Child Abuse Case Of Mary Ellen And The Prevention Of Cruelty To Children

Published case reviews draw special attention on the professionals lack of knowledge and confidence when assessing risk in children coming from various religions and cultural backgrounds. A lack of understanding of these two key components, might put at significant risk the children's welfare, leading professionals to overlook certain situations and to offer inadequate support or lower standards of care (NSPCC, 2017).

Child abuse has been a big issue in the world for a long time. There has not always been child protective services like there is now. Children would be abused and neglected and nothing was being done because it was not being reported. The New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children was the world’s first organization in the late 1800s which was dedicated totally to child protection (Myers, 2008).

This was a child abuse case where a Dodge County father and the live-in girlfriend he

Pains hurt Jeannette Walls. It hurts her physically and mentally. Especially when those pains are caused not just by physical harassment caused or those of sexual abuses she experienced or acknowledged happening to her and her family but also the dysfunctionality of her family. The way Jeannette processed and respond to all the misfortunes and abuses of life hints us a rather insightful view of how perceptions and knowledge shape certain prejudices and judgments upon another person 's circumstance.

Mary Ellen’s case, in 1874, was one of the first cases of child abuse recorded. According to American Humane Association (2013), she was being abused by her stepmother. There was no such thing as child protective services or the department of family services. There was only the society for the prevention of cruelty to animals. Her story led to the founding of the New York Society for the Prevention and Cruelty to Children (American Humane Association, 2013). In the 1960s’ child abuse was first recognized as a social problem;

This article documents the history of child abuse in the U.S. that dates back to colonial times. Children were considered property and animals were better protected than children. This was evident with Mary Ellen’s case in 1873. The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals fought for this child and the New York state court ordered the child to be removed from her abusive home and place

At the age of ten, most children are reliant on their parents for everything in their lives needing a great deal of concentration and concern. However, Ellen, the main character and combatant of the novel Ellen Foster, demonstrates a significant amount of self-reliance and mature, impartial thought as a ten-year-old girl. Ellen is a bantling even though she was not deserted, she was impoverished of a normal childhood. Her life as a child was immensely hard, physically and emotionally. She never had a mother or father take care of her through her entire youth. The recent mortality of her mother sends her on a journey for the optimal family, or anywhere her father, who had shown insensitivity to both she and her frail mother, was not. Kaye Gibbons’

Foster care is defined as an out of home placement outside of the biological family. Individuals are placed in foster care due to some form of child maltreatment, rather it be sexual abuse, neglect, and/or physical abuse. Adolescents who age out of the foster care system are between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one years old who are still in the child welfare system and have not been adopted. Aging out of the foster care systems means that adolescents currently in the child welfare system who have reached the age of eighteen and do not plan to continue in an educational setting has reached the age to where the state can no longer provide for them. Those adolescents who remain in foster care past their eighteenth birthday have to be in some type of educational setting, but at their twenty first birthday that individual is forced out of the system and into adulthood.

One of the first cases of child abuse occurred in 1871 in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen. The victim in this case was Mary Ellen Wilson, a nine-year old orphan. Mary Ellen performed household duties in the orphanage for her foster mother. According to Mary Ellen, her foster mother whipped her almost every day for speaking to people, wearing too many clothes, or any other act that the foster mother deemed inappropriate (“Illustration of a Social Worker”). Mary Ellen’s external bruises were evidence of physical abuse, and they gained the attention of nurse Etta Wheeler. With no social workers or child protection laws in place, nurse Wheeler was forced to consult Henry Bergh, a businessman at the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, or the SPCA. Bergh assisted Wheeler in finding a lawyer to fight for Mary Ellen’s protection (“Illustration of a Social Worker”). Eventually, with the lawyer’s help, Mary Ellen was removed from the home. Millions of children around the world have suffered, and are suffering, from issues similar to that of Mary Ellen. Physical child abuse is a problem that has drastically altered the lives of countless children. For this reason, people should be educated on this topic. The main causes of physical child abuse are financial hardships, substance abuse, and parents who were abuse as a child, and are merely repeating the cycle.

Every year more than 3 million reports of child abuse are made in the United States involving more than 6 million children. The amount of children abused is doubled due to the fact that a single report can include multiple children. The U.S has one of the worst records among industrialized nations, losing an average between four and seven children everyday to abuse and neglect. The sociological theories that can be used to research the issue of child abuse in the US are symbolic interactionism and the conflict theory.

Client is a 37 year- old, African American male, currently lives by himself in Boyton beach, Florida. Client was mandated by the courts to obtain individual therapy for stress and anger management in reference to allegations of child abuse involving his 16 year old daughter. Client described his circumstances at home as "living in jail". He states that he has not seen or spoken to his children for over one year. He reports being concerned about his family well being and missing out on being an active father in his children's life. He notes that the child abuse allegations has impacted his family tremendously. He referred to his wife as a "single mother having seven children".

Since 1948 there have been around 70 public inquiries into major cases of child abuse. The names of many of the children who have died have become well known, simply because of the terrible nature of their deaths. In many of these cases the child has been the target of abuse from an adult who is not

The end of the 19th century saw a raising concern with the cruelty inflicted to children by their guardians, that was expressed in the public campaigns carried out by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children . This, together with the progressive intervention of the state into family life during that period, for example through compulsory education, created the appropriated conditions for the passage of

In today’s society, child abuse is widespread and has an affect on everyone who comes across it. The act of child abuse happens everyday to a variety of kids who are typically younger and scared to tell anyone. All children are born with the right to be able to develop, grow, live and love according to their needs and feelings. For a child 's development they need protection and reassurance from adults who love them and help them acquire the skills to be a successful adult. However, some children are neglected and hurt by adults that they trust. The abuse a child receives makes them feel bad about themselves, and it is much worse when it occurs within a family because it makes them feel unloved and alone causing them to have problems. “Abuse of all types was more frequent in those from disturbed and disrupted family backgrounds. Logistic regressions indicated that some, though not all, of the apparent associations between abuse and adult problems was accounted for by this matrix of childhood disadvantage from which abuse so often emerged. Numerous studies have investigated the psychological sequelae of childhood trauma, including posttraumatic stress disorder(PTSD), dissociation, personality disorder, and substance abuse ”(“New Retrospective Measure of Child Abuse and Neglect” by David P. Bernstein). The act of child abuse causes kids to have one or more mental problems. Additionally, since people do not recognize the abuse while it is occurring, it causes these problems to