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Plumbers to spot child abuse

The link is to an article about how plumbers at Lincoln City Council are going to be trained to spot child abuse.

What all of this ignores is that more people that are under pressure to report things the more reports there will be. The system's problem is not a lack of reports, but instead a lack of action.

The more reports there are the less action there will be as there is no additional resource going into the system to handle the reports.

Obviously people should be concerned about child abuse, but we really need to concentrate on the serious cases and not overwhelm the practitioners with masses of reports of situations which frankly often don't require any intervention.

Comments

Costigan Quist said…
We've seen exactly this problem with terrorism. More people are encouraged to report anything vaguely suspicious. Seems like a good idea, but in reality it means the police waste huge amounts of time invesitigating false alarms.
moira said…
There are people that think a few bruises on a toddler must mean child abuse. I should think that they will have to report untidy houses as SS seem to be hot on this!
The council says common sense will be used but they are not an organisation renowned for their common sense approach.

I just can't see the plumbers etc relishing this idea at all.If a plumber etc bears some kind of grudge to someone does this mean a report to SS?
Unknown said…
Just plumbers, not electricians? I believe either it would be all staff not just some.

Can you imagine when a child dies, it will be said "why did nobody notice?"... Answer... "Hrmm well they never had a leak just faulty wiring".
Unknown said…
LOL it states "electricians", but they same principle applies, what about a joiner?

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