A new era for child protection

Child protection is probably one of the most difficult walks of medical life. A quick look at the career of paediatrician David Southall would certainly suggest so. Removed from his academic post in 1997 after complaints about the ethics of his research into “Munchausen syndrome by proxy”, banned from child protection work in 2004 for alerting the police to his suspicions about the deaths of Sally Clark’s two sons, and struck off the medical register in 2007 for allegedly accusing a mother of killing her son, Southall’s high profile battle could alone explain why paediatricians shun child protection work and why courts struggle …