Child and youth protection

• Refuge and advice centre for children, young people and parents in need
• Responding to enquiries from children, adolescents and other persons in connection with a possible risk to infants, children and adolescents
• Investigation, treatment and documentation of physical or psychological abuse, sexual assault or neglect, or in the event of suspicion thereof
• Emergency admission for the immediate protection of children and young people
• Crisis intervention and initiation of immediate measures
• Mediation of counselling, support and therapy

• Advice and support for internal treatment teams and paediatricians in the region on child protection issues
• Convening and organising interdisciplinary child protection conferences
• Follow-up of the recommendations developed in individual child protection conferences as quality control
• Continuous sensitisation of staff to all aspects of child and youth protection
• Regular organisation of further education and training events
• Networking and cooperation with child protection groups at other paediatric clinics and with cantonal and national agencies and offices
• Collection of statistical data on child abuse
• Participation in the national child protection statistics
• Supervision of master's and doctoral theses

All employees and professional groups at a paediatric hospital are highly committed to the protection of children and young people. Like every modern children's hospital, the UKBB has a specialised, interdisciplinary child protection group that is independent of the emergency and treatment teams and is available at all times to provide advice.

The child protection group is made up of experienced representatives from the various disciplines (paediatrics, paediatric surgery/ paediatric orthopaedics), as well as child psychiatry, nursing and social counselling. There is also close cooperation with the Institute of Forensic Medicinegynaecology for children and adolescents as well as the authorities and institutions entrusted with child protection tasks. The members of the Child Protection Group form a group of experts for all departments at UKBB as well as for paediatricians in private practice.

A meeting of the child protection group can be convened at any time within 24 to 48 hours in order to jointly assess the risk situation and initiate any necessary child protection measures. In addition to this core task, the child protection group also ensures that staff receive continuous training and further education, thus ensuring a consistently high level of awareness of potentially dangerous situations for infants, children and adolescents throughout the hospital.