Tag: family planning

Charitable contributions to prevent abuse and neglect and protect children when it happens

by Marie Cohen

It’s the time of year when many commentators are recommending charities to which their readers can contribute. So I thought it might be useful to recommend some nonprofits whose work may prevent child abuse and neglect or that are working protect children against maltreatment when it happens. Finding such nonprofits is not easy. A charity called “Prevent Child Abuse America” devotes much of its funding to a program that has not been shown to prevent child maltreatment of any kind, while my very favorite child protection nonprofit does not even have child abuse or neglect in its name.

Protecting homeschooled kids

My favorite child protection nonprofit is the Coalition for Responsible Home Education (CRHE), a small but mighty nonprofit that advocates for legislation to protect homeschooled children, researches homeschooling outcomes and policy and develops resources for homeschooling parents, children, and those who want to help them. There have been many recent reports of children who were withdrawn from school after repeated calls by teachers to child abuse hotlines and then endured years of horrific abuse, often ending in death. In 2025, the Connecticut Office of the Child Advocate (OCA) reported that nearly a quarter of children withdrawn to be homeschooled were in families that had at least one report of abuse or neglect that was accepted for investigation by child protective services. But around the country, any attempt to regulate homeschools is met with massive resistance from well-funded organizations representing homeschoolers, spearheaded by the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLADA) as well as state homeschooling organizations. Standing against this behemoth is CRHE, with only two paid staff. CRHE spent less than $122,000 in 2024 compared to the $16.7 million spent by HSLADA. CRHE needs more resources to achieve its mission of making homeschool safe for all children.

State Child Advocacy Groups

One might expect every state to have a group that advocates for policies to make child welfare systems more protective of abused and neglected kids. But that is not the case. Some groups with names that include “child advocacy” or “child advocates” have actually bought into the prevailing “families first” ideology, acting as though CPS investigations are more traumatic than abuse or toxic neglect. Abused and neglected children in a few states, including Arizona, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Washington, are lucky enough to have an advocacy group that puts children first. New Jersey and New Mexico have foster parent support organizations that also advocate for improved child protection policies. I have been shocked to find no such a group in large states like California, New York, Texas and Florida, Illinois, or in states like Connecticut, where ideology has clearly trumped concerns about child safety and wellbeing. But please let me know if I have missed any organizations that are worthy of support.

Family planning

Prevention of child maltreatment before it starts is all the rage nowadays, and of course it would be fabulous if we know how to do it. Unfortunately there is not much evidence that any programs work to prevent child maltreatment. But we do know very well how to prevent pregnancy and birth As I have written more than once, teen pregnancy, larger numbers of children, and closer child spacing are associated with child abuse and neglect. Access to family planning is not what it should be. Longer-acting methods such as IUD’s and implants, may require a repeat clinic visit, be unavailable or not covered by insurance. I support Upstream, which works to integrate family planning into primary care so that when family planning clinics close (as has been sadly happening around the country), access to contraception is not diminished. When contraception is not used or fails, abortion is the last resort, and many experts have expressed fear that the restriction of access to abortion would increase abuse and neglect and entries into foster care. I support two abortion funds, and an entire list of funds can be found here.

High Quality Early Care and Education

Free high-quality early care and education (ECE) for low-income children, starting in infancy, protects children through multiple pathways, as I have written in the past. Participation in an ECE program with staff trained in detection of abuse and neglect ensures that more adults will be seeing the child and able to report on any warning signs of maltreatment. Taking young children away from home for the day provides respite to the parent, gives them time to engage in services, and may reduce their stress, which contributes to child maltreatment. Attending quality ECE all day improves child safety by reducing the amount of time the children spend with the parents. Quality ECE programs that involve the parents can also improve child safety by teaching parents about child development, appropriate expectations, and good disciplinary practices. They may also connect parents with needed resources in the community and help them feel less isolated. I support a Washington, DC program called Educare, which provides full-day, year-round educational childcare to children in poverty from the age of six months to five years of age. Educare DC is part of a national network of 25 schools that “serve as centers of excellence, where children flourish, families lead, and communities unite to shape systems that ensure every child has access to high-quality early education.”

