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Violence against children (VAC) is a global challenge affecting up to 1.7 billion children every year (Hillis et al 2016). Early childhood is a critical period for all children – it has been conclusively recognised by research that this period is significant for young children’s rights in the here and now, for children’s future educational, economic and health outcomes, and ultimately societal flourishing. The aim of this workstream was to understand the concept of violence against children in the early years (i.e. 5 years and under) in order to contribute to the evidence base on how to create safe, inclusive learning environments. This systematic review located and synthesised research evidence on the prevalence of VAC in the early years. Details about the three key aspects of this work can be seen below.
The systematic review searched for primary studies or systematic reviews published in peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed journal articles between January 1st 2000-December 31st 2021 in nine English-language databases, and the research team searched seven peer-reviewed journals.
For inclusion criteria, we considered studies which included children aged 5 and below who are exposed to violence (e.g., child sexual abuse, child physical abuse, emotional abuse, community violence etc). The control group consisted of children aged 5 years and below who were not exposed to any form of violence. We considered studies that reported on the prevalence of any of the mentioned forms of violence perpetrated against children aged 5 and below, including but not limited to, child physical abuse, corporal punishment, intentional injury, child harm, bullying, gender-based violence, and child sexual abuse. The main outcome was the prevalence of violence against children aged 5 years and below. A flow chart of the review process is included in the final report following PRISMA guidelines for reporting systematic reviews. We used Hoy et al. (2012) checklist for assessing risk of bias in prevalence studies.
For each of the types of violence against children, a set of adjusted prevalence estimates were combined using random-effects meta-analysis. Cochran’s Q tests were conducted to assess the heterogeneity across studies.
This systematic review located and synthesised research evidence on the consequences of VAC in the early years. The systematic review searched for primary studies or systematic reviews published in peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed journal articles between January 1st 2000-December 31st 2021 in nine English-language databases and the research team searched seven peer-reviewed journals.
For inclusion criteria, we considered studies which included children aged 5 and below who were exposed to violence (e.g., child sexual abuse, child physical abuse, emotional abuse, community violence etc). The control group consisted of children aged 5 years and below who were not exposed to any form of violence. The main outcomes of the systematic review were the consequences of violence against children aged 5 years and below. The outcomes were presented in four predominant types of consequences, namely physical health consequences, mental health consequences, sexual behavioural consequences, and other consequences. A flow chart of the review process is included in the final report following PRISMA guidelines for reporting systematic reviews. Data was extracted for consequences and recorded in an Excel file by type of maltreatment. We used the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale for Non-Randomised Case-Control and Cohort Studies (Deeks et al., 2003) to assess the quality of the included studies.
A narrative synthesis of the consequences of violence against children in the early years from the included studies was presented.
Building on the systematic reviews reporting on the prevalence and consequences of violence against children in the early years, four steps were taken to estimate the economic burden of violence against children in the early years: