Introduction: Every child, anyone who has not yet reached their 18th birthday, has the right to live a healthy life free from violence. Each year, millions of children around the world are being the victims or witnesses of physical, sexual or emotional violence. Child abuse can be in the form of physical abuse, when the child suffers bodily harm as a result of a deliberate attempt to hurt the child, or severe discipline or physical punishment inappropriate to the child's age. Objectives: To assess the knowledge of mothers of under five children, To assess the effectiveness of structured teaching program regarding child abuse among mothers of under five children, To find out the association of knowledge score regarding child abuse among mothers of under five children with selected demographic variables. Methodology: A pre-experimental study was conducted among mothers of under five children in selected community of Mashobra, Shimla, (H.P). Sample of 60 students were selected using convenient sampling technique. Data was collected using self-structured questionnaire related to child abuse. The gathered data was analyzed by using descriptive and inferential statistics. Results: The study findings revealed that 20 (33.3%) had inadequate knowledge, 39 (65%) had moderate knowledge and 1 (1.7%) had adequate knowledge in pre-test. In post-test none of them having inadequate knowledge, 16(26.7%) had moderate knowledge and 44 (73.3%) had adequate knowledge. The study findings also showed that there was a significant improvement in the post-test. The mean score of knowledge in pre-test was 11.98 and in post-test was 21.75 with ‘t’ value 24.807 which was significant at ‘p’= 0.05. Conclusion: The study concluded that structured teaching program was effective in improving knowledge regarding child abuse.
Kumari et al. (Fri,) studied this question.