Child protection continues to be a pressing social problem. Robust and relevant research is essential in order to ensure that the scale and nature of child maltreatment are understood and that preventative and protective measures are effective. This paper reports selected results from a mapping review of research conducted in the UK and published between January 2010 and December 2014. The purpose of the review was twofold: to develop a typology of child protection research; and to use this typology to describe the features and patterns of empirical research undertaken recently in the UK in order to inform a future research agenda.
The paper reports the maltreatment types, substantive topics and research designs used within empirical research published in academic journals. It identifies a number of challenges for the field including the need for conceptual clarity regarding types of abuse. For example, much of the empirical research focuses on child maltreatment generally but less is known about specific types of maltreatment such as domestic abuse or child trafficking. In addition, the article highlights the need for more evidence that focuses on the effectiveness of prevention approaches, rather than simply responses to maltreatment. The importance of a national strategic agenda is also emphasised, and the authors suggest two core principles that should guide a child protection agenda: a "collaborative effort to tackle a multidimensional problem and, above all, an orientation towards the practical applications of research and a focus on barriers to change."