Designing and Evaluating a Child Maltreatment Surveillance System: Towards Improving the Management of Child Abuse Incidents

Background: Child abuse is a significant global concern, with short-term and long-term consequences for the lives of children who are victims of violence. For effective action by decision-makers, the information and analysis obtained from surveillance systems must be used to determine the problem, the magnitude of maltreatment, its relationship with other issues, and the likelihood of preventing maltreatment.Objectives: Due to the importance of child abuse and the management and control of this event, this study was conducted to design and evaluate a child abuse surveillance system.Methods: The system was designed in Visual Studio version ۲۰۱۷ using the C# programming language and ASP.NET framework. SQL Server was used to store the data. The design of the child abuse surveillance system was evaluated according to the usability evaluation.Results: The minimum data set was indexed to collect and store data on abused children by the standard format. Web-based child abuse surveillance system (CASS) has ۳ types of users. The system evaluation results showed that the highest number of problems were related to the principle of "help and documentation".Conclusion: Designing a CASS is a practical step in managing and controlling the data of abused children. This system and registration of information will help professionals, managers, and decision-makers make the right decisions to take care of injured children with up-to-date information

Keywords:

Surveillance system , Child abuse , Child maltreatment , Surveillance