Spring 2027

Child Abuse and Neglect

SOCWORK 646 examines child abuse and neglect, including physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, neglect, and exploitation, with attention to ethics, identity, poverty, risk assessment, and policy impacts on diverse children and families.

offering recorded2 credits
Recorded instructors · Spring 2027 Jeanne Ferguson

Summary

1 / 3

Recent recorded grades — Spring 2025: 3.87 GPA, 93.0% A/AB (n=43 letter grades); Fall 2025: 3.71 GPA, 83.3% A/AB (n=24 letter grades); Spring 2026: 3.92 GPA, 97.9% A/AB (n=48 letter grades).

What you’ll be able to do

  • Develop awareness of personal values and implicit biases related to child maltreatment.

  • Describe the complex nature of child maltreatment and how this complexity engenders ethical issues, both systemic and personal, and affects professional work with children and families.

  • Know the roles of historical social, racist, political, and institutional constructs as well as societal and cultural values intertwined with child maltreatment with a particular emphasis on those stereotypes related to social identities.

  • Understand the role of poverty in the etiology of child maltreatment.

  • Define common safety, risk and protective factors for assessing different forms of child maltreatment.

  • Describe the impact of child maltreatment and social welfare policies on diverse groups of children and families (e.g., from various racial, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds, people who identify as LGBTQ+, single parents, etc.).

  • Understand the history and power vested in the institutional systems that form the basis for governmental design and white supremacy in child welfare practice and structure in the U.S.

  • Identify gaps in knowledge within professions responsive to child maltreatment and understand the resulting implications for practice and advocacy with children and families and the systems that have been created to respond to their needs.

Source: UW Guide

Grade history

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average GPA
letter grades
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AB
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All recorded terms · compare terms & instructors

Prerequisites

Course map

Junior standing or declared in the Professional or Personal Enrichment Program

    • Junior standing
    • declared in the Professional or Personal Enrichment Program
    take one
SOCWORK 646

This is a best-effort interpretation; check the catalog requirements above.

Prerequisite text tree
  • Any of
    • Junior standing
    • declared in the Professional or Personal Enrichment Program

Professors

Spring 2027

Recent recorded grades — Spring 2025: 3.88 GPA, 95.0% A/AB (n=20 letter grades); Fall 2025: 3.71 GPA, 83.3% A/AB (n=24 letter grades); Spring 2026: 3.92 GPA, 96.2% A/AB (n=26 letter grades).

Historical instructors & teaching patterns

JEANNE FERGUSON is recorded teaching in Spring 2008, Fall 2009, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2023, Spring 2024, Spring 2025, Fall 2025, Spring 2026. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Calendar & sections

Spring 2027

Schedule loads here as you scroll.

SectionModeEnrolled / capacityWaitlist
LEC 001Classroom Instruction0 / 300
LEC 010Online Only0 / 300

Times are Central. Select a meeting for details; export includes recorded dates for the selected sections. Enrollment reflects scan time.

Meeting source records
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Student experience

the class

Recent recorded grades — Spring 2025: 3.87 GPA, 93.0% A/AB (n=43 letter grades); Fall 2025: 3.71 GPA, 83.3% A/AB (n=24 letter grades); Spring 2026: 3.92 GPA, 97.9% A/AB (n=48 letter grades).

difficulty & workload

No workload feedback recorded.

Topics

  • Types of child maltreatment, including physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, neglect, and exploitation.
  • Ethical and professional dimensions of working with children and families affected by maltreatment.
  • Historical, racial, political, and institutional constructs shaping child maltreatment and social identities.
  • Poverty and its role in the causes of child maltreatment.
  • Safety, risk, and protective factor assessment across different forms of child maltreatment.
  • Impact of child maltreatment and social welfare policies on diverse children and families.
  • Institutional systems, governmental design, and white supremacy in U.S. child welfare.
  • Professional knowledge gaps and implications for practice and advocacy.

Skills

  • Develop self-awareness of personal values and implicit biases related to child maltreatment.
  • Describe and analyze the complex nature of child maltreatment and associated ethical issues.
  • Analyze historical, social, racist, political, and institutional constructs and stereotypes related to social identities.
  • Explain the role of poverty in the etiology of child maltreatment.
  • Define and apply common safety, risk, and protective factors in assessing child maltreatment.
  • Evaluate the impact of child maltreatment and social welfare policies on diverse groups of children and families.
  • Critically examine the history and power of institutional systems in U.S. child welfare practice.
  • Identify knowledge gaps in child maltreatment response professions and connect them to practice and advocacy.

Grades

Latest available · Spring 2026— not enough history to project Spring 2027.

average GPA
A / AB grades
letter grades
Instructor

Grade distribution · % of letter grades

A
AB
B
BC
C
D
F

Grades over time

Through Spring 2026

More grade details Grade mix, volume & source data

Where this course fits relative to

Latest available grades · Spring 2026 · all course levels

GPA

Higher than % of other courses in this group.

Course GPAs · red marks this course’s range

letter grades

More recorded grades than % of other courses in this group.

Typical course in this group: letter grades.

About this comparison

1280 courses over the same term, each with at least 30 recorded letter grades. Cross-listed courses count once. GPA is not a measure of difficulty or teaching quality. The typical course is the median by recorded grade count; tied values are not counted as lower. Grade counts describe course scale, not unique students or typical section size.

Descriptions compare GPA with this group’s average: at least 0.20 higher or lower; otherwise close to average. Section size uses median recorded enrollment: small up to 30, mid-sized 31–99, large 100+. Lectures and discussion/lab sections are described separately.

Sources & history

UW–Madison

Catalog & offerings

Descriptions, prerequisites, and recorded course offerings.

Catalog observation history

Observations at scan time; dates do not imply when a catalog change took effect.

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Selected offering source records
SOCWORK 646 · Spring 2027

Child Abuse and Neglect

Recorded 2026-10-14
Raw records 
[
  {
    "run_id": "20261014T203208-0851c9a1",
    "semester": "1274",
    "observed_at": "2026-10-14 17:50:09.728220+00:00",
    "offering_id": "1274:896:017387",
    "course_id": "SOCWORK 646",
    "course_uid": "course_9dd0644d59906b4190565004",
    "term_id": "1274",
    "source_course_id": "017387",
    "source_subject_id": "896",
    "title": "Child Abuse and Neglect",
    "credits_min": 2,
    "credits_max": 2,
    "typically_offered": "Fall, Spring"
  }
]
Rate My Professors

Student reviews

Original comments behind the course and instructor summaries.

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Madgrades

Grade history

Recorded grade distributions by term, section, and instructor.

Explore recorded grades
Dataset & model

Recorded 2026-10-14

View the dataset on Hugging Face
Model outputs & technical records
Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B
LLM outputs across runs
Download part 1
Full model traces

Recorded model configuration, reasoning, and tool conversations.

Download part 1
Model & dataset provenance 
{
  "model": "Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B",
  "model_revision": "1d4bf0f2ff6012fd82039f2fa52739d0dd7c60c0",
  "task_version": "17",
  "output_id": "1b725bbb8869bb3b7d47aebf65677cffadd1ff737a812df9a81ddb8b69fc13d5",
  "requirements_status": "needs_review",
  "dataset_revision": "fc1811fa52e581ea57a35c0cf3343f8740a8ffbf",
  "observed_at": "2026-10-14 17:50:09.728220+00:00"
}