NSPCC child protection hotline receives record number of calls

Charity counsellors monitoring freephone helpline refer more cases than at any time in service’s 20-year history

The NSPCC’s 24-hour child protection telephone hotline received a record number of calls over the past year, with staff referring over a third more cases to police and social services than during the previous 12 months.

Statistics from the charity showed that in the year to the end of March counsellors on the freephone service (0808 800 5000) referred 16,385 cases, up 37% on the previous year and the largest figure in the hotline’s 20 years of existence.

Of the callers, 46% of cases were serious enough to be passed on to the authorities, as against 39% the year before.

A third of the cases involved families not previously known to social services.

More than 12,000 of the referrals covered various suspicions of child cruelty, with over half of these related to possible neglect, an 81% year-on-year increase.

There were about 4,100 reports of suspected physical abuse, more than 1,500 of sexual abuse and nearly 3,000 involving emotional abuse.

The charity is calling for changes to child protection policies to ensure earlier intervention for those at risk.

John Cameron, in charge of the helpline, said: “We must pick up on children’s problems as early as we can to stop their abuse.

“Social workers cannot be in the community all the time. But members of the public can be their eyes and ears.”

He added: “The increase in referrals over the last year shows more people want to play their part in keeping children safe.

“We refer only the most serious cases to local agencies for further investigation.”

A spokeswoman for the charity said it believed the increase in calls was largely down to a greater awareness of child protection issues among the public, and a greater willingness to act if people suspected something was amiss.

“There’s a lot more knowledge of the issue now, we have seen a real change in attitudes,” she said.

“Some of this has undoubtedly been due to recent high profile cases like Baby Peter and Khyra Ishaq.”

The fact that such a high proportion of cases were previously unknown to local authorities showed how vital such tipoffs could be, she said.

“Our message is, if you sense something, even if you have a hunch something is wrong, it’s better to call.”

The NSPCC has repeatedly warned about the scale of the issue. In February it reported that almost a million secondary school pupils in Britain, just under one in five of the total, had been “severely abused or neglected” during childhood.

A Cardiff University study released on Tuesday found a 20%-plus increase in the number of young children who needed emergency hospital treatment last year, something the researchers said could be partly down to recent changes making it more difficult and expensive to take children into care.

The study found that during 2010, 3,402 children aged under 10 were treated in A&E departments in England and Wales following violence, up from 2,814 the previous year.

• The NSPCC Helpline can be reached on 0808 800 5000 or by email at [email protected].