Complaints against doctors in child protection work have increased fivefold

The statistic which Professor McIntosh fails to give is the number of
paediatricians against whom the 100 complaints a year are being made. I
suspect it is no more than a handful and probably less than a half of one
per cent of the total number of paediatricians in the whole country. And
it is probable that that handful of paediatricians are those who have been
advancing to child protection agencies and to Courts those child abuse
theories which have for many years been the subject of dispute in the
medical and social work professions and even in Parliament, such as
Fabricated and Induced Illness in Children, otherwise know as Munchausen
Syndrome By Proxy.

The fact that this dispute has now been crystallized and publicized
in recent Court cases has probably given confidence to many children and
their families to emerge from the shadows and raise a complaint regarding
the injustices they have suffered in the past.

The vast majority of the paediatric community are giving an
excellent, and highly valued service to children and their families and
it is only a tiny minority who are the subject of complaints.

Professor McIntosh also fails to state what proportion the figure of
100 cases is of the total number of child patients seen by paediatricians
each year. Even if each paediatrician has on average 20 child patients,
then that is over 120,000 child patients in total – so 100 complaints is a
very small proportion of those cases and I’m sure is a proportion which
would be welcomed by many other similar service industries and
professions.

Dr. Bhrolchain has argued very clearly and cogently that the reasons
for the shortage of paediatricians working in child protection reflects a
general shortage of paediatricians to meet a rapid expansion in the number
of paediatric posts nationwide.

So we can be reasonable certain that there is no evidence to suggest
that the shortage of paediatricians in child protection work is in any way
due to the number or nature of the complaints which are being made, and
the rise in the number of complaints does not raise issues of concern for
the majority of paediatricians.

The real issue for the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health
to face is why there is again a crisis in child protection work involving
paediatricians after the events in the Cleveland Scandal, following which
assurances were repeatedly given that “Lessons had been learnt”, and
“procedures had been changed” to ensure there would be no similar
occurrence. Clearly lessons have not been learnt and any changes made to
procedures have been wholly ineffective.

The current scandal owes its origins in theories of child abuse which
lack any scientific integrity and with no regard for research
methodologies and protocols.

It is therefore in the best interests of the RCPCH and the paediatric
community for them to support the growing demands for a Public Inquiry
into the whole child protection system in this country and why it has
become so deeply flawed, erratic, and dysfunctional and hopefully one of
the recommendations of such an Inquiry would be to ensure that theories of
child abuse are carefully researched and subjected to a comprehensive
system of verification and validation, before they can be introduced into
child protection practices. Paediatricians could then have confidence in
their child protection work in the knowledge that their practices are
fully authenticated.

Competing interests:
A oncern to reform the child protection system and thereby to protect children and families