Formal networks ‘would improve healthcare response to child abuse’

Health professionals must start working in formal networks to spread expert knowledge in dealing with child abuse, a senior Department of Health (DoH) official has suggested.

Speaking at the annual Safeguarding London’s Children Conference, sponsored by CYP Now, Dr Sheila Shribman, national clinical director for children, young people and maternity at the DoH, claimed such networks could vastly improve the health service response to serious abuse cases.

“Formal arrangements are hugely important,” she told delegates. “We believe that people need to work in networks to gain expertise from others. That’s a very important part of professional support and very important particularly for child sexual abuse.”

These networks would also help overcome problems with the current shortage of specialists qualified to advise on child abuse cases.

“We have problems with a lack of paediatric forensic specialists who are available particularly for expert witness work,” she explained. “This is a patchy problem around the country. We don’t want to be reliant on goodwill. We want formal arrangements for this and delays in examinations of children and not getting forensics right are a problem we’re continuing to work on.”

In addition to looking at introducing formal networks, Shribman said the DoH is working to improve the consistency of child protection training in the NHS, after she conducted a review of wider safeguarding training for health professionals following the Peter Connelly case.

“We found that there is a tremendous amount of NHS training going on, whether it is for NHS staff on their own or whether it is multi-agency,” she said.

“But there is inconsistency and lack of clarity about what should be received by whom and how frequently and when. We’ve taken a serious look at that.”

Shribman admitted however that the DoH must overcome “barriers in terms of resources and competing training requirements”.