Due to the fact that there are limited numbers of studies on child abuse and neglect in our country and the fact that insufficient training before and after graduation cause lack of information and experience in occupations that involve children, some cases may not be noticed.Purpose: This study was conducted to find out the knowledge levels of nurses, teachers and police who have an important role in recognizing and preventing child abuse and neglect.Methods: 220 nurses, 128 teachers and 150 police working in a town center in the North of Turkey participated in the study. A questionnaire was used to determine the knowledge levelsof the participants on children's neglect and physical and sexual abuse. The data was analyzed by SPSS package program and percentages and chisquare test was used in analyses.Results: 72.5% of the police, 65.9% of the nurses and 21.1% of the teachers stated that they had encountered child abuse and neglect. In terms of the levels of recognizing evidence of neglect in children, no statistically significant difference was found between occupational groups; however, a statistically significant difference was found between groups in terms of recognizing evidence of physical abuse.Conclusions: The results of this study showed that nurses were more successful than teachers and police in diagnosing the symptoms of physical and sexual abuse in children; however, no difference was found between the members of different occupations in terms of diagnosing signs of neglect in children.
A comparison of child abuse and neglect encounters before and after school closings due to SARS-Cov-2
