Working together to prevent child abuse

Improving the way people parent might seem an impossible challenge, given the competing views about what constitutes good parenting - can we influence a behavior that is rooted in upbringing and culture, affected by stress, and occurs mainly in private? Triple P – Positive Parenting Program works to educate parents on how to improve their parenting skills.

During the early 1990s, New York City had a sky-high number of kids in foster care. Now, it's safely keeping them with their families, placing them in foster care only when necessary.

Girls Court brings an all-hands-on-deck approach to the lives of vulnerable girls, linking them to social service agencies, providing informal Saturday sessions on everything from body image to legal jargon, and offering a team of adults in whom they can develop trust.

Children coming from abusive households are often reluctant to discuss their past experiences. A Mexican foundation is using animated characters to help abused and ill children speak about their lives.

In El Paso domestic violence cases are processed more effectively by having social workers, prosecutors, and law enforcement work together to get immediate support to the victims and hold the aggressor accountable.

When processing rape kits, it may be faster and more cost-effective to extract DNA profiles rather than first screen swabs and undergarments for semen. Ohio’s crime lab, which has identified a potential suspect in nearly 40 percent of recent cases, has made this and other changes to its procedures.

Children who have been through traumatic experiences have trouble opening up to people. A virtual program in Mexico City created by psychotherapists uses animated characters to get children to explain their thoughts.

Child First is a program in Connecticut, where staff members deliver home-based parent guidance and child-parent psychotherapy to help prevent the detrimental physical and mental effects of toxic stress on children. The engagement is guided by an evidence-based methodology called Child-Parent Psychotherapy, which is grounded in collaborative problem solving.

Boston-based Veterans Legal Services (VLS) is the only organization of its kind in the state. The nonprofit helps veterans access benefits and navigate civil court proceedings. Its clients are specifically low-income and homeless veterans, all of whom struggle financially.

More women are being incarcerated around the United States and that has spurred more institutions to create prison nurseries, which allow women to be with their newborns. It's not a new idea, but it's finding support among prison advocates as well as budget hawks because research shows nurseries can lower recidivism rates among mothers. The idea of children in prison remains controversial however.