Child healthcare nurses experiences working with maltreated families

Many children in Sweden are exposed to maltreatment. Among the purposes of the Child health care (CHC) are to decrease mortality, infirmity and handicaps among mothers and their children, and to decrease hurtful strains for parents and their children. CHC-nurses get critizism for not reporting child maltreatment in high enough numbers to the Social service. The aim of this study was to chart how CHC-nurses finds their work with families suffering from maltreatment. Ten CHC-nurses were interviewed with semistructured interviews. The study has a qualitative approach and the interviews were analysed with the help of content analysis. In the result it appears that CHC-nurses experiences working with families suffering from maltreatment is very emotional. The support from collegues, psychlogists and co-operation with Mother Health Care, pre-school and Social Service is valuable. It’s hard to judge which who are exposed to maltreatment because the definition is unclear. There’s a wish to be able to help more families without needing to report to the Social service. The prevented work by the CHC agains maltreatment should get a more prominent clear position in CHC’s standard program for the entire family