Primary child abuse prevention:

• Focuses on preventing child abuse and neglect from ever happening.
• Has been proven to reduce the likelihood of child abuse and neglect.
• Requires the efforts of everyone - policy makers and community members alike.
• Can only be accomplished if measures are taken by the entire community.

Keeping children safe from abuse and neglect is the responsibility of the entire community. Child abuse is an exceptionally complex problem with numerous causes and numerous, wide-ranging consequences that affect each and every one of us.

Communities will be most effective in preventing child abuse if they adopt a comprehensive prevention strategy that offers families a variety of programs, targeted to different populations with differing needs.

The goals of a community-wide comprehensive prevention strategy should be to:

• Increase parents' knowledge and understanding of how children develop and what they can expect at each stage of development.
• Enhance bonding and communication between parents and their children.
• Increase parents' skills in coping with the stresses of caring for children with special needs.
• Increase parents knowledge about managing homes and families.
• Reduce the burden of child care.
• Increase access the social and health-care services for all community members.

To achieve these goals, community-wide comprehensive prevention strategies should include:

• Programs that support new and expecting parents by helping them prepare for the challenges of child care.
• Programs that educate parents about child care and child development.
• Child care opportunities for working parents and for parents who need respite from the stresses of their responsibilities.
• Programs that teach children how to protect themselves from abuse.
• Life skills training that helps children and young adults learn the interpersonal communication skills they need to thrive as kids and later as adults and parents.
• Self-help groups, peer-support systems, and other neighborhood support programs to reduce the isolation experienced by many parents.
• 24-hour crisis care programs that provide immediate assistance to parents in a time of crisis by offering a telephone helpline, crisis caretakers, crisis nurseries, and crisis counseling.

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