Aim and research questions

The expertise aims to assess the effectiveness of interventions to prevent the occurrence and chronification of child maltreatment based on empirical evidence. The expertise’s guiding question is:

How effective are interventions in preventing the occurrence and chronification of child maltreatment?

To answer the guiding question, the following sub-questions are addressed:

• Which interventions are effective in terms of early identification potential child maltreatment?
• Which interventions are effective in preventing the occurrence and chronification of child maltreatment?
• For which groups of people and in what contexts are the interventions effective?
• How well supported is the evidence for each intervention?

The assessment of the effectiveness of interventions is based on empirical evidence. Since the effectiveness of prevention is likely to depend not only on individual measures but also on the structural prerequisites of the prevention system (e.g., coordination of interventions), the following additional question is asked: What are the structural prerequisites of prevention systems that must be in place for interventions to be effective in the best possible way? The answer to this question is mainly based on assumptions discussed in the literature.

Methods

The question raised in this expertise is related to a broad spectrum of preventive interventions, for which a large number of relevant primary studies are available. A considerable number of systematic literature reviews and meta-analyses have already been conducted for specific types of interventions. To answer the central question of this report, we therefore systematically search for relevant systematic literature reviews and meta-analyses and present and discuss their findings. This procedure, a so-called umbrella review, has the advantage that empirical findings for a broad spectrum of interventions can be made accessible.