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This paper aims to examine the predictive potential of elder abuse on welfare status of older persons in selected districts in Southwestern Uganda.

The study took a cross-sectional descriptive and analytical design. Using a sample of 285 respondents, data were obtained from 201 usable questionnaires collected from caregivers and officials relating with older persons in this area making it a response rate of 70.5%. Using statistical program for social scientists (SPSS), the researchers tested and analyzed six hypotheses.

Results indicate that physical abuse, emotional abuse, financial abuse and neglect negatively and significantly predicted welfare status. Though negatively related, social abuse and sexual abuse did not significantly predict welfare status.

Family members and caregivers must make practices that do not promote physical abuse, emotional abuse, financial abuse and neglect as these negatively affect the welfare status of elderly persons. District officials such as community development officers and other persons handling older persons need to implement policies that promote the welfare status of the elderly.

The study demonstrates that the existence of physical abuse, emotional abuse, financial abuse and neglect is a deterrent to older person’s welfare status.

Few studies assess how child abuse and neglect (CAN) affects adolescents’ mental health. Further, the majority of studies conducted to date discount the individual CAN items and report overall prevalence rates for different types of abuse and neglect. The purpose of this study was to examine the levels of and gender differences in CAN subtypes, lifetime prevalence of individual CAN items and the contribution of different CAN subtypes for explaining depression, anxiety and irritability.

The sample included Jamaican (n = 7,182, 60.8% female) and Ugandan (n = 11,518, 52.4% female) youths. The authors used a population-based cross-sectional study design. Youths completed an anonymous survey in school settings.

The authors found gender differences in the levels of CAN subtypes. Maltreatment behaviors of lesser severity were more commonly endorsed by the youths than those of greater severity. Neglect and emotional abuse were the strongest correlates of depression (e.g. neglect: ß = 0.23, among Jamaican youths; emotional abuse outside-the-home: ß = 0.23, among Ugandan girls), anxiety (e.g. neglect: ß = 0.17, among Ugandan girls; emotional abuse outside-the-home: ß = 0.27, among Ugandan girls) and irritability (e.g. emotional abuse in-the-home: ß = 0.17, among Jamaican boys; emotional abuse outside-the-home: ß = 0.17, among Ugandan girls) in most samples.

These findings will inform policymakers and professionals working with youths in Jamaica and Uganda, providing comprehensive contemporary insights beyond existing research in these regions.

This paper aims to offer a profile of domestic abuse of older women and its impact on their health and well-being; explore some of the conceptual tensions that exist in this field; and discuss current policy and practice responses to this group of victim-survivors.

It is a review paper drawing on material from a range of sources; it has policy, practice and research implications.

Although there is growing recognition that older women are victims of domestic abuse, it tends to be regarded as a “younger women’s issue” and to be subsumed under the umbrella of elder abuse. This not only removes the gendered element, but it also uncouples it from the lifecourse where, for many, its roots lie. It also tends to foreground “old age” as the primary dimension of risk. There is a tension between the justice-oriented approach of the domestic abuse system and the welfarist approach that imbues the safeguarding system. There is a need for integration between the two systems. Also, for the health and care system to be more alert to the needs of older women at risk, we need to achieve a more effective balance between protection and justice, accord a greater level of agency to older victim-survivors and ensure they have access to domestic abuse law, policy and appropriate support services.

More research is needed with older victim-survivors: listening to their lived experiences, coping strategies and pathways out of abuse. The issue also needs to be more visible.

Developing appropriate domestic abuse services for older women is critical. Practice lessons can be learnt too: especially greater integration of the safeguarding system with the domestic abuse system. Training is needed too for frontline health and social care staff about the distinctive nature of domestic abuse of older women.

Domestic abuse of older women needs to be spoken about and made more visible in society and inside services, including older people’s third sector services.

This paper adopts a critical lens and makes a number of new arguments.

Understanding of the role that attitudes and beliefs may play on the judgments people make about intimate partner violence (IPV) is becoming increasingly important, notably in the context of the criminal justice process and in recognising IPV as a public health issue. This study aims to investigate the importance of several established factors predictive of attitudes towards male-perpetrated IPV, which have never previously been explored in relation to female-perpetrated IPV.

In total, 295 young adults (18–28) from across the UK completed an online survey (M Age = 23.82) comprised of four established psychometric inventories; the Rosenberg Self-esteem scale, Satisfaction with Life scale, Attitudes Towards Female Dating Violence scale and newly developed Modern Adolescent Dating Violence Attitudes (MADVA) scale, alongside a suite of associated demographic factors.

Results derived from a multiple linear regression indicates that three types of attitudes towards male-perpetrated violence against women (physical, sexual, and psychological abuse offline), were significant predictors of attitudes towards female-perpetrated IPV, along with gender and ethnicity. Self-esteem, satisfaction with life, age and education among those surveyed were not associated with attitudes towards female-perpetrated IPV.

