findings from the pieces project: regional overview of ...an initiative of the european child safety...

Regional overview of child injuries

Joanne Vincenten European Child Safety Alliance, EuroSafe

EURO Regional Consultation to discuss

the World Report on child and adolescent injury prevention

July 2-3, 2007 Amsterdam, The Netherlands

An initiative of the European Child Safety Alliance

PIECESPolicy Investigation in Europe on Child Endangerment and Support

Findings from the PIECES project: Assessment and Follow-up

procedures

Maria Roth, Imola Antal BABES-BOLYAI UNIVERSITY

CLUJ-NAPOCA



Policy context PIECES 3 research •  The UN and EU recommendations for the

improvement of reporting and follow-up services within the integrated child protection systems, based on adequate human and financial resources and on current scientific knowledge.

•  Council of Europe recommendation (2009) that children should be actively engaged in their protection and the state and other appropriate actors should listen carefully to children’s views

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Goals To gather expert views on reporting and follow-up

of cases of violence against children, in order to:

•  identify best practices that can be used in European countries;

•  Identify gaps in the advancement to child friendly, responsive, professionalized and evidence-based services;

•  Reveal the areas for further common European research to be funded by EU

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Questionnaire and respondents Contains 50 questions grouped in 5 themes: I. Reporting systems for violence against children. II. Mandatory reporting and consequences (what is

required to be reported and by whom); III. Investigation, risk assessment; IV. Follow-up for cases of violence against children; V. Training of professionals working in referral and

follow-up services. Respondents: part of PIECES purposive snowball

sampling involving volunteer experts from all European countries

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Referral systems •  In 90% of the respondent countries referral services

are there for children and others, in all localities. •  There are exceptions

–  in Belgium and Spain, where reporting is possible only in cities, not rural localities.

–  in Spain children can make referrals on telephone and in Austria neither children nor family members can make referrals, only specialists.

•  In 70% of the countries it is possible to report online. •  Children’s helplines exist and they are free of charge in

all of the countries. •  On-going promotion, awareness campaigns, or other

initiatives to promote referral services or helplines are organised in 76.47% of the 17 countries.



Referral services as part of the Integrated Child Protection System •  Referral services are regularly evaluated in six out of

the 17 countries providing a response (42.85%) (UK, Spain, France, Romania, Denmark and Lithuania), and not regularly evaluated in 8 countries.

•  Evaluation reports are available in three countries out of the six that responded (two from UK): –  UK: The Munro Review of Children Protection (three

separate reports), Davies and Ward (2012); –  UK: OFSTED inspections of services: https://

www.gov.uk/government/collections/ofsted-inspections-of-local-authority-childrens-services;

–  Spain: http://www.fapmi.es/contenido1.asp?sec=16&pp=1;

–  Denmark: www.siso.dk.



Standardized referral procedures exist in approx. half of the countries giving responses

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Is reporting mandatory? •  Reporting is mandatory for professionals in 15 of the

18 (83.33%) countries – generally for child protection workers, medical professionals, teachers. Exceptions: –  In Poland not obligatory to report child labor. –  In Belgium and Luxemburg there is no mandatory

reporting for professionals. –  For professional categories like lawyers in Slovakia

and Greece, or psychologists in Greece. –  Reporting is not mandatory in UK, and there is a

large oppositions from part of the SWs and other professionals, who fear the consequences on parents and professionals

•  Reporting is not mandatory for the public in more than half of the countries (56%).



Consequences for not reporting

•  For 9 countries respondents mention consequences for not reporting known situations of violence against children for all professional categories in: UK, France, Spain, Croatia, Hungary, Norway, Germany.

•  Consequences only for some categories of professionals: in Romania for medical personnel, child protection staff, social workers and psychologists; in Slovakia for health care personnel and for the police.

•  For the general public consequences rarely exist, except France where consequences can be very serious also for the public, if not reporting.



Investigation and risk assessment •  Monitoring the process of investigation has

been reported in six countries (UK/England, Slovakia, Croatia, Denmark, Luxemburg and Norway);

•  The reports are investigated by professionals from child protection services

“Child protection units have been established in all regions - cases of alleged child maltreatment, sexual abuse and violence are referred to specialist teams in the unit that coordinate the investigation with police and pediatric unit.“ (Denmark)



Assessment and standard instruments •  These are reported to be circulated in: UK,

Slovakia, Spain, Croatia, Germany, and Lithuania, Spain

Notes: •  Slovakia: “There are standardized norms of action

of particular professionals in child protection services”.

•  The Polish expert mentions different categories of tools used by different services as, for example, by the Police and Interdisciplinary teams involved in working with domestic violence.

•  Specialists interviewing children are most often social workers, but in some countries this task is the responsibility of psychologists or police and of the justice system (ex. Poland) (Figure 1).



Follow-up procedures •  Reported to be used in

Spain, Romania, Croatia, Denmark, Germany and Lithuania (35.3%).

•  Guidelines and monitoring procedures for follow up are reported in Spain, Croatia, Denmark and Lithuania (23.5%).

•  The coordinators of the follow-up service are Social services or Child protection services.

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Training •  Mandatory training for all professionals exists in

few countries - UK (England), Spain and Denmark and except NGOs, in Norway.

•  Lack of mandatory training in all types of referral services is widely spread all around Europe, and in all kind of services

•  Limited mandatory training: in France educators and day-care personnel, in Belgium the police and legal personnel and in Luxemburg to the police and NGOs are trained.

•  Initial training: in Spain and Denmark for many categories of specialists



Conclusions related to training •  There are only a few countries which invest in

mandatory training for professionals working with children (like England, Spain, Denmark and Norway for all categories, France, Belgium, Luxemburg and Slovakia for a few categories (teachers, police, NGOs).

•  The same countries invest in the training for those services which receive referrals.

•  The high number of non-responses and No answers to training (46%) shows low investment of a significant part of the countries in developing competences of the work-force, especially for public social services / child protection, health personnel, but also educators and police

•  There is more training for the helplines, but even in this area training does not cover each country.



Personnel involved

•  According to our results, social workers represent the main professional category in working with violence against children.

•  In spite of this well established career path, not all countries offer them training programs to improve their competencies.

•  In spite of evidence on the benefits of involving community nurses in reporting child abuse (K. Browne, 2013), the data filled in by our respondents show a low involvement of health professionals in reporting and managing child related violence.

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Disparities •  Many countries, including those recently accessed

the EU have developed policies according to high requirements and adopted strong legal stands

•  In spite of progress, the practical implementation often falls behind the laws, principles and policies.

•  In many countries, existing standards are not applied because there are no consequences for omitting them (FRA, 2014 explains this by the lack of human resources and their heavy workload).

•  Responses often show inconsistencies within the countries, so that countries with high investment in procedures or training fall behind on some other issues, like the inexistence of child-friendly referral systems.



Recommendations

•  Professionalization of services should continue in the direction of developing procedures, guidelines and forms for referral and risk-assessment.

•  Member States should invest more to increase human capacities –  in the initial and continuing education and training of staff –  to offer support specialists, supervision –  to increase the capacity of staff to use evidence based

methods in their work •  For countries reporting the non-application of existing

national legislation on issues like reporting and other procedures, more investment in monitoring is necessary (the case of Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria).

•  EU should continue to invest in collaborative European research that would improve the evidence base of services.



Co-funded by the DAPHNE Programme of the European Union

THANK YOU


Policy Investigation in Europe on Child Endangerment and Support

findings from the pieces project: regional overview of ...an initiative of the european child safety...

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