© 2003 BMJ Publishing Group & Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health
LEADING ARTICLE
Child protection
Protecting children, supporting professionals
Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Professor D Hall, Professor of Community Paediatrics, Institute of General Practice, Northern General Hospital, Sheffield S5 7AU, UK;
d.hall@sheffield.ac.uk
How can clinicians, managers, and national bodies maintain a high standard of child protection work as part of mainstream practice?
Keywords: child protection; clinician; clinical records
Abbreviations: CFS, chronic fatigue syndrome; CSA, child sexual abuse; FII, fabricated and induced illness
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Child protection is for many clinicians an important part of child health practice. Multidisciplinary teamwork in early recognition of child abuse and support for the family may be very rewarding,1 although paediatric assessment and clinical evidence often play only a minor role. Very few cases involve criminal proceedings or high profile publicity. Yet in recent years the UK paediatricians’ professional body, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH), has been aware of more complaints and controversies arising from child protection than from any other area of paediatric practice. Paediatricians have been criticised for ignoring signs of abuse, being over-zealous, making wrong diagnoses of abuse, failing to involve other agencies, upsetting parents, breaching confidentiality, or giving biased evidence in court. Websites criticise doctors and nurses working in child protection,2 and the media disseminate libellous inaccurate stories, without fear of reprisal. The unfortunate but predictable result is that
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