Lennart Bayer, Maike Cigelski, Justine Eilfgang, Frieda Mensing, Harriet Sewald, Isabelle von Seeler, Simone Pülschen
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
Background
School professionals can play an important role in ensuring child protection and conducting child sexual abuse (CSA) prevention in schools. These efforts are currently pushed forward.
Objective
It is necessary to determine the preparedness of school professionals for these tasks to address educational needs specifically. Therefore, this study aims at collection self-assessment and external assessment of the needs from school professionals in regards to child protection and CSA prevention.
Participants
and Setting: Semi-structured expert interviews were conducted with N = 50 professionals from schools, child protection and law enforcement. Professionals from school were chosen because of their expertise in the school setting. Including child protection and law enforcement professionals in the study was deemed necessary due to the limited expertise in CSA shown by school professionals.
Methods
The interviews were analyzed using qualitative content analysis to identify common themes and differences in the perceptions of educational needs of school professionals for themselves and in comparison to professionals who deal with CSA more frequently.
Results
All interviewees see responsibility for child protection with school professionals and state that more training about child protection is necessary. Most professionals view schools as an optimal place to conduct CSA prevention and underscore the need to train school professionals to conduct CSA prevention.
Conclusions
Our study gives detailed insights in the self-assessment and external assessment of school professionals in regards to their knowledge about CSA prevention and child protection. The expressed educational needs should be used to develop tailored training programs to prepare school professionals to implement CSA prevention and child protection in schools.
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