Denitions of Child Abuse/Neglect (cont.)
• Abandonment. The person responsible for the child’s health and welfare leaves a child with an agency,
person or other entity (e.g., MDHHS, hospital, mental health facility, etc.) without:
• Obtaining an agreement with that person/entity to assume responsibility for the child.
• Cooperating with the department to provide for the care and custody of the child.
• Medical Neglect - Failure to seek, obtain, or follow through with medical care for the child, with the
failure resulting in or presenting risk of death, disgurement or bodily harm or with the failure
resulting in an observable and material impairment to the growth, development or functioning of the
child.
Threatened Harm
A child found in a situation where harm is likely to occur based on:
• A current circumstance (such as home alone, domestic violence, drug house).
• A historical circumstance (such as a history of abuse/neglect, a prior termination of parental rights
or a conviction for crimes against children) unless there is evidence found during the investigation
that past issues have been successfully resolved.
Person Responsible
A person responsible for a child’s health or welfare is any of the following:
• A parent, legal guardian, or person 18 years of age or older who resides for any length of time in the same
house in which the child resides.
• A nonparent adult. A nonparent adult is a person 18 years of age or older and who, regardless of the
person’s domicile, meets all of the following criteria in relation to the child:
• Has substantial and regular contact with the child;
• Has a close personal relationship with the child’s parent or with another person responsible for the
child’s health or welfare; and
• Is not the child’s parent or a person otherwise related to the child by blood or afnity to the third
degree (parent, grandparent, great-grandparent, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, great aunt, great uncle,
niece, nephew).
• A nonparent adult who resides in any home where a child is receiving respite care. Note: This includes
nonparent adults residing with a child when the complaint involves sexual exploitation (human trafcking).
• An owner, operator, volunteer, or employee of one or more of the following:
• A licensed or registered child care organization.
• A licensed or unlicensed adult foster care family home or adult foster care small group home.
• Child care organization or institutional setting.
Human Trafcking (Sex trafcking victim)
A sex trafcking victim is dened as an individual subject to the recruitment, harboring, transportation,
provision, obtaining, patronizing, or soliciting of a person for the purposes of a commercial sex act or who is a
victim of a severe form of trafcking in persons in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud,
or coercion, or in which the person induces to perform the act is under 18 years old.
Labor Trafcking Victim
Labor trafcking is the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or
services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude,
peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.
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