Studies show that if health and medical care personnel in a structured way ask parents about important psychosocial risk factors in connection with visiting pediatric primary care and, if necessary, offering the parent help may help prevent child maltreatment.Childrens school programs regarding "good touch … bad touch" can provide children with a forum in which to role-play and learn to avoid potentially harmful scenarios. Pediatricians can help identify children at risk of maltreatment and intervene with the aid of a social worker or provide access to treatment that addresses potential risk factors such as maternal depression. Videoconferencing has also been used to diagnose child abuse in remote emergency departments and clinics. Unintended conception increases the risk of subsequent child abuse, and large family size increases the risk of child neglect. Thus, a comprehensive study for the National Academy of Sciences concluded that affordable contraceptive services should form the basis for child abuse prevention. "The starting point for effective child abuse programming is pregnancy planning," according to an analysis for US Surgeon General C. Everett Koop.Findings from research published in 2016 support the importance of family relationships in the trajectory of a childs life: family-targeted interventions are important for improving long-term health, particularly in communities that are socioeconomically disadvantaged.Resources for child-protection services are sometimes limited. According to Hosin (2007), "a considerable number of traumatized abused children do not gain access to protective child-protection strategies."
The differences in these cultural beliefs demonstrate the importance of examining all cross-cultural perspectives when studying the concept of child abuse. Some professionals argue that cultural norms that sanction physical punishment are one of the causes of child abuse, and have undertaken campaigns to redefine such norms.As of 2006, between 25,000 and 50,000 children in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, had been accused of witchcraft and abandoned. In Malawi it is common practice to accuse children of witchcraft and many children have been abandoned, abused and even killed as a result. In the Nigerian, Akwa Ibom State and Cross River State about 15,000 children were branded as witches.In April 2015, public broadcasting reported that the rate of child abuse in South Korea had increased to 13% compared with the previous year, and 75% of attackers were the childrens own parents. Possible link to animal abuse
There are studies providing evidence of a link between child abuse and cruelty to animals. A large national survey by the Norwegian Centre for Violence and Traumatic Stress Studies found a "substantial overlap between companion animal abuse and child abuse" and that cruelty to animals "most frequently co-occurred with psychological abuse and less severe forms of physical child abuse," which "resonates with conceptualizations of domestic abuse as an ongoing pattern of psychological abuse and coercive control." Disclosure and assessment
Suspicion for physical abuse is recommended when injuries occur in a child who is not yet able to walk independently.