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The purpose of this research is to explore nurses' perceptions of their current skills and knowledge and training needs to identify cases of child abuse and their understanding of their roles and responsibilities in relation to child abuse. Nurses, including health visitors and midwives, have been recognised as having a key role in the protection and care of children, especially in identifying and referring possible cases of child abuse and neglect.

A structured questionnaire concerning knowledge and training needs in child protection was sent to all nurses employed in a Scottish NHS Primary Care Trust (approximately 1,900), of whom one‐third (667) responded. These survey results were complemented by semi‐structured interviews with 99 members of the nursing workforce.

Almost all training in child protection had been confined to health visitors, resulting in the Trust giving an implicit message that child protection is not a role in which other nurses need have any involvement. In general, those nurses who both worked with children and had involvement in child protection issues, considered themselves to be most in need of knowledge around child protection work, to have the greatest level of knowledge and to consider further training a priority.

Nurses who had an interest or involvement in child protection work were more likely to participate in the research, which may have biased the results.

Training strategies need to address the diversity of nurses' involvements in child protection work through the development of training programmes which are appropriate for different workplaces and different occupational groupings. Nurses in some settings will need to be first convinced they have the potential to play an important role in protecting children from abuse and neglect.

Many NHS Trusts have in recent years introduced mandatory training in child protection for all staff in contact with children. However, previously published studies have considered training issues only in respect of nurses identified as working directly with children, whereas this study explores child protection issues for all nurses employed in a primary care NHS Trust.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the applicability of the process of identifying a conceptual framework of practice to areas of nursing without a current clearly identified scope of practice. Worldwide, nursing is a diverse profession with many recognised sub-specialties, some of which are under threat. Nurses with specialised knowledge, experience and education are needed to provide specific care in nursing sub-specialties. However, some of these characteristics are implicit and not clear to the wider nursing community. This paper presents an overview of research to identify the parameters of practice for a sub-specialty of nursing.

The methodology was interpretive enquiry as it allowed for the interpretation of multiple realities which resulted in a rich description of the work of a sub-specialty. The research used document analysis, focus group interviews and individual interviews as the methods of collecting data. Documents were analysed using iterative and thematic analysis The focus group and individual interview data were analysed using an adaptation of a six-phase thematic analysis process.

This paper presents the findings of the entire analysis and the resultant holistic conceptual framework for the work of the child and adolescent mental health nurse in the inpatient unit. The findings have contributed new knowledge to mental health nursing, specifically child and adolescent mental health nursing making the parameters of practice more explicit. Research is currently being undertaken in Australia to further develop the framework for other sub-specialties of nursing such as community health and orthopaedics. These sub-specialties have been identified as potentially at risk.

This paper discussed the applicability of a broader use of a qualitative research methodology used to identify scope of practice in child and adolescent mental health nursing, for other nursing specialties.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the evolution of school nursing in the USA in the early decades of the twentieth century, highlighting the linkages between schools and public health and the challenges nurses faced.

This historical essay examines the discussions about school nursing and school nurses’ descriptions of their work.

In the Progressive period, though the responsibilities of school nurse were never clearly defined, nurses quickly became accepted, respected members of the school, with few objecting to their practices. Nonetheless, nurses consistently faced financial complications that limited, and continue to limit, their effectiveness in schools and communities.

Few histories of school health have documented the critical role nurses have played and their important, although contested, position today. This paper points to the obstacles restricting the development of dynamic school nurse programs today.

Child and family health (CAFH) services in Australia initially provide at least one nurse-home-visit following the birth of a child. Planning and referral then commences for the on-going provision of appropriate services to families. Unfortunately, services in rural and regional communities in Australia can be fragmented and poorly resourced. Little is known about CAFH nurses’ experiences of working with families in these communities. The purpose of this paper is to examine the way CAFH nurses work within a universal health service model that may be compromised by isolation, discontinuity and fragmentation.

