Highlights
- •Nurses used skilled relational practices to address child maltreatment.
- •Nurses built relationships with parents to promote children's safety.
- •Tensions arise between child-centredness and preservation of relationships
- •Complexity of nurses' practices need to be recognised and supported.
Abstract
Background
Nurses working with children often encounter child maltreatment. Nurses' roles in
mandatory reporting are well-documented, but less is known about additional ways nurses
respond to child maltreatment. This is important because children experiencing less
extreme maltreatment may have unmet needs without receiving a child protection intervention.
Objectives
This paper reports one key finding from a qualitative study exploring nurses' perceptions
and experiences of keeping children safe from maltreatment. Specifically, it reports
nurses' perspectives of their relational skills used to support children experiencing
maltreatment.
Design and methods
Qualitative inductive thematic analysis followed by a secondary analysis using a social
constructionist framework. Data were collected through in-depth, semi-structured interviews
and data saturation was achieved. Transcripts were inductively analysed with support
of NVivo software.
Participants
Registered nurses (n = 21) working with children in Australia.
Results
Nurses saw relational practice as core to addressing child maltreatment. Key themes
were: 1) ‘Walking the line’: relationships in the context of surveillance, 2) ‘You
are a good mum’: focusing on the positives and 3) Seeing and being the voice of the
child.
Conclusions
Nurses are uniquely positioned to identify and respond to child maltreatment through
relational practices. Nurses maintained therapeutic relationships with parents to
ensure ongoing access to vulnerable children. Although nurses recognised the importance
of a child-centred approach, its enactment was varied and required ongoing critical
reflection. This highlights the importance of supporting nurses to develop, maintain
and continually improve their relational practices to enhance outcomes for children.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: May 27, 2020
Accepted:
May 14,
2020
Received in revised form:
May 12,
2020
Received:
January 17,
2020
Identification
Copyright
© 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
