CHILD ABUSE COSTS COMMUNITY $11 BILLION PER ANNUM

The physical, sexual and psychological abuse of more than 170,000 Australian children is costing the community almost $11billion a year.

The first comprehensive study of the financial impact of child abuse undertaken in Australia attributes the bulk of that figure, nearly $7 billion, to the children's fear, anxiety and depression as it cuts their quality of life. The report, published by Access Economics, counts the cost of child abuse on the health, education and welfare systems.

The report says there is no current reliable national data on the number of Australian children suffering child abuse. Rather than relying on reported instances of abuse, Access Economics extrapolated from Australian Bureau of Statistics data on personal safety to arrive at a "conservative" figure of 177,000 children. But its top-end estimate is more than 500,000 children. "Based on these numbers, the best estimate of the actual cost of child abuse in 2007 was $10.7 billion.

The report, notes that it is far easier to estimate the costs than to understand how abuse is so prevalent in society. "Abused and neglected children can suffer depression, anxiety and the ongoing effects of trauma," it says. "They struggle to learn at school and can lag well behind their classmates in their education. They may feel dislocated from friends and family, leading to isolation and even harsher long-term consequences such as homelessness and crime. Some will turn to drugs and alcohol.

"All these costs can be estimated, but not easily comprehended." Australian Childhood Foundation chief executive Joe Tucci says: "If we can prevent child abuse before it starts, we will be protecting vulnerable children and also reducing the burden on the Australian community." The report is the first to take a serious look at the prevalence of child abuse in Australia using data beyond official notifications and substantiations from the states' child protection departments, he says.

"This shows the threshold of what constitutes abuse within state departments is a lot higher than community attitudes, and it also reveals how much child abuse remains unreported," Mr Tucci says. Chris Goddard of Child Abuse Prevention Research Australia says it "defies belief that we spend so much and know so little about this area". "We haven't had a national child abuse prevention strategy for nearly 20 years now, and we desperately need a well-funded scheme like the one that's in place for depression," Professor Goddard says.

He says governments should be encouraging adoption, rather than dismissing it as some sort of politically incorrect historical footnote. "You have 30,000 children in care on any given night, and many child protection workers would say another 30,000 that should be in care, along with thousands more homeless, but last year there were just 190  adoptions, and most of these were just family rearrangements," Professor Goddard says. "That's one example right there that has the potential to help children and save money out of the system."

Prayer point:

* Please pray that the concept of adoption and foster parenting may resurface in Australia as one important way of dealing with unwanted pregnancies and of easing the pressures on child care agencies seeking to deal with excessive numbers of children in institutional care.


Source: Compiled by APN from media reports

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