Prelims

Half Title Page

Participatory Research on Child Maltreatment with Children and Adult Survivors

Series Title Page

Emerald Studies in Child Centred Practice

Series Editor: Sam Frankel, King's University College, Wester University, Canada; Equipping Kids.org

Emerald Studies in Child Centred Practice: Voice, Collaboration and Change seeks to reposition the place of childhood studies as a discipline, highlighting its social value. This series explores the application of theories from childhood studies in practice. It highlights the place, purpose and power of these theories to inform practice and seek to shape a child-centred approach across the settings within which children live and experience their everyday lives – schools, families, the law, the care system. Uniquely, books in the series will not only draw on academic insight but also include the perspectives of both practitioners and children. The series makes the case for the need for a shared dialogue as a foundation for re-imagining practice.

This new series offers a new and valuable dimension to childhood studies with relevance for how wider society comes to engage with it. Indeed, it offers a chance for childhood studies to increase its presence in society – to demonstrate how an awareness of children's agency and the constructed nature of society can positively influence discourse and debate – with the hope that this can increasingly shape policy and practice and add value to children's everyday experiences. Proposals are welcome for the series that align to this goal and help us to develop and grow childhood studies. The series is particularly keen to explore multi-faceted aspects of children's lives, such as schooling, home lives, children's rights, child protection, activism and more.

Title Page

Participatory Research on Child Maltreatment with Children and Adult Survivors: Concepts, Ethics, and Methods

Edited by

Maria Roth

Babes-Bolyai University, Romania

Ravit Alfandari

University of Haifa, Israel

And

Gemma Crous

Universitat de Barcelona, Spain

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Emerald Publishing, Floor 5, Northspring, 21-23 Wellington Street, Leeds LS1 4DL

First edition 2023

Editorial matter and selection © 2023 Maria Roth, Ravit Alfandari and Gemma Crous.

Individual chapters © 2023 The Authors.

Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited.

These works are published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence.

Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of these works (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode.

The ebook edition of this title is Open Access and is freely available to read online.

This publication is based upon work from COST Action Euro-CAN, CA19106, supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology).

COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) is a funding agency for research and innovation networks. Our Actions help connect research initiatives across Europe and enable scientists to grow their ideas by sharing them with their peers. This boosts their research, career and innovation.

www.cost.eu

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-80455-529-3 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-80455-526-2 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-80455-528-6 (Epub)

Dedication

This book is dedicated to all children and adult survivors of child maltreatment, in all its forms. The researchers who wrote this book aim to learn from and with you, day by day, in order to improve the quality of the research that is done in this area. We hope we can make a difference and encourage other authors to use participatory research. Your voices and decisions matter.

List of Figures and Tables

About the Editors

Maria Roth, PhD, is a Professor Emerita and Researcher in the Social Work Department of Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj, Romania. Before entering the academic field, she worked with children in special schools, orphanages and hospitals. She developed research and published in the area of child protection; developmental psychology; the well-being of Romanian children and youth; identification and prevention of child abuse and neglect in schools and families; support services for vulnerable children; children's rights; adverse childhood experiences; and programme and service evaluation. Her recent research projects have focused on the social dimensions of school success, service standards in protecting children from abuse and neglect and disadvantaged (Roma) children.

Ravit Alfandari, PhD, is a Lecturer at the Faculty of Social Welfare and Health Sciences of the School of Social Work at the University of Haifa in Israel. She is a qualified social worker with solid experience in direct service delivery, programme development and research related to vulnerable children and families. She conducted her PhD studies at the Department of Social Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science in the United Kingdom and her postdoctoral training at the School of Social Work and School of Business Administration at the University of Haifa in Israel. Her empirical investigation focuses on decision-making and risk assessment in the field of child protection.

