Kids Need to Know offers sexual abuse prevention education for children preschool through sixth grade. The program is designed to educate and empower children to help prevent abuse from occurring. It offers those who have been abused a safe place in the care of trained professionals to reveal the abuse so that it can be stopped and the hard work of healing can begin.
Why provide sexual abuse education?
- 54% of all children will be sexually abused before they are 18 years old.
- 40% of offenders who abused children under the age of six were under the age of 18 themselves.
- The average offender has 117 victims.
- 96% divorce rate with those having a history of sexual abuse.
- 90% of those who abuse children are people the family knows and trusts.
The program also equips administrators and leaders, pediatricians, teachers, social workers, school counselors, mental health professionals, residential care takers, recreational leaders, and camp leaders in both community and faith-based organizations to know what to do if abuse is suspected or reported.
Kids Need to Know also guides organizations in creating and revising needed policies which meet the guidelines for the region in which their organization resides, helps create policy manuals pertaining to pro-employment screening, in-service training for employees and volunteers such as this program's training, and how to handle the suspected or reported abuse by someone within an organization.
The Financial Cost of Abuse
Not only is abuse costly to the individual on many levels, but it is also costly to society. Prevent Child Abuse America compiled statistics from a variety of sources, including the Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Justice, U.S. Census Bureau and Child Protective Services, which showed that in 1991 the estimated cost of abuse to be $94 million.
These costs stem from care required from hospitalizations, chronic mental and physical health problems, child welfare systems, law enforcement, judicial systems, special education, juvenile delinquency, lost productivity to society and adult criminality. The burden to cover these expenses falls on the taxpayers. |
