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[A form for the notification of cases of child abuse in Spain]
P Guallar-Castillón1, C Peñacoba, A Fernández
1Centro Universitario de Salud Pública, Consejería de Sanidad de la Comunidad de Madrid, Departamento de Medicina Preventiva y Salud Pública, Spain. mpilar.guallar@uam.es
Aim:
To design a form to collect national data on child abuse, which could be used by the autonomous communities and which could supply valid information for the investigation, intervention and prevention of child abuse in Spain.
Methods:
A Delphi study was carried out with three questionnaires in which 59 experts from 16 autonomous communities participated. Of the experts, 53 answered the second questionnaire (89.9%) and 44 the third (74.6%). Each expert indicated whether, in his/her opinion, a specific item should be incorporated in a national register of child abuse. A consensus was considered to have been reached for a particular item when agreement between the experts was equal or higher than 85%.
Results:
The final notification form agreed on by the participants has 29 items. It contains information on the identity of the child and the child's parents and details of the composition of the family unit and of the event that caused the notification. It also contains details of the reasons for suspecting abuse and the type of child abuse.
Conclusions:
We present a form agreed by consensus for the notification of child abuse that, when distributed nationally, will provide valid data for the whole of Spain.