Helping foster youth

Let us not forget about children who are already in foster care, where they often are neglected if not actually abused. Moreover, adults who have been in foster care are more likely to abuse and neglect their children, so supporting foster youth may help break that cycle. One of my favorite District of Columbia programs is called Family and Youth Initiative, which connects caring adults with teens who are in foster care or have aged out. Adults may choose to mentor a teen or young adult, become a weekend host, or become an adoptive parent. Monthly fun events brings adult and youth together to make the connections that may ultimately lead to deeper involvement. Perhaps there is a program like this in your area that needs support.

Prevent Child Abuse, America?

Having the words “Prevent Child Abuse” in its name does not mean that an organization actually prevents child abuse. Prevent Child Abuse America describes itself as “the nation’s oldest and largest organization committed to preventing child abuse and neglect before it happens.” PCAA runs a program called Healthy Families America (HFA), which has become the largest home visiting program in the country. Billed as a child abuse and neglect prevention program, HFA has never proven its efficacy at achieving that goal. PCAA, then called The National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse, reports that it launched HFA after it “learned of the success” of a home visiting program in Hawaii.” But as I wrote in a post called The Power of Wishful Thinking, that report of success was greatly exaggerated. It was based on a pilot study with no control group and a short follow-up period. When a randomized controlled trial was finally completed and the results released in 1999, it found no impact on abuse or neglect. Early HFA evaluation results, published in the same issue, also failed to find effects on abuse and neglect in three randomized trials. But the HFA juggernaut was already in motion. PCAA does not say what percentage of its budget goes to HFA, but twenty-three members of the 45-person staff work on Healthy Families America. PCAA had total expenditures of $15.6 million in 2024. According to its 2023 IRS Form 990, its CEO earned $339,770 and the 13 members of the executive suite tegether earned over $2 million.

It is not easy to find organizations whose work actually prevents child abuse and neglect or protects children when it happens. Because withdrawal from school is such a common recourse by abusers to isolate their victims from protective adults, my most highly recommended charity is a homeschoolers’ advocacy organization called the Coalition for Responsible Home Education. Because the antecedents of child abuse and neglect are so diverse and reach so far back in time, I recommend supporting organizations that encourage family planning and. provide high-quality early care and education. And I also recommend giving to the woefully small group of organizations that truly advocate for children who are abused or neglected. Unfortunately, the name of an organization is not a good indicator of its purpose or impact. An organization with “Prevent Child Abuse” in its name spends much of what it takes in on a program that has no documented effect on child maltreatment.

Child Welfare Monitor’s Recommended Nonprofits

This post was edited on Monday, December 22, to add friends of the Children, which advocates for abused and neglected children in Massachusetts.

Seven children and all she needed was a van: large families and the blindness of the child welfare establishment

By Marie Cohen

Working in the field of child protection, it is sometimes hard to avoid the feeling of living in some type of alternate reality, where bizarre statements are accepted and obvious questions go unasked. A case in point was a hearing on the Family First Prevention Services Act (FFPSA) that took place on May 22, 2024 under the leadership of Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, one of the original sponsors of the FFPSA. This hearing and the fundamental misunderstanding about FFPSA that it uncovered has already been discussed in a previous post on this blog. But today’s post focuses on one particularly jarring vignette–the story of a mother, her seven children, and a van–and what it means about how child welfare policy is made and discussed today.

David Reed, the Deputy Director of Child Welfare Services in Indiana, introduced the story of this family in his testimony. Reed was trying to illustrate how the provision of economic and concrete supports can make children safer–an application of the theory that much of what is called child neglect is actually only poverty, which has been questioned previously in this blog. Reed explained the Indiana Family Preservation Services (IFPS) model requires that “concrete support be provided to families when not doing so would result in children having to come into foster care.” He gave an example of how this worked in a specific case:

DCS was called about a neglect allegation involving a single mother who had seven children, all of whom were school-aged or younger. This mother worked but struggled financially. DCS was called because she was unable to take all seven of her children in rural Indiana to school and/or daycare at the same time so that she could go to work. She took them in “shifts” leaving some children home alone. This resulted in the neglect allegation and the opening of a DCS case. The provider delivering INFPS to this family recognized what this mom really needed to ensure that her children could all be transported together—a bigger vehicle—and used the concrete supports built into INFPS to purchase her a used minivan. That $3,000 van “solved’ the reason for DCS’ involvement and very likely prevented seven children from coming into foster care, which is exactly what most likely would have happened prior to INFPS.

