Social and Family Context and Its Relevance to Child Maltreatment Through Drugs

Abstract

Poverty, social chaos, isolation from medical and social care, low parental education and parental psychiatric illness increase the risk of child maltreatment, including maltreatment with drugs. Additionally, particular forms of drug maltreatment can arise in the context of some ethnic and subcultural practices and beliefs. Children living within recreational drug-using adult subcultures are at particular risk from early introduction to intoxicants and accidental or deliberate poisoning with them. Subcultures that promote errant health-related ideologies may pervert or block effective treatment of childhood chronic illness. Ethnic healing practices, employed without disease insight, can bring further harm to an ill child. Successful case management requires an approach that is adapted to the social context that has allowed drug maltreatment to emerge, to allow effective communication about the harm the child is suffering and to prevent further drug-related harm.