Gemma Crous, PhD, is a Serra Hunter fellow Lecturer at the Department of Research Methods and Diagnosis in Education at the University of Barcelona in Catalonia, Spain. Gemma's background is in psychology (BA) and youth and society (MA). She has developed research and published on children's and adolescents’ well-being, poverty and social exclusion. Recently, her research has focused on the child protection system. She has always been interested in children's participation as a protective factor against vulnerability.

About the Contributors

Hervör Alma Árnadóttir, PhD, is a social worker and has the position of Associate Professor in the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Iceland. She is currently serving as the Head of the Faculty of Social Work. Hervör Alma's main teaching has been on child protection, group- and teamwork and children's participation. The main emphasis of her research has been on participation of children in welfare research. She has focused on research with children living in poverty and has delivered papers about opportunities of children to participate in research and about gatekeepers when researchers seek access to children for participation in welfare research.

Giuseppe Aversa is the Spokesman of The Committee of Minors abandoned by the State to Forteto. In 2009, 12 years after his out of home placement, he was one of the first to report the abuse and maltreatments perpetrated in the residential childcare community where he was collocated. He is a student of social sciences and he contributes to build a participatory chance to be listened to by the professional, social and political contexts through his participation as expert by experience to national and international conferences, training initiatives and discussion forums. Some of his contributions in this field are currently in press. The Committee of Minors abandoned by the State to Forteto that he represents is entirely made of adults who grew up in this residential childcare community where the State entrusted them at an early age in childhood.

Alina Bărbuță is a PhD candidate in Sociology and a Research Assistant at Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj, Romania. Her research interests focus on children's rights, the digital divide among children and young population, digital capital and youth social participation and inclusion.

Donata Bianchi is an expert on child protection and welfare and has been active with Associazione Artemisia since its foundation. She led the research activity and reflection on the issue of institutional abuse within the S.A.S.C.A Project. She is mainly involved in research activities at local, regional and European level. She is author or editor of many publications and articles on the issue of protection and promotion of children's rights.

Patrizia Bucarelli is a psychotherapist in the Artemisia Anti Violence Center. She has been working for 20 years in the prevention and detection of child abuse, with a specific experience in working with adult survivors of child abuse. Since October 2015, she has been coordinating the projects ‘Oltre’ and ‘Ancora Oltre’ for Artemisia, implemented for supporting the social inclusion and trauma recovery of 40 survivors of sexual, physical and psychological violence perpetrated for decades in a big residential childcare community named ‘Il Forteto’. Besides the clinical work with adult survivors of institutional abuse, she has conducted the research activity of the S.A.S.C.A. Project, by interviewing the survivors and by participating in the definition of guidelines for social-healthcare workers in front of situations of institutional abuse.

Sinem Cankardas, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in Turkey. She is currently working at Izmir Democracy University, Department of Clinical Psychology. She received her doctorate in Clinical Psychology with a concentration in Psychological Trauma in 2018, following the completion of a pre-doctoral internship at the University of Lancashire. She worked as a Researcher on several European Projects (Balkan Epidemiological Study on Child Abuse and Neglect; Behavior, Security and Culture) and an international project (Safer Together Project/UK). Her research and clinical interests are broadly focused on the areas of interpersonal violence, stress and anxiety-related disorders and cognitive behavioural therapy. She published several articles on child abuse and neglect and effects of gender based discrimination on mental health. She is also the editor of the book titled Being Women: Gender Based Discrimination and Mental Health published in 2022.

Viorela Ducu, PhD, is an Associate Researcher at Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj, Romania. She holds a PhD in Sociology, with interests in mixed and transnational families, children's rights and qualitative research methods. Her main publications include Romanian Transnational Families: Gender, Family Practices and Difference (Palgrave Macmillan) and ‘Displaying Grandparenting within Romanian Transnational Families’ (Global Networks).

Martha María Einarsdóttir is a social worker and works at the social service in City of Reykjavik in Iceland. Martha obtained her master's degree from the University of Iceland in the year 2017. In her master's thesis she researched how community art can be used when working with vulnerable children. Martha works as a social worker in Reykjavík with homeless people that have complicated service needs.

