Health visitors play a key role in child protection services. They work mainly with the well population and maintain visits and contact with families over a substantial period of time. They are ideally placed to identify changes in parental and child behaviour patterns and are trained to recognise deviations from the norm in health, child development and family relationships, including the identification and support of young carers. This enables them to recognise the need for a referral and to initiate any necessary action at an early stage. School Nurses monitor the child’s health, growth, and physical emotional and social development and are ideally placed to detect changes or identify risk for children.
Health professionals are in a strong …show more content…
Medical assessments may include the assessment of parents’ capacity to respond to the child or young person’s developmental needs and to identify where parental health
(e.g. postnatal depression), or family or environmental factors impact upon parenting capacity.
Paediatricians, wherever they work, will come into contact with child abuse or neglect in the course of their work. Consultant paediatricians, in particular, may be involved in difficult diagnostic situations, differentiating those where abnormalities may have been caused by abuse from those that have a medical cause.
The police normally take responsibility for investigating child abuse cases jointly with social workers.They hold important information about children who may be at risk of harm as well as those who cause such harm. They are committed to sharing information and intelligence with