Attendance of general practitioners at child protection case conferences.

Abstract

Objective-To investigate general practitioners' attendance at and views on child protection conferences and their confidence in dealing with sexual abuse in children.Design-Anonymous postal questionnaire sent to all general practitioners in Tower Hamlets and review of consecutive case conferences held by social services for three months in 1989.Setting-Tower Hamlets health district. Subjects-91 general practitioners, 56 of whom (62%) responded.Main outcome measures -Number of conferences attended, reasons for non-attendance, and reported confidence in dealing with sexual abuse.Results-General practitioners estimated that 202 child protection conferences had been held in 1989 on their patients and that they had attended 85 of these. Information from social services for three months suggested that general practitioners had attended only nine of the 114 conferences reviewed. Timing of the conference was the most important reason for non-attendance. All respondents wanted access to the minutes of these conferences irrespective of their own attendance. Most general practitioners were very or moderately confident of their ability to detect child sexual abuse and nonaccidental injury and to communicate with the family.Conclusion-More effort should be made to ensure that general practitioners are notified of case conferences and that the timing and location of conferences is compatible with their other commitments.

GPs' and health visitors' participation in child protection case conferences

“…Health visitors, on the other hand, are regular attenders at those case conferences to which they are invited (Gough et al, 1987). A recent study conducted by Lea-Cox and Hall (1991) suggests that the most important reasons commonly given by general practitioners for failure to attend are the timing and inadequate notice of the case conference, and these results lend support to the stereotypic views of both general practitioners and social workers. Considerations of time and notice apply equally to other invited professionals who show markedly better levels of attendance.…”

“…Relatively little is known about the factors influencing the participation of the various professionals in child protection case conferences (Murray and Gough, 199 1). However, general practitioners have long been recognized as poor attenders (Gough et aZ., 1987; Lea-Cox and Hall, 1991;Harris, 1991), and this too has been the subject of official comment (Hallett and Stevenson, 1980;DHSS, 1982). Health visitors, on the other hand, are regular attenders at those case conferences to which they are invited (Gough et al, 1987).…”

Child protection training for primary health care teams: making a difference?

“…Although responsibilities of GPs and other health professionals are recognized, there are legitimate reasons suggested for lack of participation in child protection processes, such as lack of time (Lea-Cox and Hall, 1991) and lack of understanding of other agency roles (Hallett, 1995). Lupton et al (2000) found GPs were unsure of their own role and Carter (1995) suggested many had ambivalent feelings about the validity of child protection procedures, an issue also raised by Lupton et al (2001), who suggest GPs may view these as unnecessarily adversarial for the family concerned.…”

A Service Evaluation of General Practitioner Contribution to Initial Child Protection Conferences

“…In the past, GPs have been poor attenders at child protection conferences. In the 1990s, it was reported that GPs attended only about one in ten case conferences (Lea‐Cox and Hall, ; Lupton et al, ). In one postal questionnaire study, published in 2000, GPs claimed that the main reason for their non‐attendance at child protection case conferences was having too many other tasks of higher priority (Polnay, ).…”