Professional practices in situations of child abuse: an integrative review

Child abuse is a problem that affects children all over the world. The present study therefore aimed to identify and analyze the main findings relating to professional practices for dealing with situations of child maltreatment in articles published in Brazil. To this end, we conducted an integrative literature review of articles published between 2017 and 2022 based on searches of the following databases: Google Scholar, SciELO Brasil, the periodicals database of the Agency for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES), MEDLINE, the Virtual Health Library, and Electronic Journals in Psychology (PePSIC). A total of 24 publications were selected for the review after screening the titles and abstracts. The findings reveal several challenges to ensuring the protection of children caused by shortcomings in professional training, which have a negative influence on the identification and reporting of child maltreatment. The present study reveals the lack of priority given to the issue of child maltreatment in professional training and provides important inputs to inform future research on professional practices for dealing with child violence.