Francesca Reznik is a Master of Theological Studies (MTS) candidate at the Harvard Divinity School.
FXB: What do you see as the biggest overall challenges in Child Protection these days?
Francesca Reznik: The biggest challenge to child protection in the United States is the lack of widespread rights-based view, as well as legal obstacles.
FXB: How do you think academic and scholarly work can inform child protection approaches? Have you seen any good examples of this in the real world?
Francesca Reznik: I think academic work can have a large and important impact on child protection approached. If it were not for an undergraduate professor of mine, I would have never been interested in this field. Additionally, I have been able to directly apply skills I learned in my Master of Behavioral and Decision Sciences program while working on child marriage mitigation interventions.
FXB: Are there region specific challenges you see? How do you hope to see these addressed?
I have worked/studied child marriage domestically and internationally. I have worked with child sex abuse and neglect domestically. The biggest challenge with the latter is statute of limitation reform.