René Knüsel

Structure and Challenges of Child Protection in Switzerland

This chapter aims at providing an overview on legislation, organizational structure and processes of child protection in Switzerland. For a relatively small country, the number of services is rather vast. This diversity arises from 26 cantonal and sub-cantonal variations of organizing child protection and is amplified by Switzerland’s cultural and linguistic variety. The roles in public child protection differ into risk assessment, deciding on child protection orders, and providing mandated services. They are assigned to at least two different types of organizations. Penal agencies are responsible for prosecuting child maltreatment offenses. Federal legislation entitles victims of crimes to support free-of-charge. Many private or semi-private agencies, such as specialized psychosocial counselling services or interdisciplinary child protection teams, are recognized as victim aid agencies and are therefore able to fund a part of the victim’s support through federal money. The new Child and Adult Protection Law, implemented in 2013, mandates professional sentinels to report to a child protection authority when a “person needs assistance”. Challenges discussed pertain, for example, to increasing the degree of standardization of risk assessment across cantons and to a lack of surveillance and shared data. Moreover, corporal punishment has still not been banned completely.

Mobilizing agencies for incidence surveys on child maltreatment: successful participation in Switzerland and lessons learned

BackgroundMany countries around the world lack data on the epidemiology of agency response to child maltreatment. They therefore lack information on how many children in need get help and protection or if children stand equal chances across regions to get services. However, it has proven difficult to commit child protection agencies to participation in incidence studies.MethodsThe Optimus Study invested in a continuous collaborative effort between research and practice to develop a data collection for the first national study on the incidence of agency responses to all forms of child maltreatment in Switzerland. An innovative approach of utilizing individual agencies’ standardized data reduced work burden for participation respectably: any arbitrary excerpt of data on new cases between September 1 and November 30, 2016, could be uploaded to a secured web-based data integration platform. It was then mapped automatically to fit the study’s definitions and operationalizations.ResultsThis strategy has led to a largely successful participation rate of 76% of agencies in the nationwide sample. 253 agencies from the social and health sector, public child protection, and the penal sector have provided data.ConclusionsValuing agencies context-specific knowledge and expertise instead of viewing them as mere providers of data is a precondition for representativeness of incidence data on agency responses to child maltreatment. Potential investigators of future similar studies might benefit from the lessons learned of the presented project.

Proposing a New Approach to the Research on Men’s Organizations

This article describes a study of men’s groups in Switzerland, in which both the official positions of the men’s organizations (N = 40) as well as the opinions of their members (N = 324) are examined using a mixed methods research design. This research strategy revealed significant ideological fault lines within the men’s organizations, ranging from explicitly affirmed anti-feminism to radical profeminist positions. At the same time, the mixed methods approach uncovered the existence of a shared view that transcends these fault lines, a view common to all types of men’s organizations. In light of these findings, the methodological approach used in this study is compared with that employed in the landmark studies of men’s movements from the 1990s.

Des hommes en mouvement en Suisse: trois perspectives sur la masculinité

Abstract Cet article expose les résultats d’une démarche visant à mieux connaître la façon dont les organisations masculines suisses, de par leurs discours, se positionnent face à la redéfinition de la place et du rôle des hommes dans notre société. Après une présentation d’éléments significatifs permettant de souligner les caractéristiques récentes de la reconfiguration des rapports entre les sexes, cet article présente un survol des orientations idéologiques portées par les quelques cent organisations répertoriées. Les résultats montrent que la pluralité et la diversité des positionnements idéologiques se structurent autour de trois tendances principales, qui peuvent être analysées en fonction des transformations sociales et des changements qui ont récemment influencé les perceptions du rôle des hommes.