Child Abuse: Protecting Infants and Toddlers

Child abuse is a prevalent and significant issue in our country. In Federal Fiscal Year 2015, 9.2 out of 1,000 children in the population were victims of child abuse and neglect. Similar to statistics from previous years, 75.3 percent of the victims suffered from neglect and 17.2 were victims of physical abuse (Children’s Bureau, 2017). Additionally, “children in their first year of life had the highest rate of victimization at 24.2 per 1,000 children of the same age in the national population” (Children’s Bureau, 2017, p. x). Of the estimated 1,670 national fatalities from child abuse and neglect in 2015, almost three-quarters were children younger than 3 years (Children’s Bureau, 2017). These data point out how critical it is that caregivers in out-of-home child care settings are trained to identify and report suspected incidents of child abuse and neglect.