Europe urgently needs guidelines on care for child victims of sexual abuse, needs review

Only half of the 34 European countries surveyed have national guidelines on how to provide clinical care and treatment to sexually abused children. The findings were made in a study led by researchers from Barnafrid, the national knowledge center in the field of violence and other abuse against children at Linköping University in Sweden.

The effects on affected children could be severe, researchers said. The works are published in Lancet Community Medicine – Europe.

“Our findings suggest that children in Europe may not receive equal care. From a child rights perspective, this is unacceptable. “And we know that it increases the risk of poor physical and mental health later in life,” he says. Gabriel Ottermann is a Senior Consultant Pediatrician in Uppsala and Adjunct Associate Professor at Linköping University Barnafrid.

National clinical practice guidelines include many medical areas. This ensures that the care provided is scientifically validated and that everyone is treated equally.

However, many countries do not have guidelines for the care of sexually abused children. The study of 34 European countries, conducted by Otterman in collaboration with a network of international researchers, included searches of national documents, international scientific databases and his websites of health authorities, and specialized research across the European region. I was able to work with the family.

Only half of the countries were found to have similar national guidelines in this area. For example, no such guidelines were identified in Sweden, Poland, Spain, or Turkey. However, existing guidelines are also severely lacking in quality.

To measure quality, the researchers used the guidelines for the clinical management of child sexual abuse published by the WHO as a benchmark. Otterman calls these scientifically robust guidelines the “gold standard.” A comparison shows that guidelines from different countries are often outdated and do not incorporate the latest scientific insights.

Researchers identified significant gaps, primarily in the areas of risk assessment, mental health care and opportunities for children to be heard. Overall, we found that there are many things that need improvement. Among the guidelines reviewed, Moldova’s national guidelines received the highest quality rating, while one of the UK documents was deemed the least appropriate.

To address these shortcomings, researchers recommend that countries convene an international panel of clinicians and researchers, including those who themselves have experienced childhood sexual abuse. suggests.

They will work together to develop, oversee and regularly update common European guidelines. This collaborative approach may provide guidelines that are more appropriate for the European context than the WHO guidelines. Each country will then be responsible for making its own adjustments and follow-up as necessary. Countries can then tailor these to their specific needs and ensure diligent implementation and monitoring.

Gabriel Otterman has extensive experience caring for sexually abused children and emphasizes the importance of establishing common guidelines.

“I see this need every day. Having national evidence-based guidelines gives us something to follow and allows us to compare regions and countries,” Otterman says.