The results have important implications in developing educational programmes for those who have committed IPV offences, as well as teaching young people about the nature of partner abuse.

The results suggest that those who endorse attitudes supportive of male-perpetrated IPV in offline environments, also endorse violence-supportive beliefs towards female-perpetrated IPV. In effect, violence-supportive attitudes are held irrespective of the sex of the perpetrator. However, this may differ in terms of how individuals view online types of abuse, where these attitudes appear to be processed differentially to offline attitudes.

The purpose of this study was to develop and psychometrically evaluate a tool to measure nurses’ knowledge of, attitude toward and practice regarding the elder abuse phenomenon.

This study is methodological research that was conducted in two stages. In the first stage, the available tools related to knowledge, attitude and practice regarding elder abuse were identified through an extensive review of theoretical principles, previous research and related articles. The initial items were extracted and categorized. In the second stage, the psychometric properties of the tool were examined by assessing face validity, content validity, construct validity, internal consistency and stability. Four hundred nurses working in the hospitals of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences were selected to determine the validity of the structure.

The initial tool consisted of 114 items extracted, 34 of which were removed according to the experts’ opinions. The face validity of the 80-item questionnaire was then examined. The number of the items was reduced to 74 after measuring the face validity. After the qualitative measurement of the content validity, three items were eliminated. After measuring the content validity using a quantitative approach, 8 other items were removed and 63 items remained. According to the content validity index, 1 more item was removed, reducing the number to 62. The construct validity approved three dimensions of knowledge, attitude and practice. Cronbach's alpha coefficient was calculated to be 0.84. The stability was also confirmed through test–retest with a value of 0.85 for the whole scale.

The tool developed for assessing nurses’ knowledge, attitude and practice regarding elder abuse has acceptable dependability and credibility. Given the advantages of this tool, including the simplicity and fluency of sentences, and the comprehensive evaluation of nurses’ knowledge, attitude and practice regarding elder abuse, it is recommended to use this tool in relevant future studies.

Based on an extensive literature review, this chapter outlines key developments in global health and research during the last century with focus on the emergence of violence and child maltreatment as international public health priorities. Violence has been known to humans for millennia, but only in the late 1990s was it recognised as a global public health issue. Every year, an estimated 1 billion children are exposed to trauma, loss, abuse and neglect. Child maltreatment takes a social and economic toll on countries. Research initiated in 1985 found child maltreatment to be associated with increased disease, disability and premature death in adult survivors. The global availability of data on child maltreatment is, however, sporadic with low validity and reliability. Few global experts have consulted and involved the survivors of child maltreatment, as the experts by experience, in their attempts to provide a more comprehensive picture of reality. Youth and adult survivors of child maltreatment are often traumatised by the experience, and it is important to use trauma-informed approaches to prevent re-traumatisation. Participatory and inclusive research on child maltreatment is only in its infancy. There is a need for more inclusive research, designed by survivors for survivors, hereby strengthening local capacity building and informing policymakers from the bottom up. This chapter reviews lessons learnt and provides recommendations for how to enhance the participation and inclusion of the experts by experience in research on child maltreatment.

The existing literature on abusive supervision, defined as a perception by subordinates that their supervisor displays hostility toward them (but falling short of physical abuse), is deficient insofar as it fails to account for workgroup differences in employees' perceptions of abusive supervision. We therefore sought to study such differences, which refer to as “abusive supervision dispersion (ASD).”

We interviewed 40 employees from a variety of organizations in Australia, focusing on the role of affective events in ASD dynamics, with a view to understanding how this phenomenon relates to individual and team processes.

We found that ASD stimulates employees to harbor negative emotions and resentment toward their supervisor, causing them to perceive even positive events negatively. We found further that, while low ASD facilitates team-member exchange by forcing abused members to band together resulting in low team conflict, high dispersion facilitates formation of subgroups and high team conflict.

These findings illuminate the paradoxical nature of ASD and suggest that employees experience dispersion through three paradoxes: (1) dispersion paradox, (2) resentment paradox, and (3) team paradox. Overall, these findings suggest that subordinates' perceptions of high ASD are associated with detrimental impacts on team performance.

Violence toward frontline health-care workers (HCWs) from patients and visitors is a pervasive issue that ranges from verbal and psychological abuse to physical assault. The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has led to increased reports of escalated verbal workplace aggressions (VWPAs); however, most studies have been conducted internationally. Studies based in the USA have focused on physical violence experienced by nurses and paramedics in emergency situations. The purpose of this study is to learn about the experiences of different levels of frontline HCWs with VWPA from patients and visitors and discover ways to address this issue.

