The Child in Mind：A Child Protection Handbook

All public sector workers in contact with children and families, in education as well as health and social care, need access to clearly written information about what to do if they are concerned about the safety and welfare of a child. Ensuring the safety of children who are at risk of harm is not an easy undertaking. It is sometimes difficult to assess the significance of information about a child, to gauge its seriousness or decide what to do next. This handbook helps practitioners to negotiate the complexities of child protection practice, with the aim of preventing abuse and neglect and protecting children from further harm once it has occurred.

This fully updated fourth edition takes into account the revised Working Together to Safeguard Children document, NICE’s guidelines When to Suspect Child Maltreatment and Lord Laming’s report The Protection of Children in England. It explains how the child protection process works and covers all the key areas of child protection practice, including:

• risk assessment
• physical, sexual and emotional abuse
• neglect
• the child protection conference
• key changes in the legal framework and their application in practice.

Clarifying a complex area of work, The Child in Mind provides sound advice aimed at improving individual practice. It is unique in that although it is directed to all health care workers, it can be used as part of in-service training, as a handy reference for students and indeed by anyone who works with children.

Judy Barker has extensive experience working with child abuse and neglect. Her clinical expertise is drawn from many years in practice, as a health visitor, child protection advisor and designated nurse for child protection in City and Hackney. She is now a freelance consultant on child protection issues.

Deborah Hodes is a consultant community paediatrician and designated doctor for child protection in Camden and University College London Hospital. She has a wide range of clinical, teaching and research experience in community child health.