Oregon Public Broadcasting

A new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds that the cost of dealing with one child who's been abused is more than $200,000 -- over the person’s lifetime.

As Kristian Foden-Vencil reports, it's the kind of sum that gives state health departments leverage when pushing for prevention programs.

The CDC says this is its first look at the financial cost of child abuse.

Researcher Jim Mercy found that when you add up things like health care, productivity losses, child welfare bills and the criminal justice costs, it gets very expensive.

But, he says, coming up with a number shows there's a cost to both action and inaction.

"If a particular program, home visitation program, actually prevents so many cases of child maltreatment, you can multiply that times the cost of those cases, and determine how much that program is saving in economic costs and that's really important information for policy maker," Mercy says.

Oregon sees about 11,000 cases of child abuse each year. The Human Services Department doesn't calculate lifetime costs, but it estimates each case costs about $30,000 to deal with.

The Department is presenting its new plan for keeping kids out of foster care to the legislature this month.