Natália Fernandes, PhD, is an Associate Professor with aggregation at the Universidade do Minho, Instituto de Educação, Department of Social Sciences of Education. Her area of research is the sociology of childhood. Her research interests are related to children's rights, new research paradigms with children and the ethical issues that involve them. She has authored individual and joint publications in books and journals and participated in national and international congresses, where she has discussed the issue of children's participation rights and the visibility of children as citizens and rightsholders. She is the co-founder of the Children's Rights European Academic Network.

Petra Filistrucchi is a psychotherapist and the vice president of the Artemisia Anti Violence Center in Florence, Italy. She has been working for 20 years in the prevention and detection of child abuse, with a specific experience in working with adult survivors of child maltreatment. Since October 2015, she has been coordinating the projects ‘Oltre’ and ‘Ancora Oltre’ for Artemisia, implemented for supporting the social inclusion and trauma recovery of 40 survivors of violence perpetrated for decades in a big residential childcare community named ‘Il Forteto’. From 2017 to 2019 she coordinated the European Project S.A.S.C.A., which has contributed to the theme of institutional maltreatment within residential services for minors by promoting a reflection that has involved public bodies, universities, third sector and associations of survivors in Italy, Ireland, Greece and Romania.

Nuria Fuentes-Peláez, PhD, is a Full Professor at the Department of Research Methods and Diagnosis in Education at the University of Barcelona in Catalonia, Spain. Nuria is a pedagogue and holds a PhD in Education from the University of Barcelona, awarded with special merit. She is head of the Group on Socioeducational Interventions in Childhood and Youth (http://www.grisij.ub.edu/). The main topics of her research are: (a) children and youth in foster care and adoption; (b) socioeducational group programmes that support parenting in families in vulnerable or risky situations (e.g. social deprivation and poverty, foster care, neglect and adoptive parenting) and (c) collaborative research and participatory research methods with professionals, families and children. She is a member of various scientific associations, participates in international networks regarding child protection and is an expert member of the Children's Observatory of the Government of Catalonia and the Municipal Council for Social Welfare of the Barcelona City Council.

Andreas Jud, PhD, has a Chair (tenure-track) on Child Maltreatment Epidemiology at the University of Ulm's department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry/Psychotherapy, Germany, and is staff at Zurich University of Applied Sciences, School of Social Work, Switzerland. His research focuses on service provision in multiple sectors of the child protection system. As the chair of the pan-European network Euro-CAN on Multisectoral Responses to Child Abuse and Neglect in Europe (COST Action 19106) he coordinates 130+ members in 35 countries and their efforts to improve data collection. Andreas Jud is an Associate Editor of Child Abuse & Neglect, the leading international journal in the area of child protection.

Nilüfer Koçtürk, PhD, is an Associate Professor who worked as a forensic interviewer at the first Child Monitoring Center in Turkey and has been working at Hacettepe University Psychological Counseling and Guidance Department since 2019. Her fields of study are child maltreatment, domestic violence, gender equality, trauma, psychosocial support, parent education and child psychology. The author has various national/international publications on the mentioned subjects and has also been a writer and/or editor in the following books published in Turkish language: Child Neglect and Abuse Basic Information, Domestic Violence, Sexual Abuse Psychosocial Support Psychoeducation Program (separately from preschool to high school), Trauma Psychology, Gender: Current Issues in Psychological Counseling and Guidance, Crisis Counseling, Solution-Seeking Problem of Our Time: Violence, Child Psychology, Healthy and Safe School Life, Health Management in Educational Institutions, Communication in Health Services, Adolescence and Approach to the Adolescent Individual, Psychological Treatment and Rehabilitation in Forensic Psychology, Mental Health Textbook for Disabled People and Child Participation Right.

