POLAND

A study conducted in 2011 on behalf of the Children’s Ombudsman, involving 1,005 residents of Poland aged 15-75, found decreases in the social acceptance of parents hitting children since the achievement of full prohibition in 2010. In research published in 2008, 78% of respondents agreed that “there are situations when a child needs to be smacked”, compared to 69% in 2011; in 2008, 19% disagreed with the statement, compared to 27% in 2011. A previous comparison of research carried out in 1994 and 2008 did not reveal similar decreases in public approval of corporal punishment, suggesting that law reform and accompanying public education activities had an impact on public opinion. The study also showed a high rate of awareness of the law: 74% of respondents agreed that “beating of a child is unlawful”.

(TNS OBOP, 2011, Social resonance of the amendment to the Act on Counteracting Domestic Violence, Ombudsman for Children of the Republic of Poland)

A 2009 survey of 189 teachers in primary schools in Warsaw found that 75% believed that corporal punishment is humiliating for the child and 71% believed that it meant that “the parents are not good at rearing children”. 36% of respondents felt that the use of “spanking” as a punishment would justify intervention by a third party, in comparison to 20% in an identical survey with a similar sample in 2005. On average, respondents in 2009 estimated that 61% of children in Poland experience “spanking” as punishment, compared to an average estimate of 72% in 2005. Of 1,000 respondents to a 2009 nationwide study, 38% believed that corporal punishment should not be used, compared to 35% in 2005.

(Nobody’s Children Foundation, 2009, Warsaw teachers’ attitudes toward child abuse: research report
www.canee.net/files/Teachers studies Poland 2009.pdf)
Part of  the Childhood Without Abuse project, which includes studies carried out in Bulgaria, Lithuania, Latvia, Macedonia, Moldova, Poland, and Ukraine in 2005 and 2009.
www.canee.net/bulgaria/research_on_the_problem_of_child_abuse_in_eastern_europe

A study on residential care for children found that one ninth of children in residential care had been physically hurt by a caregiver.

(The Nobody’s Children Foundation, 2005, Being a child victim in residential care)