Child abuse

One of the toughest parts of my job is hearing the stories of child abuse and the effect of violence on children. It's one of those things I don't think I will ever get immune to (at least I hope not). And incidents of child abuse seem to be on the rise or reporting them at least seems to be on the rise. As I got a referral for a 3 child abuse injunctions late last week, I thought about what I had been told by one of the attorneys when I did my first one a number of months ago. She said that child abuse injunctions are rare and that we usually only see a couple year at the most. Well, in the 6 months I've been here I have done intake on 5 different referrals that involved child abuse injunctions and my colleague has done 3 or 4. And each of them have been just as heartbreaking as the last.

I don't know if it is the economy which brings additional financial stress to families, stress that some seem to take out on their significant others and/or children. I don't know if it is something that the community is doing a better job of speaking up that it isn't right and so it has become more accepted to report it. I don't know. But I really wish people would see how much the violence affects their children and care enough to do something about it.