Laura Korhonen, MD, PhD, is a Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Senior Consultant at Linköping University and Linköping University Hospital in Sweden. She heads Barnafrid, a National Competence Center in Violence Against Children. She has extensive academic, clinical and leadership expertise in the fields of child and adolescent psychiatry, violence against children and developmental neurobiology. Her current research interests focus on mental health with a special interest in susceptibility and resilience in vulnerable groups like child refugees, children exposed to violence and those with psychiatric multimorbidity. She is also interested in ways to improve current Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services as well as support and take care of victims of violence via knowledge dissemination, capacity building, training and research.

Éva László, PhD, is a psychologist and a Lecturer in the Faculty of Sociology and Social Work at Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj, Romania as well as Director of the Hungarian Sociology and Social Work Department. Her main areas of interest in research and professional practice are abuse, exploitation and neglect of minors; victim protection; domestic and interpersonal violence and child participation. She has worked on many projects and published on human trafficking, child abuse, domestic violence and online and offline risk and safety. She has been working in the field of violence, abuse and exploitation for 25 years. She has worked in a counselling centre for victims of violence; in a shelter for girls and young women who are victims of abuse or trafficking for sexual exploitation; and in a shelter for women and children who are victims of domestic violence. She is a member of several victim and children rights protection teams and research centres.

Maria Lindersson works as an analyst at Barnafrid at Linköping University. She is a teacher with training in special pedagogy. She has extensive experience in working with children and adolescents with special needs, including adaptation and support in school after exposure to violence. She is involved in several ongoing projects that use a child participatory approach.

Linnéa Lindholm is a junior high school student at Berzeliusskolan in Linköping, Sweden.

Erica Mattelin is a PhD student at Barnafrid at Linköping University and advisor responsible for children's participation within the Swedish operations at Save the Children. She is also a licenced psychologist with extensive experience with refugee children and children exposed to violence. Erica has worked for several years in the psychological treatment of children with PTSD. She educates and lectures on PTSD assessment, treatment and access to care for children. Erica's research focuses on refugee children, their experiences of violence and the association between violence and mental ill-health. She is an author of several scientific publications in the field. Erica previously wrote the chapter ‘Children on the Run’ in the anthology A Preschool for All – Special Education, Inclusion, and Equality together with Laura Korhonen.

Fiona Morrison, PhD, is a Lecturer in Childhood Studies at the University of Edinburgh. Her research interests include children's rights, research with children, child welfare and domestic abuse. She has published on children's participation rights in law, children's accounts of domestic abuse and social workers' communication with children involved in child protection.

Ann-Charlotte Münger, PhD, is an Associate Professor and Senior Lecturer at Barnafrid at Linköping University. Her research focuses on how welfare institutions as social care and educations systems respond to children and youth who are exposed to violence.

Jolka Nathanaili-Penotet works in the Practice & Research Unit, Nyjelakim, France. She is a trained clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst at the University of Paris VII-Denis Diderot, providing therapeutic services for the past 18 years. She is specialised in the diagnosis and psychotherapeutic treatment of both mental and developmental disorders including physical health difficulties caused by trauma and violence. Her background is Albanian and she is bilingual in French and Albanian. This has contributed to her interest in cultural differences and identity and it is reflected in her clinical practice. Since the pandemic she has developed her research work extensively towards child abuse and neglect contributing to building stronger communities where children and survivors can thrive.

George Nikolaidis, MD, PhD, studied Medicine and Psychiatry. He was awarded with a PhD on Epidemiology, an MSc in Philosophy of Mental Disorder (KCL-UoL) and an MA in Psychoanalytic Studies (University of Sheffield). His scientific interests include Child Protection, Child Abuse and Neglect, Public Health and Epidemiology. He was involved as Scientific Coordinator or Main Researcher in research, training and clinical projects on child protection, violence and epidemiology. Since 2005 he has been the Head of Department of Mental Health and Social Welfare of Institute of Child Health; he had been Scientific Coordinator of the Day Center ‘The House of the Child’ (2014–2020) and he was Advocacy and Networking Consultant of Lumos deinstitutionalisation project in Greece (2014–2019). For more than a decade he has been national representative of Greece to WHO for child protection issues and Council of Europe's Lanzarote Committee, where he has been elected Member of its Bureau (2014–2016), Vice-Chair (2016–2018) and Chairperson (2018–2020).

