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It is the failure to provide for the child's basic needs. Neglect can be physical, educational or emotional, Physical neglect can include not providing adequate food or clothing, appropriate medical care, supervision or proper weather protection (heat or cold). It may include abandonment. Educational neglect includes failure to provide appropriate schooling or special educational needs, allowing excessive truancies; Psychological neglect includes the lack of any emotional support and love, never attending to the child, substance abuse including allowing the child to participate in drug and alcohol use.
Child neglect may be defined as a condition in which a caretaker responsible for the child either deliberately or by extraordinary inattentiveness permits the child to experience avoidable present suffering and or fails to provide one or more of the ingredients generally deemed essential for developing a person’s physical, intellectual and emotional capacities.
This definition is in line with current social work thinking in recognizing that
- A neglectful caretaker may be someone other than a parent.
- The neglect may not be consciously motivated.
- Allowing the child to experience suffering that could have been avoided can be considered neglect even though there may be no certain, long-term damaging effects.
- Neglect, like abuse may have serious, even lethal, effects,
- The definition can be expected to change and become less ambiguous as knowledge about the phenomenon becomes more certain.
Neglect and abuse are often spoken of together as though they were one. However, polansky et.al, (1975) believe that abuse and neglect are by no means identical and should be studied as separate entities. They offer the following definition.
Physical abuse of children is the international, non-accidental use of physical force or intentional, non accidental acts of omission, on the part of parent or other caretaker interacting with a child in his care, aimed at hurting, injuring, or destroying that child.
Many times child abuse reflects a mixture of intentional and chance elements. Sometimes accidental behavior upon further study reveals unconscious intention. Because unintentional accidents and physical abuse are often hard to separate.
Definitions of neglect and abuse, whether considered as a separate entity or as part of a child care continuum, reflect multiple dimensions. Any single instance of child neglect and or abuse must be evaluated from the viewpoint of a range of psychological, social and legal components.
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