Safeguarding Children in Primary Health Care

Safeguarding children from harm has, until recently, been driven primarily by social work practitioners. With current shifts in child care and protection practice and policy, combined with an overwhelming message of 'working together', primary health care professionals have an increasingly central part to play. There is a strong argument that cases of suspected child abuse and neglect should warrant the same level of urgent response as any potentially fatal childhood illness. This book provides an overview of the challenges primary health care professionals now face in recognising and responding to concerns about a child's safety from abuse and neglect. It provides practical accounts and perspectives from a range of frontline practitioners working with children, parents and carers, backed up by theoretical insights from leading academics in the field. Issues explored include: media coverage of child abuse and neglect cases, inter-professional collaboration, competing professional priorities and resources, practical workload decisions and personal experiences and anxieties.Safeguarding Children in Primary Health Care is a useful training and development resource for all primary health care practitioners, such as paediatricians, community nurses and midwives, community psychiatric nurses, health visitors, dentists, general practitioners and allied health professionals.

Julie Taylor is Head of Strategy and Development (Abuse in High Risk Families), NSPCC, and Professor at the University of Edinburgh, UK. She has written extensively on child care and protection. She is co-author of Engaging with Fathers: Practice Issues for Health and Social Care and co-editor of Neglect: Issues for Health and Social Care. Julie has a significant background in research projects that seek to explore better ways of recognising and responding to child care and protection issues. Markus Themessl-Huber is Senior Lecturer in Clinical Psychology in the Behavioural and Social Sciences Department at Central Queensland University, Australia. Markus has been involved in numerous research projects, including an assessment of the mental wellbeing of children and young people in a Scottish region.