|
More than 2.5 million children in the United States are victims of abuse and/or neglect every year, and every year more than 500 children die from abuse. Abuse is defined as behavior that puts the child's physical, mental, and/or emotional health and development at risk. Neglect is the continued failure to provide vital and appropriate care and protection, such as food, housing, clothing, and health care. Many of the children who suffer abuse and neglect are placed in foster care. In the United States, more than 580,000 children are being cared for outside of their biological homes, and more than half of these children are10 years of age or younger. In addition, there is a high prevalence (50%-70%) of parental substance abuse for children entering foster care. As a consequence, it is estimated that 550,000 to 750,000 infants in the United States are born with exposure to alcohol every year. Moreover, studies have found that children who experience fetal alcohol exposure are two to three times more likely to be abused than those without fetal alcohol exposure.
|
Area of Impact
|
Manifestation of Difficulties
|
|
Language and Speech
|
- Delays in grammar
- Delays in vocabulary comprehension/production
- Limited receptive and expressive syntactic skills (grammatical morphemes, complex sentence construction)
- Delayed semantic skills (multiple word and sentence meanings)
- Minimal conversational skills
- Impaired social communication skills; pragmatic language and social cognition
|
|
Cognition
|
- Memory and learning problems
- Poor problem-solving abilities
- Attention deficits
- Information processing difficulties
|
|
Sensory Integration
|
- Oversensitive/under sensitive to touch, movement, sights, sounds
- Easily distracted
- Activity level unusually high or low
- Inability to calm self
- High co-occurrence with learning disabilities
|
|
Motor
|
- Fine Motor
- Reduced control of distal musculature, resulting in motor planning problems (impulsivity)
- Difficulty in printing/writing
- Gross Motor
- Poor motor coordination and sequencing abilities
- Poor body position sense/balance
- Neurological signs (e.g., associated mouth movements during writing).
- Visual Motor
- Difficulty programming a motor response based upon direct visual input (inability to sense where fingers are in space)
- Problems copying from chalkboard/overhead
|
|
Physical/Medical
|
- Pre/postnatal growth deficiency
- CNS involvement or brain malformations resulting in neurological abnormalities, developmental delay, behavioral dysfunction, intellectual impairment, and structural abnormalities
- Minor facial anomalies such as short palpebral fissures, long and flattened midface, long and flattened philtrum, and thin upper lip
- Failure to thrive
- Malnutrition
- Physical harm due to abuse or lack of supervision
- Untreated illnesses/injuries
- Altered release of growth-regulating hormones, impacting development of the body and brain
|
|
Socioemotional
|
- Demonstrate less affection
- Increased likelihood for hyperactivity
- Aggressive
- Discipline problems in school
- Poor self-image
- Increased likelihood for alcohol, drug abuse, destructive behavior, suicide
- Inappropriate sexual behavior
- Difficulty forming close, lasting relationships
|
|