SAFE 4 CHILD PROJECT
CONTEXT AND NEED
Mental health problems among children and adolescents are a worldwide issue of concern. About 15% of people are diagnosed with a mental disorder before the age of 18. The number of use of mental health services by children and adolescents has risen in many countries. Aggressive behaviour among children and adolescents has increased and staff face it on daily basis. With, Safe4Child project, we want to increase the knowledge about the children’s aggressive behaviour and strengthen the frontline workers skills to prevent and manage these situations. The lack of competent health professionals in this field is one of the greatest barriers to prevent these aggressive incidents.
In Finland over 90 000 children under the age of 13 suffer from mental health issues and treatment is offered in five University hospitals for children between 3- 13 years. In the child psychiatric care the nurses work in multiprofessional teams. In Finland, its been growing concern that already children behaves very aggressively towards health professionals and themselves. There is currently no existing education to deal with child aggression management using high virtual reality surroundings and research evidence states that nurses are lacking the competences to deal with these issues.
In Ireland, care for those under 18 with mental health difficulties is provided in the inpatient setting through specialist child and adolescent inpatient units (usually those aged between 13-17) and in pediatric wards within general hospitals (usually for those under 13 years). The number of children admitted to psychiatric hospitals has increased and the aggression incidents has grown.
In Germany, about 20% of children and youth suffer from mental health problems. There are 170 child and adolescent psychiatric hospitals providing care. In 2019, 57,481 young patients received child and adolescent psychiatric inpatient treatment. Children living in residential care are at risk of mental health problems due to exposure to high levels of cumulative risk factors, such as parental mental illness and trauma. Epidemiological studies report a prevalence of mental health problems of about 50% for the child welfare and 60%-75% for the residential care population. Around 33% enter the child welfare system during or after receiving psychiatric care. Workplace accident statistics show that a 25% of reportable accidents in psychiatric hospitals fall into the category of “violence, assault, threat”. There is need to train the workers to prevent aggressive behaviour
In Bulgaria, according to the National Center for Public Health and Analysis, there are 22 child psychiatrists in Bulgaria. There are currently three inpatient child psychiatric wards. According to the Bulgarian legislation, child psychiatric hospital wards are child and adolescent mental health wards, psychiatric ward for children up to 12 years, psychiatric ward for adolescents (13-18 years). Unfortunately, there are no official statistical data on the level of aggression among children with identified mental disorders in Bulgaria. There is also need to develop the aggression prevention and incident report system.
AIM
Is to develop training to frontline workers and nursing students related to aggression management in child and adolescent psychiatric and residential units. In addition, we will develop high fidelity simulation virtual platform that works with VR glasses.
MAIN OBJECTIVES
1. To develop a trauma focused framework for managing aggressive child and adolescent in psychiatric and residential units.
2. To develop an online course (5ect), “Safe4Child-trauma focus care for child aggression management” with course handbook
3. To develop technical high fidelity virtual reality environment with user manual for Safe4Child-trauma focus care simulations.
4. To make Safe4Child-trauma focus care implementation quide for extended target groups.
CO-OPERATIONS WITH PARTNERS
Benefits of cooperating with transnationally with partners will ensure that Safe4Child project objectives are achieved. Safe4Child project highlights the common problems we are facing in Finland, Bulgaria, Ireland and Germany in relation to frontline workers education in child and adolescent care and especially managing child aggression in psychiatric wards. Transnational co-operation is needed to achieve Safe4Child project objectives and results. Resent research on field of child psychiatric nurses emphasizes the fact that we need to train nurse students and frontline workers to manage child and adolescent aggressive behaviour in psychiatric and residential units so that they can treat patients with humane and respectful way, by using trauma focused framework.
All participating countries are facing the same challenge in matter of lacking skilled workforce in child and adolescent psychiatric care. Safe4Child-trauma focus care will benefit frontline workers and nursing student skills to manage aggressive child and adolescent patients in all participating countries in multiple settings. Benefits of co-operation with partners enables to learn from each other, to share good practices related to child psychiatric and residential care and to make the most of each partners expertise and know how to achieve project objectives.
Different cultural context and service systems in the different participating countries gives us opportunities to exchange and share variances and similarities, while learning from experiences and solutions in child and adolescent care particularly using virtual reality.