There is something strange about this example. Is it really possible that this mother needed nothing but a van in order to parent her children adequately? The rarity of seven-child families and the association of such large families with family dysfunction, including abuse and neglect, raise doubts about this mother’s appropriateness as a poster child for the provision of material supports as a solution to child maltreatment.

The rarity of a seven-child family

Seven children is such unusual number that it raises questions about why this mother had so many children and how she managed to care for them. The National Center for Health Statistics has estimated that 28 percent of women aged 40-49 (near the end of their childbearing years) who had given birth to children had only one child, 40 percent had two children, 27 percent had three children, and only 13 percent had four or more children.1 It is likely that the proportion with seven or more children is a tiny fraction of that 13 percent–and that is a percentage of women aged 40-48. We don’t know this woman’s age, but the younger she is, the more of an outlier she is, and the more questions this story should raise about her needs.

The association of extremely large families with dysfunction

A family of seven is not just unusual; it is often a marker for family dysfunction and pathology. Despite the rarity of families with five or more children, anyone who has worked in child welfare or juvenile justice knows that children from extra-large families are overrepresented among their clients. These families frequently consist of mothers with children by multiple fathers, with both parents often suffering from mental illness and/or drug abuse, and domestic violence is commonly present. These mothers are often too disorganized or too influenced by drugs and alcohol to use contraception; moreover, they may consciously or unconsciously get pregnant to hold onto a new man. In its Study of the Root Causes of Juvenile Justice System Involvement,” the District of Columbia’s Criminal Justice Coordinating Council interviewed youth service providers with first-hand experience working with justice-involved and at-risk youth. Quotes from these interviews include:


A social service provider described one type of youth they see becoming justice involved, “You have those that the family may have multiple children and if mom has 13 kids and I’m the oldest and mom is high or dad is not involved, then they need to eat because they are looking at me. So, I need to be able to figure out how to get the next meal.

One interviewee who works with the juvenile justice system describedthe youth as coming from families with “Four, five, six, seven children” and growing up where there are “Three kids in a room, total bedlam all the time,” and as a result “They raise each other in the streets … because … a lot of times hanging out at home isn’t the pleasant environment.”

Research has consistently supported the association of larger families and closer birth spacing with higher rates of child abuse and neglect. In a groundbreaking 2024 article, Ahn et al report on their analysis of 20 years of data on almost 200,000 first-time mothers in California. They found a strong correlation between the number of children born to a mother and the likelihood that she would be reported to CPS in the next 20. The percentage of first-time mothers reported to CPS increased from 18.5 percent for mothers with one child to 25.4 percent for mothers with two children, 39.2 percent for mothers with three children, and 63.1 percent for mothers with four or more children.

Missing the Obvious?

Obviously not all large families are characterized by dysfunction and pathology. But common sense tells us that large family size can add to stress that in turn can lead to maltreatment. Moreover, having multiple children that one cannot afford may reflect other dysfunctions that may in turn be associated with child maltreatment. Yet somehow it never occurred to Senator Wyden or any of his colleagues at the hearing to ask whether this mother had any problems with mental health, drugs or domestic violence. Senator Wyden even mused aloud that federal law discriminates against large families, complaining that the child tax credit does not reimburse families based on the number of children they have! It appeared that he actually wanted to encourage unlimited childbearing regardless of the mother’s emotional or financial readiness.

And what about Mr. Reed, who actually provided this case as his only example of how material assistance can help resolve a child maltreatment report? According to the DCS website, Mr. Reed is a “licensed clinical social worker who has spent most of his career working with foster youth and children involved with the child welfare system.” One would think he had noticed that children from very large families were overrepresented among his clients. It is also worth noting, though slightly off-topic, that if this was the best example he could find, then his argument that many neglect cases can be solved with one-time material assistance appears to be in danger of collapsing for lack of support.

Perhaps one reason for Wyden’s and Reed’s blind spot is the current ideological tendency of what might be called the child welfare establishment, including the federal Administration on Children and Families, state leaders, and large and wealthy foundations and advocacy groups like Casey Family Programs. Many posts on this blog show how these groups’ focus on race and identity has restricted discussion about how to help prevent child abuse and neglect, among other problems. There seems to be a special taboo attached to any discussion about family size as it relates to child maltreatment, or any prescription for family planning as part of the solution. This taboo likely stems at least in part from our country’s shameful history of attempting to restrict childbearing by Black and poor women through means including forced sterilization and attempts to mandate that welfare recipients use an early injectable contraceptive called Norplant. But when efforts to be sensitive to past trauma to specific groups prevents the implementation of programs to improve the lives of at-risk children, it is time to set taboos aside.

