Child sexual abuse prevention in social work

Abstract

Child Sexual Abuse is a highly relevant problem in present time. The research is focused on Child Sexual Abuse prevention in Social Work. The research consists of theoretical and practical chapters. Theoretical chapter includes mapping and analysing existing programs aimed to prevent Child Sexual Abuse, while practical chapter is focused on creation, implementation and evaluation of the self-designed prevention program targeted on international social work students. Quantitative method with experimental research design is used to evaluate the results. The research is a quasi-experiment, as sampling is not random. The research includes participants from 17 different countries (Germany, Philippines, Nigeria, Nepal, Lithuania, Ghana, Turkey, Georgia, Spain, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Uganda, Poland, Latvia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Slovakia). Participants are divided into two groups; Group A includes students from Cohorts 2 and 3 of the ESWOCHY program, Group B includes social work students from the Catholic University of Ružomberok. A self-designed non-standard questionnaire was used in the research. Questionnaire was designed bilingual (English and Slovak). The results were analysed with IBM SPSS 29 Statistical software. The results showed statistically significant increase in knowledge about Child Sexual Abuse after the self-designed prevention program implementation. Participants demonstrated significant increase in knowledge about Child Sexual Abuse, including statistics, forms and particularly about the grooming phase. There is a difference in scores between the participants from Cohort 2 and Cohort 3 of the ESWOCHY program; with Cohort 2 scoring higher. However, there is no significant difference between students of the ESWOCHY program and students at the Catholic University of Ružomberok (control group) during the pre-test, which confirms that the control group was selected appropriately and both groups had similar knowledge of CSA issues prior to attending the prevention program.