Rising Child Violence: Addressing the Complex Situations and Challenges.
Situations increasingly difficult to 'repair
Disturbing Surge in Child Violence: An Alarming Trend in England.
Fernanda Almeida is the regional technical team coordinator for the Northern region of the National Commission for the Promotion of the Rights and Protection of Children and Young People (CNPDPCJ), and while she cannot provide an exact number of cases as there are 'no overall data' yet, she stated that 'what is perceived through the follow-up with the CPCCJ is that the situations are more complex, in addition to an increase in them'.
'The current moment we live in, post-pandemic and a war, has brought great complexity to families in meeting basic needs and meeting the needs of the children themselves, which often leads to situations of neglect and lack of supervision.
There is also a more complicated mistreatment and situations that are more difficult to address and repair,' clarified the coordinator of the team that monitors the CPCCJ in the five districts of the North: Bragança, Vila Real, Porto, Viana do Castelo, and Braga.
Saying that 'there is an idea that mistreatment is only when there is physical or emotional abuse,' Fernanda Almeida mentioned that there are various types of mistreatment, including school absenteeism, neglect, sexual abuse, among others.
The problem is that 'the problems are much more complex.'
Therefore, the factors associated with mistreatment are also more 'complicated,' and there is 'difficulty' in attending to such 'essential' things as having time to play with children. In a world where parents need to earn money to survive, Fernanda Almeida also lamented that 'children are in school full-time,' which ends up hindering their growth.
'Even the support network for parents is no longer the same as it used to be. In my generation, my grandparents were the support network for my parents, and my parents were my support network.
But that network is dissolving because people have to work more and more, even at advanced ages,' she explained, stating that the lack of time that children have to be children 'generates a lot of stress in families and a lot of difficulty in meeting needs, and certainly, in some situations, children become more vulnerable.