What could be achieved by seeing extra-large families through clear eyes rather than a lens that is distorted by bias? Frontline workers faced with this type of client could look a little harder to see if the lack of a van was the real issue. Even if it was, requiring the mother to adopt one of today’s safe, long acting contraceptives in return for the gift of a van would hardly be unreasonable. In general, incorporating voluntary family planning, perhaps as a condition of receiving desired benefits, into family case plans might be a good start. Senator Wyden might not know this, but a new pregnancy for a mother who is trying to get her children back from foster care is one of the frequent setbacks observed by front-line workers.

The failure to regard unusually large numbers of children as a possible sign of pathology may reflect a genuine innocence about conditions in low-income urban and rural communities–conditions that are perfectly known to people in those communities and those who work there, but perhaps not to a US Senator like Wyden or his colleagues. A more cynical view is that self-imposed oblivion is needed to stay on the right side of advocacy groups and foundations that dominate the mainstream discourse on child welfare and provide funding to state and local agencies that are willing to toe the line. Whether it is ignorance or fear of losing the support of interest groups, national and local leaders’ disregard of the perils of repeated unplanned childbearing is hurting the very children these leaders claim they want to help.

  1. There is an error in the posted PDF of this report. The percentage of all women aged 40-49 who gave birth to three children was given as 2.4 percent instead of 22.4 percent. This was confirmed by an email to Marie Cohen from Brian Tsai, Public Affairs Specialist, Center for Disease Control and Prevention, November 21, 2024. ↩︎

Primary prevention of child maltreatment should include family planning

familyplanning
Image: mattapanchc.org

Primary prevention is the phrase of the day in child welfare. As Jerry Milner, Associate Commissioner of the Children’s Bureau of the Department of Health and Human Services put it in a letter attached to the program for the recent NCCAN conference, “Right now, our child welfare system typically responds only after families have lost much of their protective capacity and children have been harmed. We need to create environments where families get the support they need before harm occurs. This calls for an intensified focus on primary prevention and a reconceptualization of the mission and functioning of child welfare systems.”

Primary prevention refers to the prevention of abuse and neglect before it occurs through universal approaches. This is distinguished from secondary prevention, which focus on those at risk for a problem like child maltreatment, or tertiary prevention, which focuses no preventing on recurrence of a problem that has already occurred. (The much touted Family First Act allows funds to be used only for tertiary prevention, which is perhaps why it was not mentioned at the conference and why the Children’s Bureau has been dragging its feet on issuing guidance to states and counties.)

Yet, discussions of primary prevention (including those at NCCAN) often leave out the most primary of all–encouraging people to delay childbearing until they are ready to be parents, to wait at least 18 months between pregnancies, and to curb the overall number of children they have.

The connection between teen pregnancy and child maltreatment is well-known, but adolescence is lasting longer than ever, and even mothers aged 20 to 25 are more likely to abuse or neglect their children than older mothers. California researchers Emily Putnam-Hornstein and Barbara Needell found that babies born to mothers who were under 20 were twice as likely to be reported to child protective services (CPS) by the child’s fifth birthday as those born to mothers 30 or older. Among children referred to CPS by age five, almost 18 percent were born to a teenage mother and 50 percent were born to a mother younger than 25. Among children with no CPS contact, only 8 percent were teen births and 30 percent were born to a mother under 25.

Less well-known or discussed is the consistent evidence that larger family size and closer child spacing are correlated with child maltreatment. The Fourth National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect found that households with four or more children had a maltreatment rate of 21.2 per thousand, compared with 11.9 per thousand for families with two children. Putnam-Hornstein and Needell found that children who fell third or higher in the birth order were more than twice as likely to be the subject of a maltreatment report as first children.

Not surprisingly, research suggest that the interaction between birth order and maternal age creates the highest risk for a child maltreatment fatality. A study using linked birth and death certificates for all births in the U.S. between 1983 and 1991 found that the most important risk factors for infant homicide were a second or subsequent infant born to a mother less than 17 years old. These infants had 11 times the risk of being killed compared with a first infant born to a mother 25 years old or older. A second or subsequent infant born to 17 to 19-year-old mother had nine times the homicide risk of the first infant born to the older mother.

