Enhancing Child Protection Responses in Oral Health Practice: A Scoping Review of Evidence-Based Approaches
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Wiley
Abstract
Child abuse and neglect represent significant global health challenges with long‐lasting adverse impacts. Oral health practitioners, who often interact with children, play a key role in detecting and responding to suspected cases. Despite this, there is a notable gap in the systematic child protection measures in dental practices globally. This scoping review, utilising the Joanna Briggs Institute methodology, aims to outline current approaches for oral health practitioners and identify gaps in the approaches designed to enhance their responsiveness. Covering studies from January 2000 to May 2023, the review explored educational programmes, guidelines and interdisciplinary training modules. A comprehensive search across multiple databases, including MEDLINE, CINAHL and Scopus, along with grey literature sources, identified 1230 sources, resulting in the inclusion of 20 relevant sources. Findings highlight three main approaches: dental‐specific education programmes, practical guidelines for child protection responses and analysis of legal and professional obligations. These approaches demonstrate a mix of direct educational interventions and policy‐driven strategies aimed at enhancing oral health practitioners' knowledge, attitudes and practices towards child abuse and neglect. Given the identified variability and gaps in training and resources, future research should assess the effectiveness of these approaches and develop comprehensive, culturally safe training for oral health practitioners globally.Description
Keywords
5203 Clinical and Health Psychology, 44 Human Society, 4402 Criminology, 52 Psychology, 4409 Social Work, Child Abuse and Neglect Research, Pediatric, Dental/Oral and Craniofacial Disease, Violence Research, Behavioral and Social Science, Social Determinants of Health, 8.1 Organisation and delivery of services, 7.3 Management and decision making, 1607 Social Work, Social Work, 4402 Criminology, 4409 Social work, 5203 Clinical and health psychology
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Child Abuse Review, ISSN: 0952-9136 (Print); 1099-0852 (Online), Wiley, 33(6). doi: 10.1002/car.2904
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© 2024 The Author(s). Child Abuse Review published by Association of Child Protection Professionals and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.