An Injury Prevention Framework to Underpin the public health model for child protection

Current child protection approaches in many westernised countries are driven by investigation and risk-averse responses to the needs of children where the harm experienced exceeds a predetermined threshold. This has resulted in systems being overburdened and failing many of the children who need support and care – particularly for families experiencing social, structural and economic inequalities that underpin child maltreatment and make them more likely to come to the attention of authorities.

This has led to calls to move to a preventative, early intervention public health model of child protection. There has not yet been, however, a clear vision of what this would look like. This paper proposes the use of Haddon’s Matrix, which provides a detailed theoretical and practical framework for a public health model to guide intervention program design and response to child protection risk and protective factors. We argue that this framework facilitates addressing social and structural factors that contribute to inequity in the child protection context, and provides the foundation for a holistic and integrated system of prevention and intervention for a public health response to child maltreatment.