And setting the research aside for a moment, anyone who has worked for or with CPS, or in foster care, knows the prevalence of larger families with closely-spaced children in the system, often with a mother that started childbearing as a teen. This blogger has observed the same pattern as a member of the District of Columbia’s Child Fatality Review Committee, and it has been observed in other jurisdictions as well.1  

If it is not the lack of research, why do supporters of child maltreatment prevention fail to include family planning and contraception in their suggestions? Judging from the reactions this blogger has received when raising this issue,  it is our country’s shameful history of attempting to restrict childbearing by women of color through means including forced sterilization and the promotion of birth control methods like Norplant.

But advocates for children of color should not allow this racist history to prevent thinking clearly about what is best going forward. There are few if any policies that could be more helpful to the future of black children and the elimination of racial disproportionality in foster care placement than ensuring that black women have access to the most effective methods of contraception so that they can determine their own futures.

Family planning and contraception need to be included in the discussion about child maltreatment prevention. Research suggests that media messaging, better information, and use of more effective contraceptive methods contributed to the drastic decline in the teen birth rate from 61.8  per thousand in 1991 to 18.8 per thousand in 2017. However, it is still high among certain populations, including Black (27.5 per thousand) and Hispanic (28.9 per thousand) teens.

We now have safe, effective long-lasting reversible methods of contraception. Known as LARC’s, for “Long Lasting Reversible Contraceptives, these methods provide long-lasting contraception without requiring action by the user. They include IUD’s and contraceptive implants. But LARC’s are not universally available, and even when available, women desiring these methods may have to return for a second appointment. Moreover, health care professionals are often not trained to address myths and misconceptions concerning longer-lasting contraception. The Colorado Family Planning Initiative improved access to LARC’s by training public health providers, supporting family planning clinics, and removing financial barriers. As a result of this initiative, the state’s teen birth rate was cut in half in just five years.

The Colorado initiative could be adopted nationwide, combined with a mass media campaign to explain the benefits to both children and parents of planning and spacing of pregnancies and births. We know that such campaigns can change people’s health-related behavior, as in the case of smoking cessation and HIV prevention. 

The omission of pregnancy prevention from the primary prevention toolkit is particularly upsetting because very few programs have been shown to be effective in preventing abuse or neglect after a baby is born. Jerry Milner and other proponents of primary prevention in child welfare argue that we should help families before they maltreat their children. How much more efficient and humane it would be to postpone the birth of children who are likely to be maltreated and help troubled adults address their problems before they have a first or subsequent child rather than afterwards?

  1. Testimony of Dr. Angela Diaz, CECANF, August 6-7, 2015), https://slideblast.com/cecanf-nyc-meeting-transcriptfinal_59767e8e1723ddc0e0eedc5d.html ↩

 

 

 

Family Planning: An Overlooked Approach to Child Maltreatment Prevention

LARCs
Image: Policy Lab

 

April is child abuse prevention month, and many organizations are offering recommendations on how to prevent child maltreatment. Typically these recommendations do not include one approach that may promise the most success–prevention of teenage, unplanned and closely spaced pregnancies.

Sarah Brown, founder of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy (now Power to Decide) gave a lecture in December 2015 that brought home this unfortunate omission. She reported being struck by “the total absence of pregnancy planning, spacing and prevention in virtually all discussions of how to improve overall child and family well being.” As she put it, many groups concentrate on services after the child is born, but “rarely do they mention the time when decisions are made about when with whom and under what circumstances to become pregnant or cause a pregnancy.”

There is no lack of research on the connection between pregnancy timing and child maltreatment. There is a strong association between child maltreatment and the mother’s age at the birth of the child. California researchers Emily Putnam-Hornstein and Barbara Needell found that babies born to mothers who were under 20 were twice as likely to be reported to child protective services (CPS) by the child’s fifth birthday as those born to mothers 30 or older. Among children referred to CPS by age five, almost 18 percent were born to a teenage mother and 50 percent were born to a mother younger than 25. Among children with no CPS contact, only 8 percent were teen births and 30 percent were born to a mother under 25.

