A Survey about the Awareness Level of the Child Abuse and Neglect among the Socioeconomically LowLevel Families

ABSTRACT Purpose: The purpose of this survey is examining the awareness level of families with low socio-economic status about child abuse and neglect. Method: A survey (Abuse Awareness Scale) was conducted among the 137 children’ parents who dwell in the Ankara city and intend to apply to social aid system. In order to test whether there is a significant difference in terms of sociodemographic characteristics of the participants, T-test among the parametric tests and Anova methods were used. Findings: A significant relevance was detected between the scores of the parents on the scale and their education level and marital status. But apparently, there was no significant relationship between age and duration of receiving social aids. Result: In this research, it was found out that the level of child abuse awareness of the families with the lower socio-economic level was not important for the age of the parents. But the education level of the participants increased, awareness of the parents about child abuse and neglect also has increased. Furthermore, results revealed that single parents are less aware of the child abuse and neglect, and there was no significant relevance between the level of awareness of child abuse and duration of receiving social aids of the families