The Identification of Pregnant Women at Risk for Child Abuse: Methodology

BACKGROUND: The prevention of child abuse should starts as early as possible in the life of children living in families at risk for abuse. We describe a two-stage selection procedure to identify those pregnant women who are at risk for child abuse. The procedure was developed to guide these mothers to VoorZorg, the Dutch adaptation of the Nurse-Family Partnership program. METHODS: In the rst stage of the selection, professionals, most often midwives, apply ve inclusion criteria: maximum age of 25 years, low educational level, maximum gestational age of 28 weeks, no previous live births and understanding of the Dutch language. In the second stage, trained nurses interview the selected pregnant women by applying a checklist with risk factors for child abuse. To identify the appropriateness of the two-stage selection procedure trained interviewers measured risk behaviour of the selected participants with validated questionnaires. RESULTS: 460 high risk pregnant women were selected through the two-stage selection procedure. The prevalence of risk factors for child abuse in this sample is: single parent: 76%, drug or alcohol use: 25%, history of abuse: 50%, no current job and/or education: 74%. In total, 98% of the selected women had ≥ 4 risk factors for child abuse. CONCLUSIONS: The two-stage selection procedure adequately identi es pregnant women with multiple risk factors for child abuse. KEYWORDS (MESH): Child abuse; Patient selection; Risk factors; Home care services; Primary prevention; Randomized controlled trial Dutch Trial Register: NTR854 Language: en