CHILD protection experts have taken part in a major conference in Bury designed to spot child neglect sooner to prevent high profile cases like Victoria Climbie.
More than 250 delegates gathered at the Village Hotel for the `Neglected Child in Focus Conference'. It was hosted by Bury council because of a high number of cases on their child protection registers.
The delegates included professionals from social services, education, health, the police, probation service and drugs support services.
Michelle Walmsley, the council's child protection committee trainer, said neglect was "the dripping tap of child abuse".
Abuse
"That is why it is so difficult to unravel," she said. "Perhaps a child is underweight for their age or dramatically overweight, maybe they constantly have a cold, or dirty clothes.
"We tend to focus on sexual and physical abuse, but although there might not be a bruise, underneath neglect, there is the hidden emotional abuse which stays with a child for a long time."
The one-day conference looked at how agencies could work together to detect cases early on.
Ms Walmsley added: "We have found that we are having rather a lot of children registered under the category of neglect but the agencies are not getting in early enough to help meet the child's and family's needs.
"They are, in most cases, loving parents, but perhaps they are in poverty, there is domestic violence or mental health problems, disability, stress or bereavement which are making them neglect their children.
"We have to work together to put a safety net underneath these parents."
Comments
Login or Register to comment
I'm sure ther are genuine cases about, but this is going to make parents paranoid. If your child's weight isn't right, that constitutes neglect? How many children from very decent families trot into school with yesturday's yoghurt splashed down the front of their jumper. Are those children neglected?
As a worker in a primary school, I see some over zealous adults making claims of abuse, when it is a stressful morning getting the screaming darlings off to school. Everything is hunky dory by 3.30pm. Is that child abused or neglect, or learning to get on with life?
Shall we ban parents from raising their voice to a child next?
I only hope that it is the underlining problems, such as poverty, that will be pointed at and not the struggling parents. And please, not turn on the single parents..... again.