SYNDROME OF ABUSED AND NEGLECTED CHILD IN THE OSTRAVA REGION

Overview

The problems of an abused child go through several departments. Although child abuse is liable to reporting duty, many of these children escape detection and are abused for a long period of time. The problem does not lie in the direct help to an abused child, but in the detection of phenomenon of abuse itself. We tried to solve the situation of abused children in Ostrava in the Project of Improvement of Care Provided for Abused Children. We created an electronic form of reporting every suspicion of child abuse in the period of 20022005, we examined typical injuries and risk factors in families. We concentrated on the improvement of quality of the care provided for abused children. Our aim was to create a functioning model of care for abused children in Ostrava, starting from the detection to complex care. This work was based upon cooperation among individual departments, so as to be able to solve the situation of the child causally and immediately. The medical examination is not a causal examination of the Child Abuse and Neglect Syndrome. We encountered 354 forms of the Syndrome CAN in 208 children. The types of injuries corresponded with data from Czech, as well as foreign literature. None of the hospitalised children died. Rapid, simple and unified reporting system of CAN Syndrome suspicions with recording of repeated visits of the injured child in different hospital institutions will hopefully lead to a detection of higher number of abused children in the future.

Key words:
child, syndrome CAN, detection, injury, risks, introduction, team cooperation.