Safeguarding children in primary health care: An introduction

This chapter introduces the book Safeguarding Children in Primary Health Care. Safeguarding children has, until recently, been driven primarily by social work practitioners. With current shifts in child care and protection practice and policy, combined with an overwhelming message of 'working together', primary health care professionals have an increasingly central part to play. It has been declared that cases of suspected child abuse and neglect should warrant the same level of urgent response as any potentially fatal childhood illness. This book provides an overview of the challenges primary health care professionals now face in recognising and responding to concerns about a child's safety from abuse and neglect. It provides practical accounts and perspectives from a range of frontline practitioners working with children, parents, carers and other professionals, backed up by theoretical insights from leading academics in the field. The issues explored include: media coverage of child abuse and neglect cases, inter-professional collaboration, competing professional priorities and resources, practical workload decisions and personal experiences and anxieties. "Safeguarding Children in Primary Health Care" is a useful training and development resource for all primary health care practitioners, such as paediatricians, community nurses and midwives, community psychiatric nurses, health visitors, dentists, general practitioners and allied health professionals.