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In What Ways Might Poverty Contribute to Maltreatment?

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Theoretical and Empirical Insights into Child and Family Poverty

Part of the book series: Children’s Well-Being: Indicators and Research ((CHIR,volume 10))

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Abstract

There are known associations between poverty and maltreatment and particularly neglect, but it is difficult to establish any clear causal relationship. This chapter considers the way that poverty might, or might not, have an impact in cases of maltreatment that are so serious that the child dies or is seriously harmed as a consequence. A transactional ecological approach is used to selectively re-analyse information about neglect collected from over 800 reviews undertaken in England where a child had died or been seriously harmed through abuse or neglect. The way that poverty acts as one of a number of stress factors in parenting and in the child’s experience is examined as is the impact of poverty on the safety of the child’s physical living conditions. A sixfold typology of circumstances linked to the catastrophic neglect is discussed and professional responses to the family and to poverty are considered in turn.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Research on Children and Families, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK

    Marian Brandon

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  1. Marian Brandon
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Correspondence to Marian Brandon .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Social Sciences, University of New South Wales, Kensington, New South Wales, Australia

    Elizabeth Fernandez

  2. Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

    Anat Zeira

  3. Fondazione Emanuela Zancan Onlus, Centro Studi e Ricerca Sociale, Padova, Italy

    Tiziano Vecchiato

  4. Fondazione Emanuela Zancan Onlus, Centro Studi e Ricerca Sociale, Padova, Italy

    Cinzia Canali

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Brandon, M. (2015). In What Ways Might Poverty Contribute to Maltreatment?. In: Fernandez, E., Zeira, A., Vecchiato, T., Canali, C. (eds) Theoretical and Empirical Insights into Child and Family Poverty. Children’s Well-Being: Indicators and Research, vol 10. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17506-5_16

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