Terra Incognita? Efforts in „charting" the size of child maltreatment in Europe (Symposium): 2) The magnitude of legal, health and child protective services response to child maltreatment in Switzerland (Optimus Study)

Switzerland lacks uniform and therefore comparable data on the institutionally identified and supported victims of child maltreatment. To overcome work burden as a major threat to agency participation, the Optimus Study has... [ view full abstract ]

Switzerland lacks uniform and therefore comparable data on the institutionally identified and supported victims of child maltreatment. To overcome work burden as a major threat to agency participation, the Optimus Study has invited 420 child protective services and sentinel agencies to upload anonymous excerpts from their internal documentation of cases to a secured web-infrastructure. The uploads will cover new referrals of alleged cases of child maltreatment during the period of September 1, 2016 to November 31, 2016. In a second step, the uploaded excerpts are screened for commonly available variables that are adapted to fit the study’s operationalization. This novel procedure allows for comparability across different agencies, sectors and regions and will provide the first nationally representative numbers on the incidence of referrals for all forms of child maltreatment.  

Overall, 82% of the contacted agencies will provide data on referred cases of child maltreatment. This excellent participation rate will allow us to present first findings in fall 2017 that allow for identifying gaps in service provision for maltreated children between different sectors and cantons of Switzerland. It will be an important step in convincing policy-makers at the federal level on the benefits and feasibility of a national surveillance Instrument.