Table 7 Reported benefits and challenges of CHWs in sexual violence services
Benefits | Challenges | |
|---|---|---|
Kohli, 2012 [49] | Authors report that local CHWs assisted healthcare providers in targeting education sessions to community concerns; CHWs provided feedback to healthcare providers e.g. reported increased patient satisfaction | Authors report “travel distance & other commitments sometimes prevented CHWs from reminding patients about appointments and thus, follow-up rates were not as high as expected.” |
Tanabe, 2013 [52] | Community reported that CHWs are trusted persons that survivors can approach for help | CHWs reported lacking confidence in history-taking and psychosocial care; ‘Lower cadres’ of CHWs were unhappy with some aspects of medical care & referrals, complained they already had too many responsibilities, had issues with maintaining confidentiality & had some safety concerns |
Barron, 2013 [47] | Increased knowledge & skill; Occurrence of disclosures in the intervention group compared to no disclosures in the comparison group; satisfaction with programme; minimal cost of delivery | Not documented |
Merkin, 1995 [50] | Increased number of victims taking action on violence in their lives & increase in number of cases of abuse going to trial | Not documented |
Rossman, 1999 [51] | Feedback from victims report non-judgemental compassionate support by volunteers | Time taken to contact the volunteer & get them to the centre to offer support was long delaying care for survivors; Failure of recognition & acceptance by both the victim & professional healthcare workers |
Zraly, 2011 [53] | Available care in crisis & source of support | Not documented |
Itzhaky, 2001 [48] | Increased community awareness with change of attitude towards child sexual abuse; Reduction in stigma & therefore increased acceptance & support for survivors; Reduced incidence of cases | Child abuse reportedly normative thus community workers not motivated to act initially |