Supporting female survivors of childhood maltreatment is critical to disrupting intergenerational abuse as new research from the University of South Australia shows a clear link between parents who have suffered abuse and the likelihood of their children suffering the same fate. The finding amplifies an acute need for far better support for victims of child maltreatment to ensure safer and more nurturing environments for all children.
Funded by the NHMRC and the Channel 7 Children’s Research Foundation, and published in The Lancet Public Health today, the study found that most child maltreatment is occurring among families caught up in intergenerational cycles of child abuse and neglect – 83 per cent of the cases of substantiated child maltreatment were the children of mothers with a history of child protection contact.
The study showed that 30 per cent of the children of mothers with substantiated maltreatment as a child were also the subject of substantiated maltreatment (by age 12). In comparison, for children of mothers with no history of child protection contact, the rate of substantiated abuse was five per cent.
The study quantified the intergenerational transmission of child maltreatment in South Australia using a large linked data set from the internationally recognised iCAN study, which included 38,556 mother-child pairs – some of whom had experienced abuse and some who had not – based on SA child protection data.
The children of mothers exposed to substantiated maltreatment and removal into out-of-home care were at greatest risk of child maltreatment, with 14 times the risk of experiencing substantiated maltreatment, and 26 times the risk of being removed, reflecting extreme child protection concerns.
Source: EurekAlert!
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