Preventing child maltreatment by developing a national action plan

Child maltreatment is a major public health problem having a serious impact on the health and development of children. The requirement to adopt and implement a national action plan to address its prevention is set out in... [ view full abstract ]

Child maltreatment is a major public health problem having a serious impact on the health and development of children. The requirement to adopt and implement a national action plan to address its prevention is set out in international and human rights instruments.

The WHO European Regional Committee Resolution, EU/RC64/R6: Investing in children: the European child and adolescent health strategy 2015–2020 and Investing in children: the European child maltreatment prevention action plan 2015–2020 emphasise improving the health and well-being of children and reducing the burden of children’s ill health, including of maltreatment and other adverse events in childhood. The European child maltreatment prevention action plan, has a specific objective on improving governance to enable multi-sectoral preventive programming. A national action plan is an essential tool for supporting comprehensive and sustained prevention actions and responses to child maltreatment. When properly formulated and implemented it can have a significant impact on the health and well-being of children.

In 2016, WHO Europe published a Handbook on developing national action plans to prevent child maltreatment to support the development and monitoring of such action plans. This paper, using examples from a number of European countries, will describe ways in which European governments’ policies and visions are intended to be, or have been made concrete, through actions or changes at a national or sub-national level. Key is the engagement of all stakeholders, including children, making best use of available data and the evidence base on effective preventive programmes. It will also demonstrate how these plans support WHO Europe’s goal “to reduce the prevalence of child maltreatment by implementing preventive programmes”, its related target and three objectives together with WHO’s targets and indicators set out in the Global Action Plan on Violence Prevention (2016) and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) agreed in 2015.