Graduate qualities for preservice health and welfare professionals for collaborative prevention and early intervention for child maltreatment: A qualitative study

Aim: This study explored Australian nursing, midwifery and social work perspectives on needs within pre-service education to enable interprofessional public health responses to child maltreatment. Background: Child maltreatment is a global public health concern, but little is known about how well health and welfare professionals are equipped for interprofessional responses to child maltreatment during initial pre-service qualification. Design: Qualitative, World Café approach with online roundtable discussions. Methods: Twenty-five participants attended one of three online roundtables in October 2023. Participants were nurses, midwives and social workers from Australia with expertise in tertiary education, professional regulation and/or child protection. Data were analysed through inductive thematic analysis. Results: Graduates are not well-equipped during their pre-service education for collaborative responses to child maltreatment. Findings identified four core areas of focus so health and welfare professionals can effectively collaborate to respond to child maltreatment. Core areas are described as graduate qualities and encompass broad domains of knowledge, skills and values which are transferable across multiple areas of practice. Conclusions: Our study proposes core qualities which are essential for health and welfare professional pre-service education to equip graduates for collaborative responses to child maltreatment. Key barriers included lack of shared interprofessional language and priorities, meaning future work should establish consensus on essential knowledge, skills and values. A shared understanding which acknowledges disciplinary nuances is vital to inform curriculum that equips future professionals to collaboratively mitigate harms from child maltreatment.