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Abstract
Introduction: Child abuse continues to be one of the primary threats to the child's emotional and social well-being globally. As students spend maximum time in school, teachers need to be trained to recognize physical and behavioural changes associated with abuse in order to confidently determine the cause and plan interventions appropriately. The inadequate knowledge and information lead to gap in the crucial role of teachers in identification and early assistance of an abused child. Objectives: The objectives of the study were to assess the knowledge of the school teachers on child abuse, to determine the attitude of school teachers on identification and reporting of child abuse and to find the association between the knowledge and attitude with the selected demographic variables. Methods: A descriptive survey design was used to conduct the study. Study was conducted among 100 school teachers from selected urban English medium schools, in Udupi district. The instruments used for data collection were a structured knowledge questionnaire on child abuse and the attitude scale on identification and reporting of child abuse. Results: Majority of the school teachers (84%) had average knowledge on child abuse whereas, all the teachers had favourable attitude towards identification and reporting of child abuse. With regard to association between knowledge and selected demographic variables, there was no significant association found except for previous knowledge on child abuse (p < .05). Conclusion: Child abuse is a global issue and children face abuse in many forms and more awareness will help in combating the issues and problems with abuse. The knowledge of the school teachers needs to be enhanced by conducting awareness program on child abuse.
Key words: Child abuse, knowledge, attitude, school teacher
Introduction
Child abuse, a global issue affects children of all ages, gender, races, ethnicities, in varied socio economic classes and is in the forefront in the line of widespread social issues and social problems (Collin-Vezina, Diagneault, Hebert, 2013). Child abuse occurs in many different forms such as physical, sexual, emotional and neglect; whereby irrespective of any form of abuse it has a traumatising lifetime experience for the victim (Habetha et.al 2012).
Deveney (2008) stressed and asserted that child abuse has both short term and long term effects not only in childhood, but also later in...