Effects of domestc violence on children

Children depend on their parents to provide a safe, stable and predictable environment. When their parents are involved in a battering relationship, attention is taken away from the children's needs and focused on the violence. The entire family becomes isolated. The mother and her children are busy with pacifying the batterer and trying to keep him from getting angry (Katz 157). Children in such a situation learn that they don't really matter. They learn that anger means losing control, and that men control women through violence.

Domestic violence is a continuous pattern of behavior by one person against someone in a close relationship with him or her A battere

Although police are typically the first professionals on the scene after a domestic violence incident, they have limited services to offer families. Law enforcement departments in several areas throughout the country have begun specific programs to improve interventions, including joint arrangements with mental health professionals who, when notified by police, appear at the scene of the domestic violence incident to assist the child and adult victims. Other strategies include police report documentation of a child's presence in the home, which automatically qualifies the child for state victims of crime funding for support services, and specialized training in child development for law enforcement personnel (“Open Arms Home”).

In an effort to address the potential harm to children exposed to domestic violence some policymakers are considering whether such exposure should considered psychological abuse. Opponents argue that such policies would create a clear command for CPS intervention in cases in which children may be psychologically harmed, and would hold batterers more accountable for the effects of their violence by making them child abusers. Opponents argue that such policies may discourage battered women from seeking help because they would be afraid of losing their children, and may further trouble an already overloaded child welfare system. Before child abuse laws are passed, a thorough investigation of their potential impact is needed. Child abuse laws do not give courts and agencies the flexibility needed to review the particular circumstances of each domestic violence case and determine suitable interventions based on that case-by-case analysis. In order to effectively address the wide range of circumstances existing within families with domestic violence, multiple, community-based response systems are needed that do not require court or CPS intervention (Katz 163).

Studies that examined age as a factor point out that exposure to domestic violence produced different developmental problems in children at different ages. Infants and toddlers who witness violence in their homes show extreme irritability, immature behavior, sleeping disorders, emotional suffering, fears of being alone, and decline in toileting and language skills. Exposure to trauma, especially violence in the family, interferes with a child's normal growth of trust and later investigative behaviors, which leads to the development of independence. The presence of symptoms in these young children is similar to posttraumatic stress disorder in adults, including continual experiencing of the traumatic event, avoidance, and lack of response (“Health Plus”).

Once women and children affected by domestic violence are identified, health care professionals must be able to either provide them with or refer them to appropriate services. Some health care institutions have routine screening for domestic violence and offer specialized domestic violence services in-house, such as safety planning and support groups for battered women or therapeutic interventions for the children. Mental health system approaches to children exposed to domestic violence vary from crisis interventions to individual, group, and family therapy programs. Crisis interventions can include mental health professionals providing on-site counseling

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