PILOT PROJECT FOR THE CREATION OF A NATIONWIDE SYSTEM TO MONITOR NEGLECTED, ILLTREATED AND SEXUALLY

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Ministry of Welfare Italian National Childhood
and Adolescence Documentation and Analysis
Centre Istituto degli Innocenti

• PILOT PROJECT FOR THE CREATION OF A NATION-WIDE
  SYSTEM TO MONITOR NEGLECTED, ILL-TREATED AND
  SEXUALLY ABUSED CHILDREN REPORTED TO CHILD
  PROTECTION SERVICES
• Donata Bianchi  

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Framework

• 1. 20022004 Italian National Action Plan for
  Childhood set as a priority
• identifying a constant, homogeneous
  registration system of the incidence (number of
  cases per year) of child abuse in all its forms,
  and providing an adequate description of
  sub-categories and of its characterizing
  features.
• 2. The project is part of the duties attributed
  to the National Centre in accordance with Law
  451/97 under which the Italian National Centre
  was established.

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• Pilot projects aims
• 1. experimenting a common format for registering
  suspected or confirmed cases of ill-treatment and
  sexual abuse of children referred to social
  services
• 2. collecting comparative data.
• Expected results from the pilot project
• Identification of a minimum common set of
  variables as the core of a standard form for
  reporting
• Acquiring a picture on the interventions
  adopted for the child, the family and
  perpetrators
• Identifying critical points, limits and needs
  for the future developments of the project

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Background information on the Italian child
protection system

• The social services are responsible for
  protecting children in needs, at risk or victims
  of child abuse
• The social policies are defined mainly on a
  regional basis
• At a national level the Government identifies the
  main aims and priorities
• All the professionals working in public sectors
  or in services funded by public Administration
  have a legal mandatory to report to judicial
  authorities any situation in which a child is at
  risk of harm (physical or emotional) or which can
  be identified as a crime which must be denounced
  de officio (e.g. sexual abuse, prostitution of a
  minore, ecc.)

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Background information on data situation in Italy

• We do not have any national agency for collecting
  data produced by Welfare agencies.
• In some regions there are regional data systems.
  The areas covered are children victims of child
  abuse reported to social services children
  victims of sexual abuse on care in specialized
  centres children in out of home care.
• At a national level we have judicial statistics
• From the police we have data on the number of
  children victims of sexual abuse or exploitation,
  or data on the number of crimes against the
  family (no numero of person, or distinction of
  the crime according to child or adult victim)
• From the Juvenile Courts there are statistics on
  the number of decrees adopted for the protection
  of children notified to Courts (they are not
  child centred)
• Ongoing the National Documentation Centre has
  just concluded a survey to identify the number of
  children in out of home care (children homes or
  fostering families)

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Projecting process main steps

• A national group of experts coordinated by
  National Centre was set up
• Review of the main experiences of data collecting
  and surveys conducted in Italy after the approval
  of the new law on child sexual abuse (1996)
• Analysis of important experiences and models
  developed abroad
• Analysis of the existing regional guidelines for
  reporting and taking care of child suspected to
  be victim of child abuse
• Drafting of a zero version of form for
  registering demographic, social and clinical
  information on the child and his/her family, and
  to document the interventions set up by the
  territorial service which is responsible for the
  minor and by all the other agencies acting in the
  protection process
• Presentation and discussion of the zero
  version (and related software) with the
  representatives of 19 Italian regional
  governments (out of 22) in order to achieve
  political consensus and identifying a first group
  of regions for a first experimental
  implementation (in Italy Regions have exclusive
  competence on social policies)

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• Identification of a group of regions (Friuli
  Venezia Giulia in the North, Lazio in the Centre
  and Puglia , Molise and Calabria in the South of
  Italy) for a pilot implementation of the project
• The National centre settled up a Coordination
  group formed by representatives of Scientific
  Committee and Regional governments trained the
  social workers and other professionals
  participating to the project, assuring a constant
  technical assistance and supervision
• Selection of a sample of services in the regions
  partecipating to the pilot study
• Training with the professionals working in the
  territorial services selected
• The application of the common form was planned
  for two periods
• On the new cases reported during the year 2005
• On the new cases which will be reported during
  the year 2006

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• Framework definition of child abuse adopted
• child abuse or maltreatment constitutes all
  forms of physical and/or emotional ill-treatment,
  sexual abuse, neglect or negligent treatment or
  commercial or other exploitation, resulting in
  actual or potential harm to the childs health,
  survival, development or dignity in the context
  of a relationship of responsibility, trust or
  power. 1999 WHOs Consultation on Child Abuse
  Prevention
•  
• Typologies of child abuse considered in the pilot
  study
• sexual abuse
• physical ill-treatment
• psychological ill-treatment
• neglect
• witnessing violence
• Each typologies is identified by a wide set of
  specific attitudes and behaviours in order to
  overcome the problem of different interpretations
  of abuse and uneven levels of expertise and
  professional training on the issue

