violence against children WORLD REPORT ON - CRIN

“It is time we moved beyond qualtiative explorations of violence against children. In South-East Asia,population-based surveys are needd urgently to shed light on the full extent of violence against children.We must invest in better research and systematic data collection on this issue.”Dr Samlee Plianbangchang, Regional Director for South-East Asia, WHO3violence against children, studies that surveya large subset of the general population andwhich are repeated over time are necessary.Confidential interview studies with children,parents and other close carers can also contributeto understanding all forms of violence inthe home and family. There must, of course,be ethical safeguards to ensure the necessaryprotection of the children involved. Retrospectivestudies, interviewing young adults abouttheir childhood experiences, are also valuable,but disclose nothing about what is happeningto children now, and may distort understandingof experiences in early childhood whensome forms of violence are most common.Child Fatality Review Teams (CFRT)One of the important purposes of data collection,especially in countries and regions wherehome and family violence is denied or not publiclydebated, is advocacy. Policy-makers needto be persuaded that violence against childrenis more prevalent than they believe or care toadmit, and that responses are urgently needed.Efforts by NGOs and international supportagencies to collect information and publishanalyses of children facing violence are oftenthe first step towards enabling a culturally orpolitically sensitive issue to emerge, becomelocally owned up to, and taken up.Most children who die from violence are young. About 40% are infants and 80% areunder six. The most common cause of death is head trauma, followed by blunt forcetrauma to the body. It is sometimes difficult to detect how a child has died when he orshe is reported as having had ‘a fall’.The first Child Fatality Review Team (CFRT) was formed in Los Angeles in 1978,sponsored by the Los Angeles County Interagency Council on Child Abuse andNeglect (ICAN). Members included the coroner, police, social services, courts, healthand public health workers. ICAN later became the National Center for Fatality Review(NCFR) and other teams followed, some adding teachers, mental health workers andoccasionally community members. The team meets to discuss cases of young childdeath where medical evidence is inconclusive; thus different types of evidence cometogether, and a mystery can conceivably be solved.91Violence against children in the home and familyBy 2001, an estimated 1,000 teams existed in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and theUSA. The Philippines recently added a hospital-based model that may better fit developingcountries. An international working network has begun connecting ICAN withcontacts and start-up programmes in China, Estonia, Iceland, the Islamic Republic ofIran, Japan, Jordan, Lebanon, the Netherlands and the UK. 209