There is no question that funds can be raised and that donations are made. It would also seem likely that volunteerism may increase. These are all beneficial actions and results. But, ultimately, our goal should be long-term, sustainable behavior change, and we should be very specific about whose behavior we want to change and how.

  We fear that all too often such efforts begin and end with a fashion statement.

  We need to do more than draw attention if we want to prevent child abuse. We also need to do more than wear or do something symbolic that broadcasts a caring image. If we are serious about preventing abuse (and not just drawing attention to the tragedy and trauma or asking people to look for it), we must actually do something to make it less likely to occur.

  The single most important thing we can do is strengthen families in ways that enable them to care for their children safely, before their circumstances become dire and maltreatment is a possibility. We need to focus on the root causes of maltreatment, which is often linked to a family's poverty, and address those root causes in our supports to families.

  We have an abundance of information about what leaves families vulnerable to maltreatment and an abundance of information about how to make it less likely to occur. 

  The behaviors we must seek to change are our own and those of elected officials who determine what resources we have available and how they can be used. To make child abuse less likely to occur, we need to invest in communities and invest in families. The writing is on the walls, and it is clear in our data and what we have learned through science. Yet, instead of making the necessary investments that will keep families and comminutes safe, resilient, and strong—and reduce the likelihood of so many of the vulnerabilities and challenges we work to address across systems—we remain stuck in the domain of stickers and bake sales. 

  Think of the difference we can make in the lives of children and families if we organize around the idea that all families need support sometimes and then make it available in nonstigmatic ways—in places that are not associated with government agencies. Governments can and should be very meaningful financial contributors to such efforts, but they should not be the face of them. In order to make those financial contributions and  be serious about preventing child abuse and neglect, we need flexibility in our funding streams that will allow communities to provide needed supports to families before tragedy occurs.

  We know that maltreatment most likely occurs when parental protective capacities are degraded or undeveloped. We know that lack of parenting experience and lack of knowledge and concrete supports leave parents more vulnerable to failing to adequately meet the needs of their children. We know that social isolation increases the likelihood that maltreatment may occur, and we know the stressors associated with poverty can also leave parents overwhelmed. Taken together, any combination of these factors can leave even the most loving parent vulnerable to poor decision-making, neglect, or worse.

  Rather than short-term, episodic public attention to a cause de jour or cause of the month, we can make families and communities our constant cause; we can truly put them first. Putting them first means that we must address societal attitudes and values around parents and families who find themselves involved with the child welfare system—values that often lead us to devalue their worthiness of fundamental supports. Imagine if we changed our commemorative month celebrations and public displays from a negative prevention focus to a positive strengthening focus. When we can see families in a more humane way, we are more likely to prevent maltreatment by strengthening families' protective capacities than to persist in a child-rescue mentality. Making this change is not a 1-month-per-year activity. It is a full-time commitment. 

  If we channel half the energy that goes into well-intentioned, temporary causes and awareness efforts into a full-time coordinated effort to create the conditions for strong and thriving families and communities where children are free from harm, we will no longer need bracelets to signal that something is important and that we care about it. If we put a modicum of the effort we put into treating trauma into preventing trauma, our impact would be profound.

  Our actions speak louder and more authentically than anything we can possibly display on our wrists or social media. 

  The question is whether we can break out of these patterns and ways of being. If we truly come together across causes, roles, and family-serving systems with a unified voice that demands it is time to address the root causes of family vulnerability and commit to unified action toward this common goal, we can move from drawing awareness to challenges to addressing them and from lip service to true service and from public displays to public action. 

  To do so, we must be comfortable with causing discomfort and stand up for families. If we do not have the courage to do so, we will continue to accumulate drawers and boxes full of bracelets and other useless trinkets to remind us of our unwillingness to act.
   

• Maintaining Emotional Connectedness While Physically Distant

  Maintaining Emotional Connectedness While Physically Distant

  Written by Melissa T. Merrick, Ph.D., president and chief executive officer, Prevent Child Abuse America
  
  April showers signal new life, prosperity, and sunshine for the months to come. It is the perfect month to plant pinwheel gardens for child abuse and neglect prevention and to don our blue ribbons in support of our commitment for a bright, thriving future for children and families. Certainly, this April feels different—because it IS different. Images of an empty Times Square and National Mall seem like blockbuster movie sets, and the news of death counts and insufficient tests and medical supplies are equally cinematic (and barely conceivable just a few weeks ago). But, as we create social distance for the public's health, we must do something else for the public's health: we must not allow our physical distance to create emotional distance from our loved ones, support systems, and communities. Now, more than ever, we must stay emotionally connected if we are to truly protect children and strengthen families and communities.

  Undoubtedly, in times of extreme economic and emotional stress and uncertainty such as these, the risk to our children for experiencing child abuse and neglect is quite high, and the likelihood that such experiences will go undetected is possibly even higher. Without the safe spaces and caring, supportive hearts, eyes, and hands that protect them from harm, children and families find themselves in an unprecedented, overwhelmingly precarious scenario. School and workplace closings increase stress in parents' and caregivers' lives. These closings can result in loss of income due to lack of paid leave and job loss; an unexpected or irregular need for child care, let alone affordable and available child care; and food insecurity when school meal programs and other valuable social resources become unavailable. With routine and consistency interrupted, our caregivers are trying to navigate virtual learning environments—if they even have access to such technology—while simultaneously performing remote work duties—if they are afforded such opportunity—while also trying to remain emotionally regulated and stable not just for themselves but for their children.  And, our children find themselves with more unstructured, idle time or with developmentally naïve understandings about what is happening in the world around them or, worse, an exact understanding of the unpredictability, instability, and fragility of life and circumstance.

  We all want what's best for our children—for them to be happy, healthy, and safe. We want this for our communities and neighborhoods, too. Unfortunately, we have not always shared these same hopes and dreams and commitments to action for everybody's children, communities, and neighborhoods. While we are flattening the curve of this global public health pandemic, we are simultaneously exposing the gross inequities in our systems that give rise to the urgent public health crisis that is child abuse and neglect and other forms of adversity that plague our families, communities, and society at large. 

  When we create conditions for health and health equity—through supporting economic supports for families, for example—families and communities are strengthened and better equipped to be resilient and thrive after encountering even a sustained stressor, and our children are protected from harm.  When we truly embrace the fact that we all have a role to play in assuring the public's health and well-being, everyone wins, not just children in my community or in my family but everyone. Indeed, we are more likely to achieve multiple public health goals if our children are healthier, and our children are more likely to be healthier if their parents are healthier. This intergenerational assertion can be supported through expansion of evidence-based home visitation programs, through family-friendly policies such as paid family and sick leave, and through providing concrete supports to families. Of course, we can all play a role, too, in checking in on family, friends, and neighbors; encouraging and maintaining routine and normalcy where we can; and taking a deep breath and a timeout when we need it amidst the chaos.

  In recognition of National Child Abuse Prevention Month, let's physically distance yet remain emotionally connected to protect our own mental health and well-being—and our children's. Let's get creative to harness the collective impact we need to prevent early adversity and set our youth on a trajectory of lifelong and intergenerational health and prosperity, making them more resilient in the face of the global pandemic of their day.
  Together, we can prevent child abuse, America, because childhood lasts a lifetime!

  Prevent Child Abuse America's resources related to COVID-19, or coronavirus, can be found in the article, "Prevent Child Abuse America Provides Coronavirus Resources for Families and Professionals," in this issue's Resources section.