Child Abuse and Neglect: Are Cases Increasing or Decreasing After 50+ Years of Paediatric Attention?

After more than 5 decades of attention to child abuse and neglect or more generically, child maltreatment, in the peer reviewed literature, the question remains, “have we made a dent in the number of children who are abused or neglected?” In order, to construct an answer that is straightforward question, we need to start with clear definitions and trustworthy statistics so that we can be clear about what cases we are measuring and what trends we are comparing. Towards that end, there are two authoritative publically available data sources that provide clear definitions of the different forms of child maltreatment and which provide rigorously collected data on these forms of child maltreatment. They are: