Identifying and reporting child abuse and neglect.

Jonathan Kotch: Welcome to Identifying and Reporting Child Abuse and Neglect presented by the Head Start National Center on Health. My name is Jonathan Kotch, and I'm a Professor of Maternal and Child Health at the Gillings School of Global Public Health of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Head Start directors and teachers, health service managers, and other staff sometimes have to make a decision whether to report a child whom they suspect may have been abused or neglected. This presentation is aimed at providing some guidance for how to make that decision. The objectives from our talk today are to define child maltreatment and subtypes of abuse and neglect and describe their frequency in the United States, to discuss the role of Head Start and Early Head Start in the identification and reporting of child abuse and neglect, and to understand that differences in state, territorial, or tribal laws and regulations may affect Head Start programs policies and procedures with respect to reporting child abuse and neglect.