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Every April, children’s hospitals across the country have pinwheel displays for National Child Abuse Prevention Month. A blue pinwheel is typically “planted” for each child abuse visit at their facility that year. The number of pinwheels in a single display can be in the thousands. It’s a shocking visual and it’s often noted how there seem to be more pinwheels with each passing year.

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Child abuse is absolutely heartbreaking and unacceptable. Also heartbreaking and unacceptable are the ways that some child abuse pediatricians and their teams are taking resources away from the children who truly need them and instead, are tearing apart innocent families by hastily labeling abuse without thoroughly diagnosing children.

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Parents Behind The Pinwheels shares the stories of families who have been impacted by the medical misdiagnosis of abuse by child abuse pediatricians and their teams. When these families see the blue pinwheels displayed for their own children, it’s gut wrenching because they know the nightmares they’ve lived through to lead to that pinwheel “representing” their child. They remember how a trip to the ER for medical care suddenly led to being in a situation they never could’ve imagined. Being accused, interrogated. They remember their children being poked and prodded and held down on tables for non-accidental trauma workup. They remember the fear of realizing they had little ability to protect their child from becoming part of a broken system. They remember realizing the terrifying amount of power that these child abuse teams hold.

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We need your help to share these families’ stories, to spread awareness, and prevent this from happening to others. We need your help to raise awareness about medical conditions that can mimic abuse, to demand more oversight of and accountability from children’s hospitals’ child abuse teams, to push for better checks and balances in these investigations, and to make sure valuable time and resources are spent on the kids who truly need them.

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Follow Parents Behind The Pinwheels on TikTok @behind.the.pinwheels