Survey of Military Services' Programs on Child Abuse and Neglect

The Army Child Advocacy Program is an installation or community command program designed to prevent, control, and treat child abuse or neglect. GAO recently completed a survey of the Program in Europe. In addition to field visits, GAO obtained information concerning 12 more military communities from participants at a child advocacy seminar.

Program officials generally believed that there were not enough medical or social service resources within the military to adequately address child abuse or neglect problems. In many host countries, there is limited access to local community resources to augment the service resources. Medical commands have shouldered overall program responsibilities which should have been handled by the Deputy Chief of Staff for personnel. Education and publicity efforts are usually directed at those likely to encounter child abuse rather than at the community population. Prevention and identification efforts are undertaken by teams whose members have child advocacy as a part-time duty. Each of the communities had procedures to respond to reported child abuse and neglect incidents 24 hours a day. However, in three of the communities visited, no program official was designated to respond to reported cases after duty hours. Child maltreatment cases were generally handled as treatable medical or psychological problems and not crimes subject to disciplinary action. Reports are forwarded inconsistently and long after cases have been evaluated and lack consistent and complete data.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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