Towards better child protection programmes: a qualitative evaluation of Youth Disseminating Life Skills Programme

The TSPCAN project: A qualitative evaluation with undergraduate students trained in child abuse prevention in Turkey

“…Participants emphasised the inclusion of practical experience in an interdisciplinary setting as an advantage of TSPCAN's project. In Turkey, university students have the opportunity to participate in civic society‐initiated projects and theoretical training (Krespi et al, 2017). However, combining two target populations in one continuous project and focusing on active participation in CAN prevention programs differentiate TSPCAN's project from other initiatives.…”

“…Providing that the participants from various professions were expected to collaborate at field level, the project seemed to act as a tutorial for those who participated. Previously, the theoretical step of this program (Altan et al, 2020) and a separately implemented program which included 12 sessions similar to our theoretical curriculum (Krespi et al, 2017) were shown to be effective in increasing the CAN awareness and knowledge of undergraduate students. Having a practical section to apply the learned knowledge into everyday life remained as one of Krespi et al's (2017) suggestions for improvement.…”

“…Active participation of youth in public issues enables young people to play a vital role in their communities as well as benefitting their own development (International Federation of Medical Students' Association, 2017). There are programs which aim to reduce abuse rates among young people (Letourneau et al, 2017) or programs which focus on training young people to increase their awareness of CAN (Krespi et al, 2017). However, to the best of our knowledge, there are no specific programs aiming to include undergraduate students in law, medicine, health sciences and social sciences as the active facilitators of a project to prevent child abuse and neglect at a community level.…”