About Child Abuse
Written by Gillian Blair, Ph.D.
July 2008

Child abuse can have devastating short and long-term impacts on a child victim. Abuse can damage or interrupt a child's behavioral, emotional and/or social functioning. That is why young victims may display aggressive or sexually inappropriate behavior, or become withdrawn, fearful, anxious, and/or depressed, and in a few cases, suicidal. Other children may experience difficulty concentrating or behaving appropriately in school and other social settings.

Without competent intervention at the time abuse is uncovered, long-term problems can arise including delinquency, school failure, promiscuity, drug and alcohol abuse and difficulty forming and sustaining healthy relationships. In some cases victims may become perpetrators themselves. Unfortunately, the devastating impact of abuse often ripples beyond the child. While those effects vary, it is not uncommon to encounter families or caretakers experiencing significant economic hardships as the result of lost work hours spent navigating the court system or attempting to secure necessary mental health and social services.

Mission Kids was developed to help the child victim and members of his/her support system manage the impacts of abuse from the outset. Timely, competent, coordinated and holistic intervention is crucial in order to avert the very worst effects of childhood abuse.