Athanasios Ntinapogias earned a BSc in Psychology from University of Crete, Department of Psychology, in 1995, followed by an MSc in Health Services Administration specialised in Economic Evaluation from the National School of Public Health in 2014. He has 25 years of research experience on issues mainly related to prevention of intentional and unintentional injuries. He worked in the National Kapodistrian University of Athens, Medical School, Center for Research and Prevention of Injuries, the Lumos Foundation and for the UNICEF Office in Greece. He is founding member of the European Antiviolence Network, NGO. Since 2009 he is working in the Institute of Child Health, Department of Mental Health and Social Welfare as project coordinator, researcher and trainer. His special interests include epidemiological study and prevention of violence against children and he was the principal investigator during the development of the CAN-MDS surveillance mechanism for child abuse and neglect incidents.

Maria João Pereira holds a PhD in Child Studies, specialising in the Sociology of Childhood, and a master's in the Sociology of Childhood from the Institute of Education of the University of Minho and a degree in International Journalism. She is dedicated to teaching, training and the development and implementation of projects in the areas of communication, school journalism and related areas, with a view to promoting inclusion, valuing the school path and enhancing academic, personal and social skills.

Judit Rabassa is a PhD Student Researcher at the GRISIJ research group at the University of Barcelona in Catalonia, Spain. Judit's background is in pedagogy (bachelor's) and pyschopedagogy focused on secondary education (master's). Her research has focused on children and youth in foster care (nonkinship and kinship care), group interventions in families at risk based on a positive parenting approach and socioeducational interventions with vulnerable children and their families. Her PhD is focused on the impact of group work programmes for kinship care families and the educational progress of youth in kinship care.

Andrea Rácz, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social Work of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary. She acquired her master's degree in Sociology at Eötvös Loránd University and holds a PhD in Sociology. Her main research field is child welfare and protection. She has published several research articles and books, which primarily deal with social exclusion, child welfare, and child and youth protection. Rácz has been granted the János Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (2017–2020), and the ÚNKP-19-4 New National Excellence Programme of the Ministry of Human Capacities Research Scholarship (2019–2020). The aim of her latest research is to examine the forms and professional content of child protection trends in the field of children well-being.

Pia Rockhold, MD, MPH, PhD, is a specialist in International development, health research, epidemiology and Mental Health. She presently works as a Psychiatrist and a specialist in substance abuse in the Region of South Denmark. As a researcher she is affiliated with the Forensic Mental Health Research Unit, Department of Regional Health Research, Faculty of Health Science, University of Southern Denmark. She holds a medical degree from Copenhagen University and a MPH and PhD in Epidemiology from University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). Prior to her present position she has worked for over 30 years in International Health and research at community, national and global level with local and international organisations (e.g. CARE, Plan International, DANIDA, SIDA, CIDA, DIfD, GTZ, JICA, EU, ADB, UNICEF, UNFPA, World Bank, WHO, TDR, COHRED and Global Forum for Health Research) in the areas of health research capacity building, child and adolescent health, sexual health and violence, health system strengthening, tropical disease research, hygiene, gender, equality and disability and development.

Thomas Schlingmann works in Tauwetter, a counselling center for men* who have been exposed to sexualised violence in Berlin, Germany. He is a survivor of sexualised violence, a psychologist, counsellor and Researcher. He is the founder of Tauwetter and is involved in the development of the ‘survivor-controlled approach’ and the ‘SELFORG’ research-project. He is co-founder of the federal coordination of specialised counselling centres against sexualised violence in childhood and adolescence (BKSF), Germany. He is a member of the former Scientific Advisory Board of the Telephone Helpline of the Independent Representative on Child Sexual Abuse Issues (UBSKM) and member of the ‘National Council against Sexual Violence against Children and Adolescents’ in Germany.

