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  • Families getting on together
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    • Trend: overall
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    • Table: summary (n)
    • Trend: age (rate)
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What does this mean?

In Kids Stats child abuse refers to physical assault, psychological and emotional abuse, sexual assault and failing to provide adequately for children and young peoples' care and protection.

Why is it important to monitor?

Child abuse can have a profound effect on children and young people. It can affect their physical, emotional and cognitive development both in the short and long term. Effects vary according to the type of abuse and can include:

• lower social competence
• poor school performance
• impeded language ability
• depression, anxiety disorders and self-harm
• injury and disability
• in rare cases, death. [1]

Child abuse and neglect has been found to be associated with low socio-economic status, parental involvement in crime, domestic violence, substance abuse and family disruption [2,3].

Indicator

The indicator used in Kids Stats to monitor child abuse is:

The number of child protection reports of children and young people aged 0-17 years in a given year, as a rate per 1,000 children and young people aged 0-17 years.

For a child or young person to be included in this indicator, concern must have been raised with the NSW Department of Community Services that a child or young person was at risk of harm including physical, sexual or emotional abuse or neglect.

Main findings

• The rate of child protection reports has increased from 1999/2000 to 2005/2006 by 37.6 per 1,000. The NSW Department of Community Services advises that the increase in the rate may not reflect an increase in the incidence of child abuse but could result from changes in legislation, policies, practices and a new client information system occurring since 2000
• Age is a factor. In 2005/2006 the highest rate of reports was for infants aged less than one year (112 per 1,000), these infants accounting for 8.8% of all reports
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people are more at risk. The rate of reports for children and young people who are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander was more than three times higher than for those who are non-Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (in 2004/2005: 194.9 per 1,000 and 60.1 respectively).

Notes:
[1] NSW Child Death Review Team (2003). Fatal Assault and Neglect of Children and Young People. NSW Commission for Children and Young People, Sydney.
[2] Tomison, A. (2002). Preventing child abuse: changes to family support in the 21st century. Child Abuse Prevention Issues Number 17, National Child Protection Clearinghouse, Melbourne.
[3] Shonkoff, J. & Phillips, D. (2000). ‘Committee on Integrating the Science of Early Childhood Development; Board on Children, Youth and Families,’ in From Neurons to Neighbourhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development, National Academy Press, Washington D.C.

For details of the references and to find out more about the data follow the link to Glossary and further information.