Better Guidance Urgently Needed For Doctors In Child Protection Cases, Say Experts

A British Medical Journal Journal article (below) points out the confusion in doctors duties regarding child protection. In Britain the welfare of the child is place highly only when a decision is governed by the Children Act statute, which has created an atmosphere of increased complaints against paediatricians. Doctors may be avoiding work related to abuse because of this.

As a guardian ad Litem in the U.S., I often found the medical professionals unresponsive to the violence and dysfunction responsible for the condition of the child before them.

In the U.S. there is an organization trying to change that; The Academy on Violence and Abuse, www.avahealth.org is working diligently to better educate the medical profession about the signs of abuse and how to respond effectively.

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Tip Of The Iceberg; Abused Children Dying Due To County Backlogs

“The social worker staff simply cannot keep up with everything we are asking them to do,” she said, adding that she planned to make the case to county supervisors that hundreds of additional social workers were needed. “All of the things that equate with quality do take time.”

In the end, Ploehn never submitted a budget request for additional social workers, citing the county’s tight finances.

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Art Rolnick & Pliny, Friends of Children

Lori Sturdevant points out in her July 4th Star Tribune column how our state has done very well by investing in children and how Art Rolnick’s extensive studies as director of research at the Federal Reserve Board have made those investments measurable.

Just like investing in the stock market or tax increment financing, putting money into early childhood programs brings solid financial and social returns back into a community.

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What Oklahoma Will Show The Nation

The original plaintiffs were nine children who are alleged to have suffered in DHS placements. The case has since become a class-action lawsuit with thousands of children in DHS custody as plaintiff

How many states have caseloads that are just too high to provide a realistic safety net for the children they support? How many states need more training and education for the agency employees, foster parents, and adoptive parents?

I would add that without educating judges, court workers, and criminal justice people, this nation is still on the path to maintaining excessive prison populations and disastrous school performance among the population of abused and neglected children.

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