Paediatricians in England and Wales are being frightened away from child protection work by fears of complaints from parents, says the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.

Each primary care trust is supposed to appoint a paediatrician as a “designated doctor” to serve on the area child protection team. But the college has discovered that 30% of these posts are unfilled. Similar problems affect the “named doctor” programme in hospital trusts. Both roles are unpaid.

Professor Alan Craft, president of the college, said that paediatricians have never felt more isolated than they do now. The paediatrician Professor Sir Roy …