Regional overview of child injuries

Joanne VincentenEuropean Child Safety Alliance, EuroSafe

EURO Regional Consultation to discuss the World Report on child and adolescent injury prevention

July 2-3, 2007Amsterdam, The Netherlands

An initiative of the European Child Safety Alliance

Symposium on findings from the PIECES project

Availability of Survey and Administrative Data Sources on Child Violence in the EU

Mathilde Sengoelge

Psytel

BASPCAN Conference 2015 – 14 April 2015, Edinburgh, Scotland

An initiative of the European Child Safety Alliance

Rationale for investigating data sources on child violence

• Data drives policy

• Epidemiological data is necessary for taking action and generating evidence

• Need for sound data for decision-making

Crucial that data on violence to children are harmonized and comparable throughout the European Union

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An initiative of the European Child Safety Alliance

Limitations of Existing Data

• Children and their families affected by violence use a wide range of services -- each service generates its OWN data, using different definitions and classifications

• Only a small percentage of children exposed to violence use services

France: 27% of women reported being victims of sexual abuse, only 2.7% of children are identified as being victims of sexual abuse through child protection services (ONED 2008).

EU Report: a 10-fold difference between official data and those reported in surveys (Sethi 2013).

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An initiative of the European Child Safety Alliance

Objectives

• To map information on national level data related to violence against children covering all forms (also self-harm and suicide as potential outcomes of violence) in the EU and Norway

• To analyse, synthesise and provide recommendations on existing data sources on child violence: prevalence, incidence from administrative sources and ad hoc surveys

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An initiative of the European Child Safety Alliance

Descriptive Analysis of Results

• Key respondents contacted in all EU Member States and Norway

• 19 completed country surveys (shown on next slide)

• Surveys for 7 of the 19 completed were incomplete: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Ireland, Lithuania, Luxembourg

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An initiative of the European Child Safety Alliance 5

An initiative of the European Child Safety Alliance 6

An initiative of the European Child Safety Alliance 7

National Ad Hoc Surveys on Child Violence

• 10 reports of 2 or more than 2 ad-hoc surveys on child violence since 2008 (Lux, Spain no such surveys)

• Of the 10 surveys implemented, all representative of the national population except for France

• Majority of surveys one-time only, covered multiple types of child violence.

• In 6 out of 10 surveys were children included as respondents

• Only the Greek respondent stated data on exposure to violence as child witness and outcome of the maltreatment in the survey

An initiative of the European Child Safety Alliance

Existence and Data Sources for Prevalence and Incidence Data

• 24 types of violence (including self-harm, attempted suicide and suicide as an outcome of violence) against children

• Most data available on common types of violence--physical and sexual abuse, neglect

• Little data on abandonment, 3 out of 20 respondents (Ireland, Malta, Spain)

• Definitions vary (FGM included in sexual abuse)

• Age groups vary (0 to 14, 0 to 11, 11-14)• Target groups and classifications vary (e.g.,

mild or severe physical abuse in Denmark)

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An initiative of the European Child Safety Alliance

Other types of violence

• Incidence/prevalence of emotional abuse obtained for 11 out of the 19 countries.

• Majority of country respondents stated they have no data on child prostitution, child pornography or child solicitation.

• Respondents in seven countries (Croatia, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Romania, Sweden) reported having data on online/cyberbullying, either incidence or prevalence data

• No data available for female genital mutilation, forced marriages or harmful traditional practices, except in Denmark

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An initiative of the European Child Safety Alliance

Child violence data by setting

• No country respondent had data for all settings and majority stated data on half of these types of violence: peer-to-peer, school, gang, workplace, care settings and in detention or justice system

• Only respondents from Bulgaria and Romania reported having data on violence in care settings

• No respondent had data on violence at the workplace or in the justice system.

• Only England had data on gang violence

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An initiative of the European Child Safety Alliance

Main Findings: EU Data on Child Violence

• Data highly fragmented at the national level• Majority of respondents not possible for data to

be accessed by another agency• Over 1/2 of respondents reported no data

sharing agreements exist • No country represented had data on ALL types

of violence against children• Few countries have repeated surveys to

estimate the magnitude and nature of violence against children

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An initiative of the European Child Safety Alliance

3 Data Recommendations

• Council of Europe to fund and create an EU-wide Violent Death Reporting System to gather, share, and link national-level data about violence

• Council of Europe to fund an EU-wide Survey of Children’s Exposure to Violence. The study would be repeated every five years

• Eurostat to contribute to a European Indicator Framework based on internationally agreed standards to ensure that data are comparable across the EU

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An initiative of the European Child Safety Alliance

Co-funded by the DAPHNE Programme of the European Union

THANK YOU

Policy Investigation in Europe on Child Endangerment and Support