Abstract
Aim:
The aim of this study was to describe child health nurses (CHN's) experiences of meeting and helping the children exposed to child abuse in the home environment.
Background:
CHN's have the opportunity to come close to families and support them. This support may strengthen the parental role which can improve the child's environment and provide help to children exposed to child abuse.
Methods:
A descriptive design with a qualitative approach (content analysis) was used. Six CHN's were interviewed.
Findings:
The experience of to obtain an insight into the child maltreatment was described. The CHN's experienced their meeting with child abuse as a difficult task e.g. to take a decision to notify the social services and the CHN as the child's agent. The CHN's also had experiences of both providing and receiving support.
Conclusions:
CHN's have a number of difficult tasks like meeting abused children. Through experience and support from colleges the CHN's can reach a higher confidence in their own capacity of helping the children. This can affect how fast the CHN take the necessary decision to report to social services when a child is abused.