The Ministry of Education would next month provide schools a checklist to help teachers identify signs of child abuse, Minister of Education Pan Wen-chung (潘文忠) said yesterday.
The list would include indicators of child abuse that could be observed in a child’s physical appearance, behavior and in their caretakers, K-12 Education Administration official Lin Liang-ching (林良慶) told a meeting of the Education and Culture Committee at the Legislative Yuan in Taipei.
For example, an abused child could be irritable, have mood swings or wear long sleeves in warm weather to conceal wounds, he said.
Photo: Chen Kuan-pei, Taipei Times
The checklist is meant as a guideline to help teachers identify child abuse victims and enable government intervention as soon as possible, he added.
Ministry of Health and Welfare statistics showed that 56.28 percent of child abuse cases take place at the child’s home, of which 40 to 45 percent are inappropriate punishment by their caretakers.
The number of abused children for whom the health ministry opened intake cases reduced significantly from 19,174 in 2012 to 3,046 in the first three quarters of last year, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Ko Chih-en (柯志恩) said during a question-and-answer session with Pan.
“Has the number of abused children really decreased?” she asked. “The drop from nearly 20,000 cases per year to only 3,000 is disproportionate — there must be cases that were not taken into account.”
Statistics showed that children under seven account for more than 30 percent of all abused children, yet “they are least capable of expressing what happened to them,” Ko said.
Preschool teachers could help spot child abuse, but they rarely report it, she said.
Last year, preschool teachers reported 107 cases of child abuse, accounting for only 0.24 percent of all child abuse reports, she said.
The number recorded in 2017 was equally low at 117 reports, or 0.19 percent of the total, she said.
“The purpose of the checklist is to serve as a reminder to teachers who may have been otherwise unaware of child abuse,” Pan said.
Teachers are required to report to related government departments within 24 hours after noticing child abuse, he added.
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