SUMMARY OF THE FINDINGS OF THE STUDY
The prevalence and long-term effects of child abuse in our various communities, formed the basis of motivation for this study; hence, the study aimed at examining the prevalence of child abuse in Ovia North East Local Government Area of Edo State. The researcher made use of data from both quantitative and qualitative sources to gather the data for this study which were used to answer the research questions.
Child abuse in its occurrence comes in various forms. These forms include, amongst others neglect, fetal abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, spiritual abuse, and physical abuse (Child Help). There are absolutely no doubts that child abuse is a problem faced globally. It is present in every nation, although there are statistical differences in the rate at which it penetrates every given nation. It occurs either in the cultural, economic, or social practices, the widespread of child abuse is enormous in so many countries (Ebigbo 2013). Many cases of child abuse have been reported in Nigeria. There are a variety of factors which contribute or favor the occurrence of child abuse in Nigeria, most of which are related to family perceptions, and the general poor conditions of living in the country. These factors due to their broadness could be classified into a number of groups which include the individual characteristics of a child, that of his or her family, how the local community is structured, the social, economic and cultural environment as well.
The study further revealed that domestic violence, no matter the level of its occurrence often increases the risk of a child getting physically abused in Nigerian families.
While the prevention of child abuse is almost universally proclaimed to be an important social policy, surprisingly little work has been done to investigate the effectiveness of preventive intervenetions. Careful work has been done on a few interventions, such as home visitation but many more interventions in this field lack adequate evaluation. The majority of programmes focus on victims or perpetrators of child abuse and neglect. Very few emphasize primary prevention approaches aimed at preventing child abuse and neglect from occurring in the first place. The more common responses are described below in line with the roles of social workers in reducing child abuse. Social workers through an effective public health strategy for child abuse requires primary, secondary and tertiary prevention. Primary prevention includes education and health promotion among groups at risk, while secondary prevention seeks to detect maltreatment at early stage, when the effect on the child is more limited and reversible, tertiary prevention targets children already damaged by abuse and neglect; these are children in long-term foster care, kinship placements and adoptive families, Early and accurate diagnosis of suspected cases of child abuse, with proper documentation and report of suspected cases to the appropriate agency, can protect a child from further harm.