This qualitative descriptive study asked registered nurses, licensed practical nurses and patient care technicians from one health-care system about their experiences with patient and visitor VWPA using an anonymous, voluntary open-ended survey and in-person interviews. In all, 31 participants completed the survey and 2 were interviewed. Data were analyzed using content analysis.

Three themes emerged from the data: the experience, moving through and moving forward. Frontline HCWs described experiences of VWPA, indicating its forms, frequency and conditions. They used coping, along with personal and professional measures, to manage and move through the situation. Moving forward was captured as suggestions for the future and conveyed hope for a perfect state.

The experiences of frontline HCWs offered insight into how they perceive and cope with difficult encounters. Recommendations relate to not only implementing interventions that support frontline HCWs but also creating a culture where aggression is not tolerated and addressing perpetrator behavior is a priority.

Culture significantly influences individuals' lives and shapes their behaviour in an ecological framework. In this chapter, we examine the issue of children's participation in research about child abuse and neglect (CAN) in the context of Turkey – a country that bridges the Asian and European continents. This study was based on a review examining studies on CAN in Turkey. Thus, the main goal was to find cultural explanations for the scarcity of participatory research with children in the field of child maltreatment. A review examining studies on CAN in Turkey found that no study included children victims of CAN or explored why children victims of CAN have not been participating in research. Therefore, we analysed ecological factors influencing the participation of children in CAN studies and interpreted the findings based on our observations as experts in this field. The analysis indicated that causes are not only due the characteristics of the caregivers and children but also result from the interaction of various environmental and systemic factors. Recommendations for politicians and researchers to increase children's participation in research are discussed.

In 2014, the Health Service Executive (HSE) in Ireland published its Safeguarding National Policy and Procedures (HSE, 2014). Under this policy, all agencies providing services through the social care directorate must ensure a robust culture of safeguarding is in place. Concurrent to this has been a move in social policy, practice and research to include the voice of the service user, both in terms of planning and reviewing services. (e.g. HIQA, 2012; Flanagan, 2020) This article examines whether service users with intellectual disabilities want to be involved in safeguarding plans and, if so, how that can be supported. Using focus groups service users demonstrated their knowledge of safeguarding as a concept, how they felt about the issues raised, and, crucially what they felt they would like to see happen next in addressing a safeguarding incident or concern. The focus groups took place in a large organisation providing residential services, day services, independent living supports and clinical supports. Engaging service users in planning and responding to safeguarding concerns is a fundamental principle of human rights legislation, both nationally and internationally. This study aims to highlight that it is both possible and desirable to engage fully with service users using a range of simple communication tools. For this to be implemented as routine practice in services providing support for people with intellectual disabilities, authentic leadership is required. Services will need to devote time, human resources and will need champions to get on board with the necessary culture shift.

Qualitative research examined peoples’ “lived experiences” and knowledge of safeguarding. Focus groups were used with thematic analysis highlighting common themes throughout, as guided by Braun and Clarke (2006). There were two objectives: Objective 1: measuring participant’s understanding of the safeguarding process. Objective 2: compare the potential differences between safeguarding plans devised by the participants in the focus groups, versus plans devised by trained designated officers responsible for safeguarding within the service.

Four principal themes emerged – 1. participants understanding of safeguarding; 2. restorative justice; 3. consent; and 4. high levels of emotional intelligence and compassion. Participants demonstrated that they could and did want to be involved in safeguarding planning and showed little variation in the plans compared to those completed by trained staff.

The study was completed with a small sample size in a single service in one area. It may not represent the lived experiences and knowledge of safeguarding in other services and indeed other countries. The video may have led to some priming; for instance, the Gardai in the footage being called may have resulted in the participants stating that contacting Gardai should be part of the plan. After the video was shown, there was a heightened awareness of safeguarding. This may indicate that participants are aware of safeguarding but unsure of the terminology or how to discuss it out of context.

For this to be implemented as routine practice in services providing support for people with intellectual disabilities, authentic leadership is required. Services will need to devote time and human resources and will need champions in the safeguarding arena to get on board with the shift in culture required.

While there did not appear to be many barriers to listening to participants, to progress this as a standard practice a very real shift in culture will be needed. It is important for practitioners to ask: Is the vulnerable person aware that this concern has been raised? What is known of the vulnerable person’s wishes in relation to the concern? To truly engage with service users in safeguarding plans these questions need to be more than a “tick box” exercise. This process needs to be fully embedded into a culture that promotes a person-centred, rights-based, inclusive approach as a standard rather than a one-off project. Some structural changes will be needed regarding the time given to designated officers, and what resources they can access (such as speech and language therapy). However, the real difference will be made by services operating authentic leadership that champions engagement on this scale, to fully answer the question posed by the researchers at the beginning of this report, “Whose safeguarding is it anyway?”

There appears to be little evidence of service user engagement in terms of planning and processing safeguarding responses, either in research or anecdotally.