Citation

McCartney M. BMJ 2014; 349: g6347.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, BMJ Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1136/bmj.g6347

PMID

25347985

Abstract

Some 1400 cases of child sex abuse went unchecked in Rotherham from 1997 to 2013, the horrendous recent report details.1 Half of these children had misused drugs or alcohol; a third had mental health problems; two thirds had emotional difficulties. Almost half came from a home with reports of domestic abuse, and two thirds had refused to go to school or been repeatedly reported as missing from home. Some children had been gang raped or threatened with guns. Some went on to become abusers themselves. This was against a backdrop of underfunded social and care services, impossibly long waiting lists for counselling, and children afraid to give evidence against their abusers.

GPs are pattern spotters—but not every such pattern indicates a child at risk. And we should not want parents and carers to hesitate to take an injured child to the emergency department lest they be suspected of abuse.

Electronic records disjoint patients’ narratives across separate documents, each a click away. Might this make patterns harder to spot? Either way, as GPs we need named social workers in our teams who we can talk to as regularly as our health visitors. And we need to fund health and social services properly, so that the most vulnerable children always get the priority they need.

Language: en