A risky business

✍ Scribed by Alison Kemp; Jo Sibert

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 105 KB
• Volume: 7
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0952-9136
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-0852(1998090)7:5<301::aid-car512>3.0.co;2-d

✦ Synopsis

With reference to the Guest Editorial by David Gough (1998), the article con®rms how important it is for those involved with child protection to have quantitative risks to consider. As David Gough says, knowing these risks makes `the decision making transparent and open to evaluation'. Above all, it will make for better decisions.

If we are to give professionals working in child protection accurate risks in child protection it will need a commitment to plan and fund multidsciplinary research. It is unacceptable for us to base public policy on research from one discipline alone.

The work on Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy from our Department and Leeds (Davis et al., 1998) has given us an insight on how useful knowing probabilities of further abuse are in a real child protection situation. It has also revealed a need for education of all sta on what probabilities and risks actually mean.