The purpose of this thesis is to determine the methods used by public health nurses to assess the risk of child abuse, recognize ongoing child abuse and intervention. Additionally, this research will provide information for possible development of the guidelines and methods in order to make the intervention as simple as possible for public health nurses. Good guidelines would also make it easier to open up the dialogue during children´s health center visits in potential abuse situations. Additional purpose for the thesis is to determine the support system in place for public health nurses to intervene with abuse cases.

Foundation of the thesis will present different types of abuse, challenges of intervention, recognition, early prevention and providing early support in child health centers. Different methods in use today are also described.

Thesis is quantitative. The study was implemented by an internet questionnaire, using Webropol- tool. Questionnaire includes structured and open ended questions, witch are used to provide solutions to problems presented in this thesis. Questionnaire was sent to Kallion peruspalvelukuntayhtymä, Raahen seudun hyvinvointikuntayhtymä, Selänne peruspalvelukuntayhtymä and Oulaisten kaupunki. Only 20 of the answeres was validated to the study. Questionnaire wich was sent via e-mail was kept open for two weeks.

According to the research results there is plenty of different methods in use in the maternity clinics which are intended to help to recognize the mistreated children. Still half of the respondents feels it hard to ask the parents about mistreating. Most of the respondents hoped clearer guid-ance for their superior about how to intervene mistreating. Half of the respondents hope more open cooperation between child protection, social welfare and family work. Eight of the respondents told that they know the child maltreatment clinical guideline but it had been studied together only in one workplace.

We will write an article about the resoults from the study and it will be published in Pro terveys -magazine. The pourpose is to share the information that the study brought up and to open conversation about child maletreatment all over the country. The results of the study will be reported to the persons responsible of the child health centers that were part of the study, who can then utilize the results to update guidelines and methods in use today.