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• Witnessing directly or indirectly at frequent
  quarrel btween parents or other trusted family
  members with menace of death or use of weapon
• Witnessing directly or indirectly ,or being
  involved, in sitiation of psychological
  ill.treatment against a parent, or other
  relatives.
• Witnessing directly or indirectly ,or being
  involved, in sitiation of physical ill.treatment
  against a parent, or other relatives.
• Witnessing directly or indirectly ,or being
  involved, in sitiation of neglect against a
  parent, or other relatives.
• Witnessing directly or indirectly ,or being
  involved, in sadistic acts or vilence agianst
  domestic animals.

• Witnessing violence

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The Child form/questionnaire

• Section A the child, personal information of an
  anonymous nature
• Section B the reasons for the report of child
  to the service (including information on possible
  previous referral of child or his/her family to
  the service completing the form or other)
• Section C description of the family context (its
  structure, data on parents, education, job,
  social/personal caracteristics)
• Section D the interventions performed by the
  service filling the form, or others, in favour
  of the child and the family

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• Section E the characterizing features of the
  forms of child abuse reported, and for each
  forms frequency, duration, data on perpetrator,
  interventions to perpetrator (s)
• Section F (Not compulsory)identification of
  specific risk factors in the child and in the
  parents identification resources for protection
  (material but also qualitative) at an individual
  (parents and child) and family/social level
  ecological approach to the interpretation of the
  causes and dynamics of child abuse
• The professionals participating register the
  information in a friendly software designed by
  the National Centre fro which the data are
  extracted anonymously

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• The Form or Child questionnaire a dynamic tool
  for registering the process of taking in care the
  child and his/her family

Detection
Protection
Assessment
Recovery
Child form/questionnaire, which may be updated
constantly until the 31 December of each year
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Territorial units involved
Social services

• .

Local services
Specialized equipes depending by Social sector
We are collecting anonimous data on each single
child, who was identified with an unique
informatic code (or key).
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A look at the first data

• 1. Emerging of sexual abuse as the main child
  abuse problem there is a severe problem of
  identification of the situations of neglect due
  to cultural and training limits
• 2. The children live mainly with biological
  father and mother
• 3. Identification of a specific vulnerable groups
  in children already known to services before the
  detection of child abuse (in particular sexual
  abuse) 30,
• 9 were already know for caused related to
  violence against them or their siblings.( in
  this group the violence is more chronicized).

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• Strong evidence of the child abuse as a situation
  characterized by the presence of multiple forms
  of violence, in the 67 of cases reported there
  is the presence of at lest, two main forms of
  child abuse older the child more forms of abuse
  are reported
• Under evaluation of witnessing violence as a
  specific form of child abuse- few cases are
  identified , this information does not
  correspond with the identification of problem of
  domestic violence inside the couple some
  professionals registered it in the part of
  questionnaire finalized to detect the presence of
  protective or risk factors, but do not recognize
  witnessing violence as a problem for the child
• Detection of situation when the violence is a
  chronic event

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• Regarding protection and recovery and the
  coordination of actions among different agencies,
  we observe, as in other local surveys
• 1.The presence of sexual abuse favourites an
  evaluation of the case as urgent and this
  pushes toward a more strong and complex
  coordination among agencies. Professionals are
  more active and rapid by a month the main
  interventions of protection are implemented.
• 2.In the all other situations, even if there is a
  wide presence of risk factors or a worrying
  sintomatology, the intervention goes more slowly
  so they tend to become chronic with an escalation
  of abusive acts.

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First elements to reflect on

• Related to services organization and culture
• Fear of stigmatised the family registering the
  child in the form
• Professionals are not used to the application of
  a standard registration tool
• Problems with political level of local
  administration if the data collecting on child
  abuse resulted greater than those registered
  previously
• Evidence on the lack of specific intervention of
  long term treatment for child, family and,
  especially, the author (s) of violence
• Problems of time, motivation and resources

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• The project is going onBUT
• We need to identify variables which may be used
  for creating a set of local, regional and
  national indicators related both to monitor the
  phenomenon and to the evaluation of socio
  economic impact and costs of child abuse,
  policies and interventions (ISPCANs model is a
  point of reference as well as the English
  Register, others?)
• We planned a very long term period of
  implementation (10 years) in the meanwhile the
  regional governments should be supported to adopt
  regional action plans to empower local social
  services (human resources and informatics) and to
  set down child abuses prevention strategies,
  coordinated with the residual competences of
  Central government
• We are trying to qualify the project also as a
  contribution to the definition of the so called
  national minimum level of social assistance in
  case of prevention, recovery and treatment of
  children victims of child abuse.