Dorottya Sik, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Work of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary. She finished her master's degree in Sociology and Social Work in 2003. Her research field is child welfare and protection, and her PhD topic was prevention in the child welfare system in Hungary. She also works as a family and couples' therapist.

Zeynep Sofuoglu, MD, PhD, is an Associate Professor in Turkey. She is currently working at Izmir Democracy University, Faculty of Medicine Department of Public Health. She worked as the national principal investigator on the BECAN (Balkan Epidemiological Study on Child Abuse and Neglect) Project. She published several articles on child abuse and neglect.

Alex Stern is a Research Associate and PhD candidate at the Department of Epidemiology and International Public Health of the School of Public Health at Bielefeld University in Germany. His research areas are marginalization and health care, knowledge transfer, queer health, and violence. He has an academic background in sociology and education science. Stern is a psychotherapist in training as well as a survivor advocate at the Survivors' Board supporting the German Independent Commissioner for Child Sexual Abuse Issues since 2015, with a focus on issues regarding gender, organised and ritual sexual abuse, and research on child sexual abuse.

Áron Telegdi-Csetri is an associate researcher at Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj, Romania, holds a PhD in Political Philosophy and is interested in Kantianism, cosmopolitanism, transnationalism and children's rights. His main publications include Childhood and Parenting in Transnational Settings (Springer) and Kant's Cosmopolitics (Edinburgh UP).

Betül Ulukol, MD, is a paediatrician and epidemiologist, who earned a master of science degree. She works as a Professor at Ankara University, Department of Social Pediatrics. Child abuse, neglect, domestic violence, child development and child protection are her main areas of interest. She has been the Director of Ankara University Ankara Child Protection Unit since 2005. She had worked as a consultant at the Ministry of Health for the establishment of a protection system for sexually abused children in Turkey. Dr Ulukol's work includes public education programmes, campaigns and consultancy to the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Family and Social Services and some parliamentarians on the protection of children from sexual, physical, emotional abuse, human trafficking and neglect.

List of Reviewers

Foreword

Andreas Jud

In a world still full of atrocities, disasters and widespread poverty, there is consensus that children are among the most vulnerable in our societies: As adults, they suffer from the aforementioned phenomena, including victimisation by strangers or peers. In addition, some children are subjected to violence by those responsible for their upbringing: parents and other close caregivers (for a detailed conceptualisation of children's victimisation in multiple settings, see Finkelhor, 2008). This type of violence is commonly labelled child maltreatment and encompasses the subtypes of neglect, sexual abuse, physical abuse and psychological maltreatment. Unfortunately, academia and child protection practice have not yet converged regarding a uniform and operationalised definition for child maltreatment; varied definitional approaches are still abundant (e.g. Jud & Voll, 2019). Consequently, epidemiological research on the prevalence of child maltreatment is associated with large variances and lack of comparability (e.g. Jud et al., 2016). Still, findings have unanimously confirmed the large size of the problem: Studies regularly identify that more than 10% of respondents have suffered from violence at the hands of caregivers in their childhood (e.g. Sethi et al., 2015; Stoltenborgh et al., 2015). Despite definitional challenges, there is a steadily growing evidence base on the prevalence of child maltreatment both around the world and in Europe. Empirical information on who gets services and protection by which type of services in a multidisciplinary field, however, is either lacking completely for some countries or lacking relevant variables and reliable coding in others. Additionally, available administrative data on child maltreatment lack comparability across countries. Administrative data, however, are needed to understand how well a child protection system addresses its challenges and serves its vulnerable population, identify potentially underserved populations and unintended regional variances in protecting vulnerable groups and so on (e.g. Jud et al., 2016).

To counter the lack and deficiencies of administrative data in different sectors of child protection systems on the European continent, more than 130 academicians, researchers and professionals from different disciplines in 35 countries have gathered in a network labelled Euro-CAN (http://www.euro-can.org), an acronym for its title: Multi-Sectoral Responses to Child Abuse and Neglect in Europe: Incidence and Trends. The initial 4 years of the network were sponsored by the European Cooperation on Science Technology (COST) as COST Action 19106.

