Ethics and the Identification and Response to Child Abuse and Neglect

Abstract

Healthcare professionals, communities, and families face ethical issues as they struggle to make good choices on behalf of children who may be victims of child abuse and neglect. This chapter includes the identification of an ethical framework and its application to the following clinical issues: thresholds of mandatory reporting (including three sample cases), family as decision makers, end-of-life decision making, visitation and placement, funding priorities, research, and two emerging and controversial issues of reporting pregnant women whose substance use behaviors put their fetuses at risk and obesity as medical neglect.