Background Child maltreatment is a common public health problem globally and in Europe. The European report on preventing child maltreatment reported a prevalence of 9.4% for child sexual abuse, 23.9% for physical abuse, 29% for mental abuse. Investing in Children: the European Child Maltreatment Prevention Action Plan 2015–2020 has an aspirational target to reduce child maltreatment by 20% by 2020. The Action Plan has three objectives: 1) Strengthen health systems governance by developing intersectoral national action plans to prevent child maltreatment 2) Make the problem more visible by developing surveillance systems to measure and monitor child maltreatment 3) Reduce risks by implementing child maltreatment prevention programmes. The plan was approved by 53 Member States of the WHO European Region and requests that WHO to provide support to these countries to reduce the prevalence and consequences of child maltreatment by achieving these objectives. An assessment carried out and reported in European facts and the Global status report on violence prevention 2014 shows that much work needs to be done in order to achieve these objectives. For example whereas 78% of countries reported having a child maltreatment prevention action plan, only 60% of countries reported that they had conducted population surveys of child maltreatment. The implementation of prevention programmes was also incomplete, with a median of 44% countries that reported implementation on a large scale. If the target is to be met, then action needs scaled up markedly.

Objectives of workshop The workshop will discuss tools that are being developed by WHO to support countries. The session will provide state of the art presentations to support countries in the areas of developing national plans, improving child maltreatment surveillance and implementing prevention programmes. These will be based on handbooks that are being developed.

Workshop description The session will comprise a series of brief lectures which will set the state of the art on how to develop national action plans, on how to improve surveillance through surveys of prevalence in school children, and on what experts say on how to implement prevention programmes. This will be followed by a facilitated discussion involving policy makers, practitioners and researchers who will share country experience. Handbooks in these 3 areas will be disseminated at this session. All participants with an interest in the prevention of child maltreatment are invited. The session will be facilitated by Dinesh Sethi, (WHO Regional Office for Europe), Mark Bellis (Public Health Wales), and Dimitrinka Jordanova Pesevska (the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia).