Reasonable suspicion in reporting child maltreatment: a survey among German healthcare professionals
Date
2021
Journal Title
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Volume Title
Publisher
Child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health
Abstract
Background: With regular contacts to the general child population, healthcare professionals could play an important role in the detection of child maltreatment. However, a majority of child maltreatment cases go unnoticed by
the healthcare system. Child protection legislations usually ofer terms like “reasonable suspicion” to corner a threshold that warrants reporting to child protection services (CPS) is defned as. The indistinct legal terminology leads to
marked diferences in the interpretation of this threshold. Therefore, we aimed to systematically assess the understanding of reasonable suspicion and subsequent handling of cases in the German context.
Methods: A cross-sectional online survey was conducted among 2485 physicians and psychotherapists working
with children and adolescents. Field access was gained by German professional associations. Via case vignettes, predictors of thresholds for reporting were assessed.
Results: The probability of a report to CPS increased positively with the degree of suspicion for maltreatment. However, even if participants were certain that child maltreatment occurred, 20% did not chose to report to CPS. Training
in child protection lowered the professionals’ threshold for reasonable suspicion; experience with child protection
cases and good knowledge of the legal framework increased the likelihood to report an alleged situation of child
maltreatment to CPS.
Conclusion: Our data show that a signifcant proportion of health care professionals are uncertain about estimating
reasonable suspicion and on how to proceed when there are strong indications for child maltreatment Therefore, data
point towards the relevance of training in child protection among healthcare professionals in order to improve detection and adequate handling of cases of child maltreatment
Description
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Article
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Keywords
research, healthcare professionals, reporting, Germany, International Resources, child protection
Citation
Berthold, O., Jud, A., Jarczok, M., Fegert, J. M., & Clemens, V. (2021). Reasonable suspicion in reporting child maltreatment: a survey among German healthcare professionals. Child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health, 15(1), 1-7.