Spell out your preventive solution at the top of the communication. People often believe the only solutions to child abuse lie within the legal system. To make a case for prevention—a vague word on its own—we need to describe actual prevention activities and explain how and why they are successful. Connect the dots for people so that prevention programs make sense to them.

Include a clear definition of the problem, its causes, and solutions while making your case for prevention. Be careful not to focus on people in the abusive situation, but rather on the predictable situations in which abusive behavior happens: poverty, divorce, addiction, stress, limited education, job loss, social isolation, etc. Instead of referencing parents, talk about the families that children live in and the pressures surrounding them. Prevention programs connect families to needed resources and ensure healthy development of children. Such programs are likely to engage public interest and support more than those perceived to help “bad” parents.

Avoid vivid, dramatic details and don’t focus on the worst cases, nor on sexual abuse as the dominant form of abuse. These approaches only serve to reinforce people’s understanding of abuse as an exclusively criminal issue. When exposed primarily to dramatic cases (which the media favor), people tend to conclude that abuse is inevitable because it involves bad people who are bad parents. The solution that makes sense to them, then, is to remove children from danger and punish those responsible.

Whenever possible, tell stories of efficacy—demonstrate how programs and policies have worked for the benefit of children by predicting and addressing abusive situations before they happened. Doing so increases the idea of situations, not people, as the appropriate focus for child abuse interventions.

Forget the numbers for explaining the prevalence of abuse. People believe it is a big problem and they tend to overstate it numerically. It is not a good idea to pair prevention activities and announcements with the release of your state's annual child abuse statistics. Remember that if you give these numbers to the media, the story will almost certainly lead with them.

Stop fighting the fight we've won: People understand the seriousness of child abuse. It is time to shift to deepening citizen's understanding of the problem and its solutions. We believe child abuse prevention is not receiving adequate public support NOT because people aren't outraged by the issue, but because they STOP at outrage and are not aware of credible solutions beyond reporting.

Try getting multiple actors into the picture and avoid communications that imply that abuse is only a family issue, solved by outsiders who "save" or "punish." Try to broaden the discussion to the larger community.

Don't issue confusing or conflicting calls to action such as asking outsiders to both befriend and report troubled families. The message should either be about prevention—family support, parent education, family-friendly policies, child development initiatives—or reporting. Promoting support asks the reader for empathy, while issuing calls for people to report asks for vigilance or judgment.

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