22 May 2009
By Alex Klaushofer
GPs and health professionals must do more to spot potential child abuse in the wake of the Baby Peter case, two government ministers have told a Commons committee.
Health Secretary Alan Johnson and Children’s Secretary Ed Balls told the children, schools and families select committee on May 20 that doctors must play their part in a concerted effort to improve child protection across public services.
‘GPs are crucial in all this. GPs need to be absolutely up to date with the latest information on how you deal with these kind of problems,’ said Johnson.
Balls added that what mattered was whether ‘the GP or paediatrician come to the case conference’.
The comments follow the publication on May 13 of a report by the Care Quality Commission demonstrating systemic failings in the care provided to Baby Peter by NHS trusts. Johnson requested the inquiry after a review of safeguarding in the London Borough of Haringey, where Baby Peter lived. The review found that agencies were not working effectively together.
A report published by the Healthcare Commission in March found that many NHS staff lacked the training to identify the signs of child abuse.
The ministers were giving evidence for the committee’s inquiry into the government’s Child Health Strategy, published in February by the Health and Children, Schools and Families departments as part of an effort to promote joint working.
Johnson said GPs had a crucial role to play in improving joint working across agencies. ‘I don’t take the argument that they are too busy to get engaged in this way,’ he said.
The minister also admitted that the government was almost certain to miss its target of providing every secondary school with a school nurse by 2010. ‘I think it will be difficult to hit it spot on, to be frank, but I think we can ramp up the number of school nurses that we put in,’ he said.
According to NHS statistics published in September, there were 1,447 full-time school nurse equivalents in England – almost one nurse for every 5,000 pupils.
Johnson also rejected a suggestion from committee member Graham Stuart that the government was reneging on its commitment to raise the number of health visitors.
‘It’s not as simple as just rising numbers,’ he said. The role was being redefined as a team leader, backed up by increased numbers of community nurses doing home visits, he added.
‘A health visitor doesn’t need to go to every single family,’ he said. ‘They [nurses] can take the workload from the health visitor.’
Before Baby Peter’s death in 2007, he had contact with health professionals at the trusts 34 times, 14 visits to a GP practice and five visits by a health visitor. Both the GP and paediatrician who saw him were suspended for 18 months.
