Child Abuse Awareness Month

Nine years before the first April observance, Congress passed the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, enacted on January 31, 1974 as Public Law 93-247. It was the first time the federal government created a single, dedicated focus for preventing and responding to child abuse and neglect.

The law did more than name the problem. It set up the national clearinghouse that, decades later, operates as the Child Welfare Information Gateway, the service that now hosts the prevention month's official resources.

The month's most visible symbols did not come from Washington. The blue ribbon is widely attributed to 1989, when Bonnie Finney, a grandmother in Virginia, tied one to her vehicle's antenna in memory of her grandson. The small, personal gesture spread into a national emblem of remembrance.

Two decades later the imagery turned hopeful. In 2008, Prevent Child Abuse America, the country's oldest and largest prevention organization, introduced the pinwheel through its Pinwheels for Prevention campaign. The choice was deliberate: a pinwheel stands for the carefree childhood every child deserves, turning the month's focus from mourning toward the future it is trying to protect.