Treating Child Abuse

There are many forms of child abuse. Typically though, it is when a parent or caregiver causes injury, death, emotional harm, or risk of serious harm to a child. Unfortunately, there are more than 3 million reported cases of child abuse in the United States each year.

We take child abuse very seriously. Our Metro Regional Diagnostic and Treatment Center (RDTC) professional team consists of highly experienced pediatric medical specialists and mental health professionals working across all of our New Jersey pediatric facilities. These professionals have received extensive training in assessing and treating all forms of child maltreatment.

Our team conducts a wide range of peer education and training programs designed to improve the skills from other professionals in recognizing and reporting child abuse and neglect, as well as preventing abuse and neglect. Programs are offered year-round for medical professionals, ER personnel, mental health professionals, Division of Child Protection and Permanency (DCP&P) personnel, law enforcement agencies as well as the community-at-large. These include:

• Grand Rounds/Professional Seminars are held at least each quarter to train pediatric and Emergency Room colleagues, residents nurses, DCP&P personnel and CASA volunteers on a wide range of child abuse issues.
• EPIC SCAN Training is conducted in collaboration with the New Jersey Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and is taught with a resource educator from the Division of Child Protection and Permanency. It trains professionals to recognize and report child abuse and neglect.
• The Period of Purple Crying is a program in conjunction with the New Jersey Chapter of Prevent Child Abuse New Jersey to educate parents on coping with crying, educate on the dangers of shaking infants, and to reduce non-accidental head trauma. Parents are trained in the nursery and at well-baby visits in the first year of life.
• “Enough Abuse!” is a train-the-trainer prevention training program offered in collaboration with Prevent Child Abuse New Jersey. It is designed for parents, caregivers and professionals to improve techniques for speaking about sexuality, to end the silence about child sexual abuse, and to prevent sexual abuse from happening in the first place.
• General requests for child abuse education