There is also strong evidence that family size and child spacing are correlated with child maltreatment. Putnam-Hornstein and Needell found that children who fell third or higher in the birth order were more than twice as likely to be the subject of a report as first children. Moreover, a large study published in 2013 found that women who gave birth to another child within 24 months of the previous child were 80 percent more likely to have a substantiated CPS report.

And research suggest that the interaction between birth order and maternal age  creates the highest risk for a child maltreatment fatality. A study using linked birth and death certificates for all births in the U.S. between 1983 and 1991 found that the most important risk factors for infant homicide were a second or subsequent infant born to a mother less than 17 years old. These infants had 11 times the risk of being killed compared with a first infant born to a mother 25 years old or older. A second or subsequent infant born to 17 to 19-year-old mother had nine times the homicide risk of the first infant born to the older mother.

And setting the research aside for a moment, anyone who has worked for or with CPS, or in foster care, knows the prevalence of larger families with closely-spaced children in the system, often with a mother that started childbearing as a teen. The same pattern has been observed among families that experience a child fatality.1 

It is truly unfortunate that the number of children in families that are involved in child welfare is not among the data required to be reported to the federal government by states. It is highly plausible that if these data were collected we would see a big difference.

If it is not the lack of research, why do supporters of child maltreatment prevention fail to include family planning and contraception in their suggestions? In part, Sarah Brown says of child advocates in general, it may be that they simply don’t think of it. But in large part, says Brown, it is because they fear getting in trouble and becoming mired in controversy about abortion or sex outside marriage. In addition to the issues raised by Brown, it is likely that others avoid this topic because of the shameful legacy of past attempts to control the population of minority groups.

But people who care about the future of African American children should not allow this racist history to prevent thinking clearly about what is best going forward. There are few if any policies that could be more helpful to the future of black children and the elimination of racial disproportionality in foster care placement than ensuring that black women have access to the most effective methods of contraception so that they can determine their own futures.

Family planning and contraception need to be included in the discussion about child maltreatment prevention. We have made great progress in teen pregnancy prevention. The teen birth rate has fallen dramatically from 59.9 per thousand in 1990 to 24.2 per thousand in 2014. While research suggests that reality TV shows and the last economic recession contributed to the decline in teenage pregnancy,  better information about preventing pregnancy and the availability of more effective methods have doubtless contributed to the drastic decline.

The Colorado Family Planning Initiative, initiated with the help of a private funder, improved access to highly effective methods of contraception by training public health providers, supporting family planning clinics and removing the barriers to obtaining Long Acting Reversible Contraceptives (LARC’s). As a result of this initiative, the state’s teen birth and abortion rates were cut in half in just five years, with big financial savings to the state. Because younger mothers are so much more likely to abuse or neglect their children, this initiative should yield lower maltreatment rates now and into the future.

Upstream USA, a nonprofit organization, hopes to expand the Colorado program nationwide, starting with Delaware. Delaware’s Contraceptive Access Now (CAN) is a partnership between Upstream and the State of Delaware to decrease the incidence of unintended pregnancy. CAN works to ensure that all women get same-day access to all methods of birth control, free or at a nominal cost. They are also working to eliminate administrative and reimbursement barriers so that women can access LARC’s immediately after giving birth, taking advantage of a crucial opportunity to provide this critically important service.

Imagine if these initiatives could be expanded nationwide, combined with a public information campaign to explain the benefits of planning, spacing and timing pregnancy for both children and their parents.

Few child welfare experts have noted the link between family planning and child welfare. One of the few is Judge Patricia Martin of Illinois, a member of the Commission to Eliminate Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities (CECANF). Martin included teen pregnancy prevention, especially in high-poverty neighborhoods and among youth in foster care, as one of the recommendations in her dissenting report.

Family planning experts also rarely if ever mention the potential of their programs to reduce child maltreatment. The more immediate benefits of increased opportunities for women and reduction in taxpayer funding for cash assistance and other services are more than enough to justify spending on helping women plan their childbearing.

The link between child abuse prevention and family planning is clear. I hope that the word will spread and that child welfare advocates and family planning advocates can work together for increased resources to help young people plan their childbearing based on their readiness to be parents.

  1. Testimony of Dr. Angela Diaz, CECANF, August 6-7, 2015), https://slideblast.com/cecanf-nyc-meeting-transcriptfinal_59767e8e1723ddc0e0eedc5d.html ↩