[Social or judicial alert in child abuse: Announcement guidelines and simulation in child welfare training with standardized patients]. / Information préoccupante ou signalement dans les violences intrafamiliales : construction, validation et mise en application d'une grille d'annonce par technique de simulation en santé avec patients standardisés.

Child abuse is a major health problem that can lead to physical and psychological issues. Its diagnosis can be difficult and sensitive. Physicians are submitted by law to inform the parents when they report to child welfare services or judicial authorities, unless otherwise in the minor's interest. This exercise is destabilizing for both patients and physicians. The physician must be trained to detect and announce a possible diagnosis of child abuse. To facilitate and increase those reports, we have developed guidelines for the physicians to help the exercise of announcement. These guidelines were based on pre-existing recommendations about how to announce bad news. We have also planned to put into practice these guidelines with a communication skills training program based on standardized patients. We propose the acronym PROTECT; P for plural: never stay alone in such situations, R for remaining a caregiver and not becoming an investigator or judge, O for obligation to protect minors, T for time, to take enough time to inform the parents and the child but in a limited time frame, E for explaining to the parents what preoccupy the professionals; C for centring ourselves on the child, his or her symptoms, needs and pain; T for total care of the child that should integrate physical, psychological, and social child health, through a global and interdisciplinary approach in collaboration with child welfare services, and should involve also the child in the process. This tool will be applied by simulation in child welfare training with standardized patients. The evaluation of this tool and its application would need further study.

[Minors in a French custody center: Sociodemographic characteristics, global health and vulnerability factors]. / Mineurs en garde à vue: caractéristiques sociodémographiques, auto-évaluation de la santé et identification de facteurs de vulnérabilité.

Minor offenders are at risk for medico-psycho-social vulnerability, that impacts global health, schooling, professional future, and socio-familial environment; moreover, minors who are victims of violence and neglect are at greater risk of becoming offenders and minor offenders are at greater risk of suffering violence. Few data are currently available regarding global health and vulnerability factors for minors (i.e. those aged under 18) who have been placed in police custody. This study aimed to describe the judicial and social characteristics of these minors, their medical and psychological health status, with the hypothesis that most minors placed in police custody can be considered as abused or neglected, by presenting factors of vulnerability. We carried out a prospective study, including consecutive minors aged of 13 to 18 years old, who had been detained in custody at the Central Police Station of Nantes (France), from October 2012 to May 2013. The sociodemographic characteristics, scores for global health and the data collected from the welfare and judiciary services were analyzed, to identify abused or neglected minors. Ninety-nine teenagers were included: 78 males and 11 females (mean age±standard deviation: 16.5 years±1.01), who had been placed in custody for robbery, with a remarkable proportion of recidivist minors. Our study has highlighted several worrying characteristics of minors in police custody reflecting their vulnerability, as living conditions (no schooling, no fixed address) and irregular or absent medical follow-up; however their scores for global health were not different from the general population. While 49 minors (49.5 %) had already been identified by the welfare services, our study find that 35 added minors of this population should nonetheless be considered as being abused and/or neglected, based on a very high rate of minors already followed by child protection services and/or already penalized. Systematic health screening in custody could help to detect abused and/or neglected minors, in order to provide them access to appropriate medical and social cares. They could be referring to psychiatric or rehabilitation cares, and to the relevant welfare and judiciary services in order to assess if a specific protection measure is needed.

[Child protection: Pediatricians' knowledge and practices in Brittany]. / Évaluation des connaissances et des pratiques des pédiatres de Bretagne concernant la protection de l'enfance.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: On 5 March 2007, the law concerning the child protection system was reformed. Since then, child protection services have been responsible for the management of child abuse and neglect. Reporting and asking for child protection is now easier for every physician by submitting a "preoccupying information" form. A study conducted in 2014 in the general practitioners (GP) in the Ille-et-Vilaine department showed that they were quite unfamiliar with the child protection updates and that they needed special training. We wished to study the knowledge and practices of the pediatricians in Brittany and compare these results to the previous study. METHODS: An anonymous postal investigation was conducted between May and July 2014. The questionnaire was referred to the previous study so the results would be comparable. RESULTS: A total of 134 pediatricians (including 99 women) of the 316 pediatricians of Brittany answered our questionnaire regarding their activity and their knowledge about child abuse and neglect. These results were analyzed and compared to the data of GPs in Ille-et-Vilaine. Only 4.4 % of the pediatricians obtained more than 80 % correct answers and 12 % of the pediatricians obtained fewer than 50 % correct answers. Among the pediatricians, 41 % of them had not reported a single time since 2007. The pediatricians who obtained better results (P<0.001) had more training and were more often in contact with child abuse and neglect than the GPs. The most common reasons that clinicians gave for not reporting were lack of a return from social services after a report, lack of training and the fear of making a misdiagnosis. Indeed only 9 % had received feedback from social services. To make reporting easier, 92 % of the pediatricians would like training and 97 % found a simple practice guide on child abuse useful. CONCLUSION: Child protection is a neglected subject, including by pediatricians. To fight against professional denial and isolation, a substantial effort is still needed concerning caregivers' training as well as pediatric care organization.