Child Maltreatment Priority Setting Partnership
Better Together Results:
Top 10 Research Priorities
About the Project
The perspectives of youth with lived experiences of maltreatment are rarely included in child maltreatment research. Meaningfully engaging youth (18-30 years) and caregivers in research as equal collaborators will result in impactful research that is reflective of, and relevant to, the needs of youth and families. The goal of this Priority Setting Partnership (PSP) is to identify key research priorities for the field of child maltreatment. Youth, caregivers, and clinicians will guide the selection and formulation of the research priorities. Our team will then disseminate the top ten research priorities to policymakers, stakeholders, and the public.
In the first phase of this project, we collected open-ended responses on what participants believe are important research questions in the field of child maltreatment. The purpose of these focus groups and Talking Circles is to build on the responses of the first survey by centering the perspectives of Black, Indigenous, racialized, and 2SLGBTQIA+ youth, who are disproportionally affected by child maltreatment and child welfare systems. Participants will be asked to consider their intersecting identities when discussing what research priorities, concerns, or questions related to child maltreatment they think are most important to investigate.
How do we define childhood trauma?
For this project, we use trauma and maltreatment interchangeably to mean:
‘All types of physical and/or emotional ill-treatment, sexual abuse, neglect, negligence, and trafficking or other commercial exploitation, which results in actual or potential harm to the child’s health, survival, development, or dignity in the context of a relationship of responsibility, trust or power’ (adapted from WHO, 2022).
Please watch this video for more information on our PSP
Learn more about the Child Maltreatment PSP
James Lind Alliance
