ABSTRACT
Childhood maltreatment is a major public health, human rights, ethical, legal and social problem, and a significant adversity faced by children and their families (Norman et al., 2012). The impact on an infant, child or adolescent depends on the characteristics of the maltreatment and the context in which it occurs. Age of onset, severity, chronicity, exposure to multiple forms of maltreatment, and relationship to the perpetrator are some of the pertinent characteristics of maltreatment. The availability of practical and emotional support, socioeconomic status, poverty, welfare dependency, long-term parental unemployment, discord in the parenting relationship, paucity of familial and other social supports, poor educational opportunities, criminality, living in a violent neighbourhood, dispossession and war are examples of important contextual factors. The layering of adversity and exposure to multiple types of maltreatment compound negative consequences.
