Mark Chaffin on child abuse
From 2014 PCA Georgia Conference keynote by Mark Chaffin, Ph.D. · · School of Public Health - Georgia State University
“Currently we are enjoying probably the lowest rates of physical and sexual abuse of children in the modern era, with drops on the order of 50 or 60% or more in physical abuse since the early 1990s.”
On , Mark Chaffin, Chief Information Officer at FLOWERS FOODS INC, spoke about child abuse during 2014 PCA Georgia Conference keynote by Mark Chaffin, Ph.D. on School of Public Health - Georgia State University.
About Mark Chaffin
Mark Chaffin, a professor of health promotion and behavior at Georgia State University's School of Public Health, delivered a keynote address at the 2014 Prevent Child Abuse Georgia Conference. In his remarks, Chaffin noted that rates of physical and sexual abuse of children were at their lowest in the modern era, with drops of 50 to 60 percent since the early 1990s. He stated that chronic neglect accounts for approximately 80 percent of child welfare cases and that families below the poverty line are 44 times more likely to enter the child welfare system than families at the median income. Chaffin discussed the gap between research and practice in child protection. He cited randomized trials showing that evidence-based parenting programs can reduce recidivism into child welfare from over 50 percent to under 20 percent, but said that implementing these programs at scale remains a challenge. He observed that training providers in evidence-based models does not guarantee implementation, noting that 106 trained providers had seen only six cases using a new parenting model after one year. Chaffin argued that effective intervention models are often focused and brief, and that traditional funding structures incentivize volume over quality, making it difficult to deliver cost-effective, high-quality programs.