Promotion of multi-organizational and multi-professional cooperation to prevent child maltreatment

Abstract

Child maltreatment and related issues affecting children and families have become increasingly complex in recent years, emphasizing the importance of early detection and response. Cooperation between institutions such as child guidance centers, public health centers, child welfare facilities, police, municipalities, and medical institutions is indispensable to ensure an early response. In 2020, the National Institute of Public Health partially merged two training programs, “Mid-level Staff Training for Interprofessional Work”for the staff of child guidance centers and “Child Maltreatment Prevention Training”for public health nurses. It began efforts to develop human resources to strengthen multidisciplinary and multi-agency collaboration. This report will introduce the outline of this initiative, analyze the contents of the questionnaire for trainees, and discuss the possibilities and challenges of multidisciplinary and multi-agency collaborative education. The group work that involved child welfare caseworkers, child psychologists, and public health nurses validated the trainees' awareness and learning by rediscovering the strengths of their occupations and deepening their understanding of multidisciplinary expertise. For future training, it was recommended that interprofessional education must create a system that effectively exploits group dynamism and enables each trainee to understand their partner's perspective.