When we were given the task of choosing a topic to begin our research on, I could not help but find myself drawn to the issue of the child welfare system and how it works. I’ve always been curious as to the inner workings of the child welfare system. I wasn’t aware that I would encounter such a mass of information on several topics and subtopics. There was just so much information out there, possibly too much information for me to wrap my head around entirely. The one thing that kept coming up in all of my research was the topic of child abuse. How does one know how to recognize abuse? What can we do to stop and prevent the maltreatment of children? Who are those affected most? How does Child Protective Services determine cases of abuse or neglect? When is it necessary to intervene? I read information on Child Protective Services and the investigation process. I found out how the Foster Care system and court systems become involved in the process. In most cases, the child welfare system strives to keep families together as long as the best interest of the children is kept the top priority.
Too often, we read in the papers or watch on the evening news stories about adults being placed under arrest for the most heinous of actions towards children. Some cases are about teachers acting inappropriately with students, family members molesting young children, even babies dying at the hands of their own mothers. It’s definitely a very disturbing topic to look into.
When beginning this PSA assignment, I knew exactly the song I wanted to use. “Dear Mr. Jesus” was a popular song when I was a child. I felt that the voice of a child singing to Jesus, pleading to him and asking him why things like child abuse could possibly occur was a strong use of pathos in this assignment. The song certainly evoked a saddened emotion from within me. I debated using shocking images like that of the death of five month old Baby Brianna Lopez in 2002. It was the story of an infant abused at the hands of family members and the media firestorm that followed. As I searched for images on the internet, I encountered many disturbing photos of abused children. Often I had to stop the work that I was doing and regroup. I found going that route too disturbing to continue and opted for a more sympathetic effect. Instead I opted for images of scared and sad children. I chose images of children in emotional pain hoping that this would be enough to reach my audience.
The most common factor in all of the research of this project was intervention. To get results is for people to actually step and make the call to CPS or the Child Abuse Prevention hotline. I know that we all have busy lives. Some of us may not want to be bothered or want to pry into the lives of others. Morally, we cannot continue to turn a blind eye and let children go unprotected. They won’t speak up for themselves. Won’t you speak up for them?
