Training day care program personnel in handling child abuse cases: intervention and prevention outcomes

Attempts have been made to provide day care services as part of a treatment plan and these services are also used as a preventive strategy. Day Care programs have the potential for providing growth experiences, supportive adult role models, and modeling parental skills in an atmosphere of understanding, respect and trust. There is a need, however, for day care professionals and paraprofessionals who come into contact with children to recognize problems of child abuse and neglect and to develop skills to deal with the range of inherent problems. A report on a training program for day care workers is presented in this article. A survey involving 84 day care programs in southeastern Pennsylvania was conducted and comparisons of intervention and prevention activities of two groups: those programs whose staff participated in the training and those whose staff did not, were made. Assessment of intervention activities shows that there is no difference between the groups. However, analysis of prevention activities shows that day care workers in the trained group were significantly more involved in prevention and high risk referral.