Focus groups with 26 CAFH nurses from five rural, two regional and one urban community in New South Wales (NSW), Australia were conducted. A secondary, thematic analysis of the qualitative data were undertaken to reflect on change and continuity in the field of universal CAFH services. Analysis was driven by two key research questions: How do CAFH nurses experience their role in universal home-based CAFH services within rural and regional areas of Australia and, what unique factors are present in rural and regional areas that impact on their CAFH nursing role?

The experience of the CAFH nurses as presented by these data revealed a role that was family centred and concerned for the welfare of the family, yet compromised by the need to meet the disproportionately complex needs of families in the absence of a strong network of services. The opportunity to present the findings provides insight into the way in which families engage with available services in isolated communities. CAFH nurses in the study attempted to maintain service integrity by adapting to the unique context of their work.

It is important to understand the mechanisms through which CAFH nurses operate to work effectively with families referred to their service. This paper describes the way in which CAFH nurses work with families not meeting the threshold for more intensive and targeted home-visiting service delivery in rural and regional communities of NSW, Australia.

Previous research has explored inter-professional education (IPE) in mental health contexts, for example, between mental health nurses and clinical psychologists (CPs). However, little research has explored IPE with children’s nurses (CNs) and CPs, who often work together in a range of in-patient and community mental health settings. Indeed, a significant proportion of CNs’ work involves identifying and responding to the mental health needs of children, young people and families; equally, CPs work directly into child teams, and their consultancy work requires awareness of other professional roles. However, knowledge and understanding of roles, and true collaborative working, appears to be limited. This study aimed to address these limitations.

A project was designed to bring together these two groups in an educational context, to explore ways in which collaborative working may enable effective mental health-care delivery. A total of 17 children’s nursing students and 15 clinical psychology trainees participated in a 3-day workshop, including experiential and clinical vignette work. Workshops were evaluated at three time points, using a questionnaire.

The workshops were effective in improving knowledge, skills and understanding of roles. Teamwork and discussions were helpful in modifying attitudes and perceptions. However, “defensiveness” was an important theme, demonstrating somewhat fixed beliefs about roles in relation to child mental health care.

Few studies have explored IPE in child mental health contexts, especially in the pre-qualification arena.

This study aims to identify the barriers that prevent community nurses in Israel from reporting cases of child maltreatment.

A qualitative study included interviews of 20 community nurses using questions that focused on the following subjects: knowledge of the law and reporting methods, barriers to reporting and the nurses’ outlook on child abuse.

Nurses felt they have a lack of the professional knowledge needed to identify suspicious signs. Furthermore, finding indicates that there is a lack of understanding regarding the term “reasonable suspicion” under the law among nurses, and a lack of familiarity with the postreporting procedure. The duty to report is not, by itself, sufficient to increase the rate of reporting. The training in this area is insufficient.

Policymakers must formulate clear rules to identify various forms of harm in children and determine the existence of a “reasonable basis” to believe that a crime has been committed among community nurses in Israel so that they can fulfill their legal and moral duty.

Reporting abuse is a professional duty enshrined in law. The enactment of this law in Israel in 1989 created a new reality, designating a legal and moral obligation, on the part of society in general, as well as professionals, to break the code of silence surrounding child abuse. However, the present findings suggest that the rates of reporting among community nurses remain low. As of yet, no research has been conducted as to why nurses are not reporting suspected cases of abuse in Israel, despite the continued existence of this law.

Primary care (PC) is a strong determinant of overall health care. Children make up around a fifth of the population of the European Union and European Economic Area and have their own needs and uptake of PC. However, there is little research into how well PC services address their needs. There are large differences in childhood mortality and morbidity patterns in the EU and EEA countries, and there has been a major epidemiological shift in the past half century from predominantly communicable disease, to non-communicable diseases presenting and increasingly managed in PC. This increase in multifactorial morbidities, such as obesity and learning disability, has led to the need for PC systems to adapt to accommodate these changes. Europe presents a challenging picture of unexplained variation in health care delivery and style and of children’s different health experiences and health-related behaviour. The Models of Child Health Appraised (MOCHA) project aimed to describe the PC systems in detail, analyse their components and appraise them from a number of different viewpoints, including professional, public, political and economic lenses. It did this through nine work packages supported by a core management team, and a network of national agents, individuals in each MOCHA country who had the expertise in research and knowledge of their national health care system to answer a wide range of questions posed by the MOCHA scientific teams.

