The evaluation of family functionality in forensic children cases admitted to children emergency unit

Families are known to have the traditional roles of carrying forward and preserving the present culture, being in financial unity and integrity, enabling their children to socialize and access education, being in psycho-biological integrity and bridging between the individuals and the other units of the society. It is inevitable for children to have domestic and non domestic accidents during their development and the injuries and lethal risks of these accidents can harm the order and functionality of the families. This study aims to evaluate the functionality of the families whose children had been admitted to the child emergency rooms with the potential forensic children cases. With that purpose families are given to Family Information Form in order to determine the socio-demographical data of the family and Family Evaluation Measure (FEA) to evaluate the functionality of the families. The study is only conducted with the voluntary mothers since fathers had refused to voluntarily participate in the study and the study group has been compared with the matching control group. The average age of 124 forensic case children is 6,78±5,18 (min: 1; max: 17). The mother's age ratings are the following: 15 mothers with ages of 18-25 (12,1%), 37 mothers with ages of (29,8%), 56 mothers with ages of 31-40(45,2%) and 16 mothers with the age of 41 and above (12,9%). According to the FEA that have been given to the mothers of the forensic case children who are admitted to the children emergency room; there is a statistically significant difference (p<0.001) between the mothers of forensic case children and control group in terms of mothers' age range, education level, occupation status. Mothers who have a lower level of education and who are at a younger age are considered to more probably have dysfunctional families than the mothers in the control group. As a result of this study, several suggestions have been made in order to establish a healthy family functionality between the parents and the child and to prevent the injury prone or lethal child domestic and nondomestic accidents. Keywords: Family, Family Functionality, Child, Forensic Child Cases, Nursing