Title: Risk and protective factors for child abuse and neglect | Child Family Community Australia
Headings: Risk and protective factors for child abuse and neglect
Risk and protective factors for child abuse and neglect
Why discuss risk and protective factors?
Definitions
The interaction of risk and protective factors
Limitations of the research
Common risk factors for child abuse and neglect
Table 1: Commonly cited risk factors for child abuse and neglect
Common protective factors for child abuse and neglect
Table 2: Protective factors for reducing the incidence of child abuse and neglect
Practice applications of skills and protective factors
Conclusion
Additional CFCA readings
References
Endnotes
Authors and Acknowledgements
Publication details

Content: Much of the research examines individual-level causes of child maltreatment, examining the characteristics of the child or parent (Stith et al., 2009), and much less research has looked at the social and environmental factors. The types of research methods used make it difficult to determine the direction of causality. This means that it is possible that some of the factors that have been identified could be the result of abuse or neglect. It is also possible that many of the risk factors identified by the research may be indicators of low socio-economic status (Wu et al., 2004). Finally, the majority of the research has been undertaken in North America and there may be differences in risk and protective factors in the Australian context. For a more detailed discussion of some of the issues and criticisms of the risk-based approach to child abuse and neglect, see Risk Assessment Instruments in Child Protection. Common risk factors for child abuse and neglect
Any effort to identify definitive causes of child abuse and neglect is complicated by the interrelatedness of factors. One model that has been used to demonstrate how factors at multiple levels intersect to increase the likelihood of child abuse and neglect is Bronfenbrenner's (1979) "developmental-ecological" model (Horton, 2003;