ISPCAN Working Groups

ISPCAN’s Working Groups bring together experts from around the world to work together on a specific aspect of child abuse and neglect and achieve the goals set forth by the group. The groups include members and nonmembers from across disciplines who meet regularly and can share resources, data, reports, and build new tools together to address a gap.

Below is a list of our current Working Groups and the conveners. If you are interested in participating, please join the member forum group directly.  If you are interested in joining or leading a group please let us know.

ISPCAN Congresses are another great way for members and other multidisciplinary professionals working to end violence and neglect of children to come together and learn from one another. These in person events offer another opportunity for working groups to gather and have face to face meetings.  Our international congresses attract multidisciplinary professionals from over 50 countries who have the opportunity to share their latest research, treatments, prevention tools, raise challenges, and share best practices in the form of oral presentations, workshops, symposia, multimedia presentations, and ignite/poster presentations.

Opportunity to connect in person at our upcoming congress

ISPCAN members interested in any of the working groups are encouraged to participate by subscribing to the member forum page, starting a conversation or posting resources in the Forum. We welcome participants from all disciplines and with varied experiences.

Data Collection & Icast

The goal for this group is to identify and share the key methodological approaches and findings and to explore areas of difference and comparability. The secondary objective is to develop a network of professional researchers who are involved in developing systematic national data collection programs. A further objective is to analyze data trends at national and international levels to inform policy development. The group seeks to include participants from a range of countries in order to represent a broad diversity of cultures, approaches to service delivery, languages, methodologies, and comparative data.

Convener: John Fluke, ISPCAN

Child Death Review

There is an increasing recognition of the benefits of studying child fatalities to ascertain why children die and whether some of these deaths might be preventable. This group assesses the public health response and systems in place regarding the examination of unexpected child death in order to uncover abuse and neglect and establish better prevention measures within a country’s child protection system. This Group frequently meets at ISPCAN Congresses and these sessions are open to anyone and is typically run in a workshop format, using case examples to share approaches to the review of child deaths.

Convener: Fujiko Yamada, ISPCAN

Street & Working Children

The goal for this group is to develop health standards of practice for invisible children who have many challenges. We will analyze data trends at national and international levels to inform policy development. The group is open to members from a range of countries and partners who can work with us to find solutions.

Convener: Shanti Raman, ISPCAN

Mental Health

We are testing appetite for a new working group on mental health practice. If interested please join the session in Edinburgh on Wednesday.


Convener: Brooks Keeshin, ISPCAN

Bringing Data to Practice in our new open access journal Child Protection & Practice

Do you have an idea or want to lead a working group?