Jacqueline Kuruppu
Mental Health Research
‘Co-designing a decision-making tool to assist GPs and practice nurses in the decision to report child abuse’
University of Melbourne, VIC
Awarded 2018
Co-funded by Rotary Club of North Balwyn
“The decision-making tool will provide support for doctors and nurses to help to allay the emotional burden that mandatory reporting of child abuse causes them. ”
Researcher Profile
Jacqueline is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne. Her greatest passion is improving the children’s health and well-being. She completed a Bachelor of Biomedicine and the University of Melbourne in 2016, majoring in Human Structure and Function. Using this knowledge, she commenced an Honours year researching child abuse in 2017. Jacqueline published this research and decided to pursue her findings through a PhD.
She is currently completing her research while working concurrently as a research assistant in the area of domestic violence.
Project Summary
Currently, doctors and nurses that are mandated to report child abuse lack support, information and confidence in undertaking the decision to report child abuse. My project aims to support doctors and nurses in responding to child abuse by co-designing a tool to help them decide whether and how to report child abuse.
The project has two phases. The first phase will gather evidence from doctors, nurses, child protection services, parents and children to inform the development of the tool. The second phase will explore the acceptability and feasibility of the decision-making tool. An online prototype of the decision-making tool will be constructed, and feedback will be gathered and the usefulness and acceptability of the preliminary decision-making tool. Acceptability will further be explored during workshops held with key stakeholders. One workshop will be held during the online development of the decision-making tool and a second workshop will be held near the end of development to refine the decision-making tool. The decision-making tool will subsequently be tested in clinical practice in a pilot program.
Supervisors: Professor Kelsey Hegarty, Professor Cathy Humphreys & Dr Gemma McKibbin