Development of methods for continuous child maltreatment surveillance - On the road to uniform child maltreatment surveillance data for Switzerland

Switzerland lacks uniform and therefore comparable data on the institutionally identified and supported victims of child maltreatment. Without uniform data, we do not know how well our system works and if the most vulnerable... [ view full abstract ]

Switzerland lacks uniform and therefore comparable data on the institutionally identified and supported victims of child maltreatment. Without uniform data, we do not know how well our system works and if the most vulnerable are identified and served. While stakeholders are generally welcoming the goal of a uniform national data collection on child maltreatment, many agencies will be hesitant to complete lengthy questionnaires in addition to a partially similar documentation for the agency, the canton and umbrella organizations. To overcome work burden as a major threat to agency participation, an ongoing project has addressed the issue in several steps. First, a process to develop shared definitions and operationalization of child maltreatment between research and practice has been initiated. Second, administrators, policy-makers and frontline staff have been included in developing a minimum data set, least common denominator variables that are shared between different agencies in the social, health, and penal sector. Third, to convince policy-makers at the federal level on the benefits and feasibility of a national surveillance instrument, anonymous excerpts from the agencies’ internal documentation of cases will uploaded to a secured web-infrastructure and adapted to fit the minimum data set’s operationalization. This will allow for identifying gaps in service provision for maltreated children between different sectors and cantons.