In the United States child neglect accounts for more than half of all those cases reported to child protective services and in England neglect cases represent approximately one third of children and young people on Child Protection Registers (Department of Health, 1997). However, child physical abuse and especially child sexual abuse has received much more attention from researchers, clinicians and policy makers. By contrast, this issue of Child Abuse Review covers physical neglect and the Journal has previously devoted a Special Issue to Emotional Abuse and Neglect (Child Abuse Review, Volume 6, Issue 5) in December 1997. take an ecological approach to the concept of neglect and argue that neglect should be deยฎned on the basis of the child's unmet needs from the broad ecological perspective of the parents, the family, the community and the society as a whole. This follows Bronfenbrenner's environmental perspective on child development . Previously, socio-legal processes have concentrated on inadequate parenting when determining a case of neglect, rather than taking a broader view of the environment in which the child lives.
A wider perspective to child protection is emphasized in this issue's Special Communication by Christine Walby, Chair of the National Commission Implementation Initiative. In this Special Communication she describes how the `National Commission of Inquiry into the Prevention of Child Abuse', instigated by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), may make a dierence to the future of child protection work.
This broader theme also is adopted by David Gough in his contribution on child neglect in Childhood Matters, Volume 2 (National Commission of Inquiry into the Prevention of Child Abuse, 1996). Gough identiยฎes that families who neglect their children often have multiple problems and come from deprived backgrounds and communities. Nevertheless, he acknowledges that children may be neglected because of poor parenting related to psychological problems and deยฎciencies of the parent which may lead to distorted perceptions of the child. Indeed, Crittenden (1993) has conยฎrmed that neglectful parents process