The National Child Protection Clearinghouse has recently completed an overview of research on primary and secondary prevention of child maltreatment in Australia. This paper will present some of the key findings on the research direction and gaps in research knowledge, and make recommendations for future research.
Introduction
The Australian Council on Children and Parenting (previously the National Council for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect) commissioned the National Child Protection Clearinghouse to provide a detailed assessment of the current state of child abuse and neglect prevention research in Australia, within a context of international research trends, and to develop a national research strategy for the prevention of child abuse and neglect. This task follows on from a recent audit of Australian prevention initiatives recently completed by the National Child Protection Clearinghouse (Tomison and Poole 2000). This paper reports on some of the major findings from this review and presents some of the major recommendations for an Australian research strategy for the prevention of child maltreatment.
In this paper, child maltreatment is viewed in terms of the common classifications - physical child abuse, psychological child abuse, sexual abuse, and neglect. Child abuse prevention is classified into:
The need for more research
The need for more research is consistently identified in the maltreatment literature, as there are still not the answers to key child maltreatment questions. The value of prevention research in particular, is that it provides knowledge on:
The need to maintain Australian research strengths
Australia has developed considerable strengths in the prevention of child maltreatment and is leading the research field in a number of areas, particularly in programs targeted towards parents. This position has been reached despite significant funding differentials between Australian research projects and many overseas projects, particularly in the United States. The study identified the need to acknowledge these important Australian projects and facilitate their on-going development.
There has been a recent trend to import large-scale prevention programs which have been developed overseas (Voigt and Tregeagle 1993). However, as far as the authors could ascertain, only two major program models have been reported as showing long-term effectiveness in preventing maltreatment. Even with these programs, their transferability to other settings has not been tested. The authors recommend that Australia continue to fund and research programs, often developed by community agencies, and tailored to the Australian conditions and needs.
The need to develop a research agenda in areas unique to Australia
Some major gaps in Australian research were found. These gaps are particularly concerning where they relate to uniquely Australian issues of child maltreatment prevention, as this knowledge gap is unlikely to be addressed with research originating from overseas. Such areas include child maltreatment prevention within Australia’s Indigenous community, where there are extremely urgent needs for funding to be given to the development of participatory research within the Indigenous community. Other areas include the development of research relating to issues around recent migration to Australia and child maltreatment, and on prevention initiatives within rural and isolated communities.
Gaps in the world prevention research agenda
It is recommended that Australia develop a research agenda in areas that have been the subject of very little worldwide research. Of particular importance is prevention research relating to children with disabilities, a group which appear to be particularly vulnerable to abuse. Other largely overlooked areas of child abuse prevention research are the maltreatment of adolescents, the association between maltreatment and maternal postnatal depression, the maltreatment of children of substance abusing parents (including drug exposure prior to birth), mentally disabled and psychiatrically ill parents, and children who live in violent households.
Broad principles to guide Australian prevention research
The authors argue that prevention research should rapidly move towards a child-centred approach, particularly in relation to defining outcomes in terms on the impact on the child. Indeed, there is a need for research on how to understand outcomes, both at the structural level (such broad economic trends and the impact of the media) and micro levels (such as how 'happiness' can be measured). The paper will raise a number of other issues, including the need for research on ethical issues in maltreatment prevention research, and for research on program implementation and evaluation.
Conclusions
This paper identifies current trends, and recommends future directions, for Australian research on the prevention of child maltreatment. The authors found that Australian research was disparate, unco-ordinated and difficult to locate. The conference paper details recommendations in relation to the formation of a national research prevention facilitation group. Such a group could undertake tasks such as coordinating research across disciplines and community sectors, promote ecological integration of programs and data sources, and provide links between research, programs and policy.
Selected references
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Chalk, R & King, P.A. (eds) (1998), Violence in Families: Assessing Prevention and Treatment Programs, National Academy Press, Washington DC.
Durlak, J.A. (1995), School-based prevention programs for children and adolescents, Vol. 34. Developmental Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks.
Ellis, R.A. (1998), Filling the prevention gap: multi-factor, multi-system, multi-level intervention, The Journal of Primary Prevention, vol.19, no.1, pp.57-71.
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Karoly, et al. (1998), Investing in Our Children: What we Know and Don’t Know About the Costs and Benefits of Early Childhood Interventions, RAND, United States.
Olds, D., Henderson, C., Kitzman, H., Echenrode, J., Cole, R. & Tatelbaum, R. (1999). Prenatal and infancy home visitation by nurses: Recent findings. The Future of Children, vol.9, no.1, pp.44-65.
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The Australian Health Promoting Schools Association (1997b), Priorities for Research into Health Promoting Schools in Australia, [online], available http://www.hlth.qut.edu.au/ph//ahpsa/report4/report4.pdf [2000, July 11].
Tomison, A.M. (1998a), Child protection towards 2000, revisted: Trends in child protection and child abuse prevention. Paper presented to the 6th Australian Family Research Conference, October, Melbourne.
Tomison, A & Poole, L. (2000), Findings from an Australian audit of prevention programs: Preventing child abuse and neglect. Australian Institute of Family Studies.
Voigt, L. & Tregeagle, S. (1993), Empowering women to keep their children. Proceedings of the Twenty-third Biennial Conference of the Australian Association of Social Workers. Making an Impact: Shaping the Future, Newcastle 27th — 30th September, 249-50.
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