Making children safe.

Our goal is to enable policy-makers and practitioners to find and run the programmes that are most likely to work. This site brings together the rigorous evidence about ‘what works’ in child protection and institutional response to child protection; it helps you to find it; and summarises it.

What evidence exists?

We have mapped the evidence in the Evidence and Gap Map.
Evidence and Gap Map

What does the evidence say?

Our Guidebook summarises the evidence on the various topics.

Finding Evidence
0
completed rigorous primary ‘what works’ studies are on the Map
0
systematic reviews, and 8 primary studies underway are also on the Map.
0
countries where studies have been conducted.

Many(!)

gaps with no research yet, or only one or two studies.

What is child protection?

By ‘child protection’, we mean protecting children (people up to 18 years old) from abuse of any sort: physical, verbal, mental, sexual or neglect.

This site looks at institutional responses to child abuse: meaning, actions taken by institutions (such as schools, hospitals, sports clubs, residential care facilities, churches and other faith-based organisations) to prevent abuse / respond to abuse within the institution (e.g., by the institution’s staff) and to prevent abuse / respond to abuse outside the institution (e.g., schools teaching children about abuse so that they can recognise it and avoid it in the home).

What our evidence covers

The evidence compiled and summarised on this site is rigorous, ‘what works’ studies of institutional responses to child abuse.

The EGM & Guidebook do cover…

  • Institutional* responses to child abuse ie. what organisations do to prevent abuse both in their organisations and outside.

  • What did the studies find.

  • Which effects of which programmes have been studies.

  • Studies at any point, and from anywhere in the world, and published in any of various languages.

  • Types of study that are on this site: primary causal studies which have a robust counterfactual (RCTs & QEDs), and systematic reviews.

  • Protocols (“recipes”) for new studies which are likely to be underway.

They don’t cover…

  • Most work on abuse in the home / by friends or relatives”.

  • Where the abuse is.

  • What types of abuse.

  • How much abuse there is.

 

*By ‘institution’, we mean school, pre-school nursery, church, other faith-based organisation, hospital, residential care setting, sports club, music or other clubs, holiday camps etc.

10 pointers for designing or requesting monitoring or evaluation.

There are many gaps in the existing evidence about institutional responses to child abuse. So practitioners, funders and policy-makers may need to commission new rigorous research. It’s easy to waste time and money there! This guide explains what to do and what to avoid.