Research supports the value of clinical supervision as an essential aspect of mental health nursing. Despite the need for this, there appears to be a deficit in qualified supervision in the mental health field, although efforts have been made toward advanced mental health practitioner nursing. This study aims to characterize the ideas that advanced mental health nurse practitioners hold about supervision in practice and to consider what is required to support changes to advanced mental health nursing in Saudi Arabia.

This study adopted a qualitative exploratory design that applied a phenomenological approach as the research method. Twelve postgraduate mental health nurses were recruited through purposive sampling.

The data analysis generated the central theme, which indicates the attributes of a competent supervisor of advanced mental health nurse practitioners. The components of a supervisor’s competence had the following three main themes: nursing competencies, professional characteristics and communication.

A limitation of this study is that the data was collected from practicing advanced care mental health practitioners in Saudi Arabia. Further research conducted in different geographical areas and with different categories of staff is warranted. The results of those studies could be compared against the results presented here.

Best practice measures indicated that mental health nurse practitioners working in mental health settings and private practice should receive supervision to help them reflect upon their daily nursing practice challenges.

The findings of this study indicate that to support mental health practitioners and advanced mental health practitioners working in private practice, competent supervisors need to be on hand and willing to invest in creating a supportive culture in practice.

This article aims to explore the meanings of positionality and demonstrate how reflective memos can illustrate positionality in a constructivist grounded theory (CGT) study.

Acknowledging the positionality of the researcher through a reflective approach is an essential element of CGT studies. The first author (IS) used reflective memoing in her CGT study on Indian immigrant children's asthma to practice reflexivity and make her positionality explicit. Through memos, IS acknowledges her knowledge, beliefs, practices, experience and pre-existing assumptions about the research topic. This article is a compilation of the reflective memos that IS wrote during the initial phase of her research and draws on her motivations as they relate to the topic under study in the context of current literature.

The reflective accounts of a researcher's background and experience can act as a lens for understanding the research question and the choice of methodology.

This article may be useful to novice qualitative researchers who are struggling to define and establish their own positionality. John Dewey's and David Schon's works on reflective thinking serve as valuable tools to practice reflexivity. Philosophically underpinned reflections in the form of memos, employed from the outset and throughout the study, can enhance the study rigour by making research decisions transparent.

This article provides practical guidance on how to outline positionality at the outset of a CGT study.

It is estimated that approximately 10% of children and young people in Scotland have mental health problems (Scottish Government, 2008), resulting in a rapidly increasing need for child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS). Primary mental health workers (PMHW) have been identified as one of the key professional groups within a multidisciplinary CAMHS team to progress the agenda of early intervention and identification of mental health problems among children and young people. One discrete aspect of the PMHW role is the facilitation and delivery of consultation services to a wide range of agencies. Consultation, in this context, is understood as a community activity for disseminating knowledge, creating understanding and facilitating non‐CAMH professionals to support children and young people with psychological difficulties (Scottish Executive, 2005). This paper discusses a smallscale study that aims to deconstruct the concept of consultation and explore the professional expertise and service requirements necessary for effective delivery. It concludes that complex and multifaceted skills are required if a consultation is to be meaningful and effective. Consequently, and despite competing discourse, there remains a strong debate for retaining the role of the PMHW, specifically for the delivery of early intervention and health promotion activities, such as consultation. The study took place in Scotland, but UK‐wide data is drawn on to provide a more comprehensive picture.