Here you will find frequently asked questions about Children Under the Radar.
What is the purpose of Children Under the Radar?
The main goal of Children Under the Radar is to limit injuries and developmental problems in children and young people at an early stage.
The sub-goals are:
- to detect more cases of child abuse and serious neglect
- to reassure healthcare professionals in assessments related to the reporting obligation to the child welfare services (§ 33)
- to ensure high professional quality in the work
What is the reason why healthcare providers and hospitals have chosen to implement Children Under the Radar?
The Weakness and Betrayal reportfrom 2017 revealed weaknesses in the public service apparatus' handling of cases where children and young people had been exposed to child abuse and serious neglect. The report also states that messages were not always sent to the child welfare services when the criteria for the reporting obligation were met.
The report recommended strengthening the competence of healthcare professionals, especially in identifying violence, sexual abuse, and neglect. A specific measure the report refers to is integrating checklists into patient journals that can serve as decision support when healthcare professionals assess whether to send a message to the child welfare services or not.
Healthcare professionals are in a unique position to identify children who are exposed to child abuse and neglect at an early stage. To be confident in assessing when a message should be sent to the child welfare services, healthcare professionals need, among other things, knowledge aboutthe Healthcare Personnel Act §33Children Under the Radar provides training and tools that ensure competence enhancement in this area.
How can the Children Under the Radar initiative help healthcare professionals make good assessments in situations where they need to consider whether there is reason to believe that a child is exposed to child abuse and neglect?
Children Under the Radar has been developed to increase healthcare professionals' competence in handling serious concerns about patients' children and assessing whether the criteria in the Healthcare Personnel Act § 33 are met.
The law emphasizes that the reporting obligation to the child welfare services is an individual responsibility for healthcare professionals. Children Under the Radar therefore focuses on strengthening the individual healthcare professional's competence on the subject through training, guidance, and the use of a tailored checklist, to contribute to more thorough assessments and better decision support.
When should Children Under the Radar be used?
Children Under the Radar is used when adult patients who have minor children, need acute health care due to:
- serious mental condition
- suicidal ideation
- intoxication
- violence
Who is Children Under the Radar a decision support for?
Children Under the Radar is tailored for and developed as a decision support for healthcare professionals working in:
- the ambulance service
- emergency departments
- mobile acute teams
Could Children Under the Radar lead to healthcare professionals confusing the Healthcare Personnel Act § 10a and 10b with the reporting obligation in § 33?
The Healthcare Personnel Act § 10a-b concerns the assessment of children's needs for information and follow-up in the event of illness and death in the family, while § 33 concerns the reporting obligation to the child welfare services. Healthcare providers and hospitals have separate training, procedures, and routines for each paragraph. Training, procedures, and routines related to § 10a and b are mandatory for all healthcare professionals. The same applies to general training and procedures related to § 33.
Children Under the Radar includes its own specific training, procedures, and checklists for handling specific patient groups in very serious and acute situations. So far, this has only been developed for healthcare professionals in acute services.
Feedback from healthcare providers shows that Children Under the Radar contributes to increased competence and supports healthcare professionals in assessments related to the reporting obligation. The checklist prevents routine reporting through good assessments, documentation, and decision support.
Could Children Under the Radar lead to an increased number of unlawful reports to the child welfare services?
Children Under the Radar helps healthcare professionals make professionally sound assessments through competence enhancement, training, and the use of checklists.
The focus is to send the right messages, rather than routine messages. All healthcare providers and hospitals that implement Children Under the Radar are encouraged to collaborate closely with the child welfare services to learn from each other and contribute knowledge to each other. The initiative contributes to more equitable services with the same routines for handling such cases.
Could Children Under the Radar lead to the child welfare services becoming overloaded, and the most serious cases drowning in a pile of paperwork?
The child welfare services that have been involved in the work have themselves stated that it is their responsibility to prepare to receive the messages that come, and they are not concerned that they will become overloaded in connection with the implementation.
That being said, it is important to emphasize that the starting point is a very limited number of cases and that most healthcare professionals rarely have to make these assessments.
Preliminary feedback from the child welfare services shows that the introduction of Children Under the Radar in healthcare providers and hospitals has led to the content of the messages becoming better and that more accurate and targeted messages are therefore achieved.
Will patients lose trust in the healthcare services and be reluctant to seek necessary help?
Research from the introduction of the corresponding checklist The Hague Protocol in the Netherlands shows that patients maintain trust in the healthcare services. However, the issue is not yet fully illuminated in the Norwegian context.
