Prevention and Treatment of Child Abuse and Neglect: Policy Directions for the Future. Hearing before the Subcommittee on Select Education of the Committee on Education and the Workforce. House of Representatives, One Hundred Seventh Congress, First Session (October 17, 2001).

These transcripts present testimony from the second hearing held on the reauthorization of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA). Discussed at this hearing were total financial costs of child abuse and neglect, cost savings from prevention programs, the role of infant safe havens, and parents' rights. Representative Robert Scott identified problems in the current system. Testimony was heard from: (1) the state executive director of the Georgia Council on Child Abuse, focusing on the need for a public health approach involving more prevention and public awareness campaigns and the benefits of corporate partnerships; (2) the founder and president of an infant abandonment safe haven program, describing programs to facilitate transferring unwanted infants to parents who want them and to reduce the likelihood that a woman will endanger her child's life; (3) the counsel for the Home School Legal Defense Association, making suggestions to build in protections for parents' due process constitutional rights into CAPTA; (4) the director of the early childhood division of the Northern Virginia Family Service, discussing cost effectiveness of prevention programs such as Healthy Families America; and (5) a professor of psychology from James Madison University discussing the link between child abuse/neglect and criminality and psychiatric disorder; this testimony also points out the impact of CAPTA-funded training for mental health professionals and others, and the need for continued and higher funding levels for CAPTA. Written statements of the witnesses, written responses of Joann Grayson to a representative's questions, and written testimony by the Voice for Adoption organization are appended. (KB)