Evaluation Plan: Case of Safe Horizon: Underreported Child abuse
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Initially, Safe Horizon was called Victim Services Agency. It is the largest non-profit organization in the United States that deals with providing social assistance services to victims of violent crime and abuse. The organization provides services by over 1000 employees and volunteers from various cities. In addition, the organization also deals with prevention of violence that occurs in the society. “Safe Horizon is the largest victim advocates organization in the United States. As a non-profit agency, they are funded by public donations and provide services to children, families, and other victims of sexual assault and violence through organizations across the country. For over twenty years, Safe Horizon has been committed to preventing child abuse and being a voice for abused children.”
The organization is assisting more than 250,000 adults, children, and families. The organization’s mission is to enhance support provision, justice promotion, and violence promotion. This organization is providing life-saving services to victims of violence and abuse in order to help them cope with the traumatic effects of crime. It also advocates for public policies that promote victim safety and wellbeing.
In New York City, the organization has over 100 employees who are working at child abuse hotlines, adult victim assistance centers, 24-hour domestic violence hotline, hospital emergency rooms, legal aid offices and residential programs. Furthermore, these employees also provide services to victims in various languages other than English such as Spanish and Chinese language. The work of this organization is divided into five major departments which include: Advocacy services department; Children services department; Community outreach department; Legal Services department; and Public Policy department.
Safe Horizon has three main programs designed for combating child abuse. they include Child advocacy center, counselling center, and community programs. The organization states that child advocacy centers assist child victims of physical and sexual abuse. In addition, they also provide counseling to adults who have been victimized while they were children. The goals of these centers are to prevent more children from being abused, provide compensation and support to those who have been abused, and punish the perpetrators (Safe Horizon).
Safe Horizon’s counselling center works with more than 400 licensed agencies and mental health professionals in 47 communities across the country. Furthermore, they also work with some 300 high school volunteers. The organization is helping more than 70 organizations which deal with early childhood education as well as family services.
My focus in this research proposal is to evaluate the organization if they are updated with the cases. The research is going to be done by evaluating the current state of child abuse in the United States. Child abuse is any form, physical and emotional, that harm a child. I’m proposing that Safe Horizon is not updated with the cases and therefore children are not getting proper care when they need it. It seems like there would be gaps in their reporting process which would lead to underreporting of cases. This could be happening because they are often overwhelmed with just dealing with what’s in front of them and don’t have time for anything else plus this can happen if reports go unanswered or miscommunicated.
There are many reasons why this child abuse is underreported.
Not enough cases reported to authorities. In the United States there are more than 8 million reports of sexual assault made each year which is over 86% of all cases of sexual assault. Cases do not get investigated and recorded. The same number of reports of sexual assault are made to law enforcement as there are cases recorded by authorities in the United States. Some cases of child abuse go unreported because many victims don’t know that they have been abused until they are older and have recovered memories of the abuse. For example, a girl may be molested at a very early age and has no idea what is happening until she is older that she realizes what happened to her was abuse which was perpetrated on her by an adult. Cases go unreported because a parent or caretaker may be abusing their children and they don’t report it because they won’t get in trouble with the law. Child abuse gets reported to the police but they don’t believe the victim. This can happen if the police officer is bias towards that race or gender of the victim. The cases aren’t reported because of parents not wanting family members to know about it for impressing others and not having pride in their family member being an abuser.
Evaluation Design
It is vital to note that the issue of underreported child abuse cases is a serious one. Some estimate that one in ten children are victims of abuse, most of the time it is not reported because it is not believed by the authorities. This can happen if child abuse cases go unmonitored and therefore it doesn’t get reported to the organization such as Safe Horizon.
This can also happen because some childcare facilities are not providing adequate training for the staff about what to do when there is an incident and this may lead to a lack of knowledge or understanding about how to report a case properly.
Evaluating this issue could lead to a short-term or long-term impact. For the short term, there would be an increase in reports of child abuse since they would be able to take it more seriously and therefore help more children and get cases that wouldn’t have been reported. There would also be a decrease in underreported cases because the organization that is in charge of caring for the children would be more knowledgeable about what to do when there is an incident.
For the long term outcome, this could lead to an improvement of future programs if there is more knowledge about how to handle situations for children that may need their services. This may also lead to more understanding about how child abuse can happen through a better understanding of what causes it. This could also lead to an increase in training on how to better handle certain situations in order to prevent future cases from happening. There would also be an increase in care for the children since they would be able to provide proper treatment and may prevent problems with the children later.
It is crucial that we continue to evaluate this issue because it could greatly help or even save many children’s lives. I believe that Safe Horizon needs to review their current practices and reevaluate their procedures so that more people can be helped and a better prevent against underreporting cases of child abuse.
The main method that Safe Horizon can use to evaluate this issue of underreported child abuse is through research. They can look in their records to see if there are any cases that were not reported through their system. This would give them a complete view of what may have happened and how many cases they could have missed. They could also use an online database, such as a search engine, to see what is currently happening with the organization and their current patterns of behavior in terms of reporting child abuse cases.
To do this, they will need to look into the database themselves because they could not assume that the person who is looking it up has accurate information since it is usually people who are looking for information about child abuse who may be misinformed or just searching incorrectly on different names. In this research, a questionnaire will be vital to ensuring that the organization collects large amounts of data in an efficient and effective way (Grassini & Laumann, 2020). This will allow them to collect more and accurate data and to give the data a thorough evaluation that can be viewed so that they can continue to develop their program.
The first step is finding how many people have a child who has been abused and not reported because they don’t believe it. There are factors that may lead someone not to report it if someone thinks the abuse is not serious or if the abuser is a family member or friend of theirs. Then Safe Horizon will need to find out who those families are, where they live, and how many cases they have missed due to their underreporting.
How recently were you a victim of child abuse?
What is your age?
How many years have you lived in America ?”
How often is your current household income higher than $150K per year? ?”
What are the most common reasons for underreporting?
How do agencies interact with victims of child abuse?
In what ways does Safe Horizon work to reduce underreported cases of child abuse?
How many cases have been reported in the past year?
Has any case led to criminal prosecution and/or disciplinary action against a Safe Horizon staff member or volunteer.Conclusion
In Summation, this study will assist Safe horizon to address the issue of underreported child abuse cases. The information will help the organization to understand how many cases of child abuse have gone unreported as well as the reasons why they may have been missed. This is useful information that they can use to evaluate their current practices and procedures in order to improve them.
This study is also useful in developing future programs because Safe Horizon can now take steps towards strengthening their current efforts to prevent child abuse and improve their procedures for handling cases. These changes would help them recognize situations earlier, and would make sure that they are providing adequate care and services to those children who have been abused. Therefore, this study is relevant because it could save many children’s lives and make life safer for them.
References
Child Abuse – Safe Horizon. (2022). Retrieved 3 May 2022, from https://www.safehorizon.org/get-help/child-abuse/#overview/
Grassini, S., & Laumann, K. (2020). Questionnaire measures and physiological correlates of presence: A systematic review. Frontiers in psychology, 11, 349.
