Euro-CAN

The COST Action  CA19106 “Multi-Sectoral Responses to Child Abuse and Neglect in Europe: Incidence and Trends (Euro-CAN)”. It addressed a critical gap in Europe’s capacity to protect children: the lack of nationally representative and internationally comparable data on child maltreatment. Without this information, policymakers cannot evaluate how effectively national child protection systems are supporting children and families. This Action created a pan-European, multi-sectoral network to improve child maltreatment surveillance by harmonizing definitions, facilitating data access, and promoting ethical and inclusive research.

 

Over its duration, Euro-CAN engaged over 140 professionals from 36 member countries across healthcare, child welfare, law, public health, statistics, and academia. Through a structured Delphi study involving 70 experts from 34 countries, Euro-CAN investigators developed a consensus definition of child maltreatment to support research and administrative data harmonisation. This process, and all major outputs of the Action, were underpinned by strong academic rigor, with transparent methodology, peerreviewed publication, and international validation. The resulting definition informed international developments, including UNICEF’s 2024 launch of the International Statistical Classification of Violence Against Children.

 

Euro-CAN researchers conducted a Europe-wide survey and scoping review to map administrative datasets relevant to child maltreatment. These outputs are informing the development of an open-access database to support comparative research and national benchmarking. To ensure ethical surveillance practice, Euro-CAN members – including adults with lived experience of child maltreatment - also developed guidelines for involving children and adult survivors in research, built on participatory consultation and consensus-building processes. These guidelines have already been shared with national stakeholders and are publicly available for implementation.

 

The Action catalysed multiple European-level projects that will extend its reach and impact. These include: Training to Improve Child Abuse and Neglect Diagnostic and Administrative Coding (TICANDAC), funded by the European Union’s Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values (CERV) Daphne stream, which supports healthcare providers in Sweden and Germany to improve diagnostic coding of child maltreatment using the new ICD-11 system; Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) Prevention, an initiative supported by the Internal Security Fund of the European Commission, which promotes coordinated prevention of physical and online CSA across EU Member States through training and cross-sectoral collaboration; SERENA (Access to Health and Care Services for Children Rendered Vulnerable by Abuse), a Horizon Europe-funded project led by researchers in France, which aims to improve access to healthcare and support services in 12 countries across Europe.

 

In addition to its research achievements, Euro-CAN prioritised capacity building and inclusiveness. Two training schools and 40 mobility and dissemination grants were awarded, with strong participation from Early Career Investigators and researchers in Inclusiveness Target Countries.

 

The network’s sustainability is secured through its integration with the International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (ISPCAN) Working Group on Child Maltreatment Data Collection, linking Euro-CAN’s efforts to ongoing global networking initiatives.

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By creating tools, standards, and partnerships to strengthen multi-sectoral data collection and coordination, Euro-CAN lays the groundwork for data-informed decisions that allow for enhancing the prevention of child maltreatment in Europe.