The contribution of a hospital child protection team in determining suspected child abuse and neglect: Analysis of referrals of children aged 0-9

Wendy Chen, Saralee Glasser, Rami Benbenishty, Bilha Davidson-Arad, Shmuel Tzur and Liat Lerner-Geva

Children and Youth Services Review, 2010, vol. 32, issue 12, 1664-1669

Abstract: Background Hospital professionals have a unique opportunity to identify victims of child abuse and neglect (CAN). The hospital multi-disciplinary Child Protection Team (CPT) offers a means for optimizing procedures, maximizing caution and enhancing decision-making.Objective The current study describes cases of children aged 0-9 years referred to the CPT, to identify the contribution of the CPT to the assessment process in determining reasonable suspicion of child abuse or neglect.Methods The files of all 990 cases of children aged 0-9 referred to the CPT from 1991 thru 2006 were abstracted.Results Nearly equal rates of boys and girls were referred to the CPT, and the average age was 2.4Â years (SD 2.6), with over two-thirds aged 0-2. Half of the cases arrived at the hospital due to accident or trauma, and nearly one-third due to illness. Eighty-five neonates were referred due to parental risk factors identified at birth. The most common reasons prompting referral to the CPT were medical indication and parent behavior, with parents most often the suspected source of danger. Over half of the cases (566) were reported to authorities. Nearly half of those reported were cases of suspected physical neglect, 21.5% were suspected of physical abuse, and 7.6% of sexual abuse. There were significant differences in the patterns of reporting and types of suspicion both for the various age groups (pÂ

Keywords: Child; abuse; Neglect; Hospitalized; child; Child; protection; team; Cohort; studies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190-7409(10)00202-1
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:cysrev:v:32:y:2010:i:12:p:1664-1669

Access Statistics for this article

Children and Youth Services Review is currently edited by Duncan Lindsey

More articles in Children and Youth Services Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().