European Epidemiology of Child Abuse and Neglect (Euro-CAN)

There is a paucity of research in the field of child abuse and neglect (CAN) epidemiology, recognition and investigation within clinical practice across Europe.

The World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Europe in its report, European Report on Preventing Child Maltreatment, 2013 states that child maltreatment (CM) is a serious public health and societal problem in the European Region.

Few countries regularly collect reliable information on CAN prevalence and other adverse childhood experiences. There is an urgent need for credible and valid data that can be exchanged across sectors in Europe.

More research is needed to identify the prevalence of CAN in Europe using agreed standardised operational definitions. Consensus-based standardised data collection tools are fundamental to monitoring and evaluating the impact of preventive child abuse and neglect programmes.

European Epidemiology of Child Abuse and Neglect (Euro-CAN) was set up in 2015.  It is a multidisciplinary collaboration between four European countries (The UK, Ireland, Sweden and The Netherlands) conducting research into CAN.

Research themes

• Epidemiology of CAN in Europe.
• Comparison of child protection medical investigations in these countries.
• The development, piloting and implementation of a  standardised data collection (SDC) tool and to collect a  minimum dataset (MDS).
• Develop, pilot, and validate clinical decision rules for subsequent scaling up for use across all European Union countries.
• Multi-disciplinary and multi-agency collaboration and innovation in CAN with partners in social care, education, law enforcement agencies and healthcare.