Community Healing: Child Maltreatment in Hilo

Abstract

Every year, child maltreatment costs the United States billions of dollars in healthcare costs1. Child maltreatment has life‐long physical, psychological, and behavioral consequences for the victims. This problem is particularly a problem in the County of Hawai‘i, where the majority of residents believe child abuse is a major problem in the community and almost half of adult residents know someone who was abused as a child, or suffered abuse themselves2. This project looks at child maltreatment in Hawai‘i, with a focus on the Hilo area in the County of Hawai‘i. The goal of this research is to come to an understanding of how building design can affect child maltreatment risk, and how it can be used to both prevent and heal the effects of child maltreatment in families. This research will look at child maltreatment in the country in general, child maltreatment in Hawai‘i traditionally and historically, child maltreatment in Hawai‘i in the present and future, how the built environment effects people, and design parameters from related types of buildings. These separate topics led to the same conclusion of what elements need to be incorporated into the design of a building in order to ensure the well‐being of building users. These design elements are: a connection with nature, use of daylight, balance between encouraging social interaction and privacy, security, flexibility and transformability of spaces, and user control of their environment.