Euro-CAN has established five working groups in an effort to mobilise knowledge in improving data collection on documented incidents of child maltreatment. Working Group 1 focuses on the challenging task to find pathways towards making definitions of child maltreatment more comparable and standardized. Working Group 2 collects information on available administrative data on child maltreatment in Europe and tries to access these data for secondary analyses and comparisons across countries. In close connection with the latter, Working Group 5 tries to elucidate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on reported incidents of child maltreatment. It is essential to not only ‘preach to the converted’ who embrace the importance of data collection on child maltreatment incidents but also advocate for this relevant task among policymakers and administrators who are responsible for data collection. Working Group 4 dedicates its efforts to the communication of our goals and output. The book you have started to read, however, is a valuable output of Working Group 3, which focuses on participatory approaches in epidemiological research on child maltreatment. We are adamant in our convictions that victimised individuals are not to be perceived simply as respondents of surveys or individual data points in records or child files but empowered subjects in research on their suffering. Participatory approaches will improve efforts to better understand how child protection systems work and ultimately, minimise child maltreatment in upcoming generations.

Although the literature on participatory approaches in child protection is – fortunately – trending upward in general, participatory approaches to epidemiological research on child maltreatment are still largely terra incognita. This edited book contributes to mapping the territory in 17 chapters contributed by 36 Euro-CAN members from different countries, disciplines and child protection sectors. The coleaders of Working Group 3, Maria Roth and Ravit Alfandari, together with Gemma Crous have assembled an overview that both highlights gaps and needs and also identifies opportunities and examples of good practice. Excerpts from four chapters give exemplary insight on major takeaways: Filistrucchi et al. (2023) clarify that participatory approaches will not necessarily bring up issues that are entirely new to professionals and academicians in the context; they will, however, always add an additional layer and perspective to better understand and contextualise the complexity of child maltreatment incidents. Having been objectified for a major part of their life, survivors of child maltreatment might once again feel objectified by non-participatory research on child maltreatment and consequently, decline to respond, as Schlingmann (2023) highlights. Giving voice to survivors might thus increase response rates. Participatory approaches, however, move beyond increased response and an improved, holistic understanding of child maltreatment. The ethical component of giving voice to survivors of child maltreatment has the power to contribute a restorative value to epidemiological research on the topic (Filistrucchi et al., 2023). Being heard might thus potentially support a process of healing. In an overview of recent participatory research projects with children on maltreatment, Alfandari et al. (2023) highlight that there is a need not only for more participatory research in general but also for higher degrees of children-led participation. The overview on legal prerequisites in Europe for participatory research with children not only reveals both a large variance in pertinent legislations but also identifies potential barriers for future research on the topic (Ntinapogias & Nikolaidis, 2023).

As the Chair of the Euro-CAN network and COST Action, I strongly recommend that you read this entire book to find additional takeaways, spread and multiply them, and include participatory approaches in your research. Ultimately, this might add a mosaic puzzle piece to minimising children's suffering in the future. As Albert Einstein, the most famous son of the city that hosts my university, allegedly put it: ‘There are no great discoveries and advances, as long as there is an unhappy child on earth’.

Acknowledgements

This book would not have been possible without the members of the Euro-CAN project ‘Multi-Sectoral Responses to Child Abuse and Neglect in Europe: Incidence and Trends’. The editors would especially like to give heartfelt thanks to all the members of the Working Group 3 ‘Promoting participatory approaches to child maltreatment surveillance’ for your efforts, professionalism and patience.

The editors and authors would like to acknowledge the much-valued contribution of the professional proof-reader and writer Eric Lindberg, who responded to all our requests in an amazingly efficient manner, showing excellent understanding of the researchers' scientific language, and giving valuable hints for clarifying it. His guidance accompanied authors from 12 countries to reach the final stage of publishing a common book.