This op-ed was written by Deborah Merrifield, past commissioner of the Erie County Department of Social Services, who is now executive director of the Family Help Center and chairwoman of WECAN, Western New York Ending Child Abuse and Neglect.
The analysis of 10 years of child fatalities and my own 34 years of child welfare experience lead me to recommend using a public health prevention model with priority given to children from birth to 3 years and their parents, and to teens who are the community’s soon-to-be parents. A comprehensive public health approach could be very powerful in a partnership with schools, early childhood education providers and primary care doctors, especially pediatricians. These are the settings where there is the most potential access to all families with young children and to teens.
A review of current science and many studies strongly point to the first three years of life plus the child’s experience in the womb as a highly changeable time for the brain, when our neurological, immune and endocrine systems are just getting set up chemically and physically. The roots of later violence and/or physical and mental health conditions can often begin during this stage of human development.
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