Child abuse awareness education bill gets a look after four sessions
The state Capitol in Harrisburg. (Capital-Star file)
Pennsylvania schools would be required to integrate child abuse awareness and prevention into their curriculum under a bill being proposed in the state House of Representatives.
'We need to educate (children) when they are young. Sometimes by second grade, it's already too late. They've already been abused. But at least if they hear the program and they get it, we can then provide them with help,' said Abbie Newman, CEO of global and external affairs at Mission Kids Child Advocacy Center in Norristown.
Newman testified Tuesday at a hearing for the legislation before the House Children and Youth Committee.
No votes happened. Just an informational hearing with expert testimony. That's the furthest the measure has gone, though, with versions introduced during every legislative session since 2019.
More than half of states already require schools to teach child abuse awareness and prevention, according to the bill's sponsor state Rep. Mary Jo Daley (D-Montgomery).
The Department of Education would jointly develop the age-appropriate curriculum for students in kindergarten through high school with another state agency (likely Human Services) under the current version of House Bill 460, according to legislative researcher Ryan Kline.
'We want to make sure we get this right,' he said, noting the legislation probably will change.
Proponents emphasized the need to engage experts — such as local child advocacy centers certified to provide preventative education — to help develop and deliver the curriculum. That could mitigate unintended consequences like traumatizing students and adding to the already overwhelming workload of public school teachers and faculty, they said.
They also advised modeling evidence-based programs such as the Safe and Health Communities Initiative recently highlighted in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Researchers found rates of both substantiated and unsubstantiated child sexual abuse reports dropped after they'd implemented a three-pronged intervention in schools and surrounding communities across five counties in Pennsylvania. They reached nearly 15,000 second graders in the classroom and more than 14,000 adults through a combination of formal training and public education campaigns during 2018 through 2020.
Asked how to improve the bill, one expert said a two-year launch seemed rushed.
'This is too important an issue,' said Benjamin Levi, a professor in the departments of humanities and pediatrics at Penn State College of Medicine. 'As a pediatrician, I've dealt with both reporting [and] the long-term consequences. As a researcher, I've looked at these issues. As someone who's developed educational programs, I know how hard it is to implement this. So I just want to caution that as we move forward, we need to be careful, deliberate, and evidence-based.'
Levi noted, for example, the potential for reporting to increase. That could overwhelm the state's ChildLine reporting conduit if it remains resourced as is. He pointed out that ChildLine has about half the staff of its counterparts in Illinois and Michigan, which have comparable populations.
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