Since 2009, Awareness to Action has been helping adults and communities take action to prevent child sexual abuse. Today, Children’s Wisconsin and the Child Abuse & Neglect Prevention Board partner to bring training and guidance to individuals, organizations, and communities ready to take responsibility for keeping children safe. Through awareness, education, prevention, advocacy, and action, adults can take steps to protect the children in their lives.
For most adults, it is difficult to even think about the possibility that a child could be sexually abused. It is critical that adults build their awareness of the pervasiveness of child sexual abuse. Educating yourself on this topic will better prepare you to protect the children in your life.
Wisconsin’s price tag for helping and protecting abused and neglected children is staggering. The bills keep rolling in long after the children have grown up, as we pay for special education, law enforcement, juvenile justice, and mental health care to deal with the enduring scars of childhood maltreatment. In Wisconsin, the lifetime economic burden of substantiated child abuse, neglect, and child deaths in 2018 is estimated to exceed $4.5 billion (Klika et al., 2020). Preventing child sexual abuse before it occurs and responding appropriately when it does impacts children, families, and society.