Child Protection, Public Health and Nursing

Reviews / Votes

'This book is an interesting addition to the safeguarding literature as it looks specifically at the role of the public health nurse in safeguarding children and preventing abuse. It was developed from a series of papers forming a symposium that was delivered at the International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect European regional conference held in 2013. There are a range of expert contributors from the safeguarding and nursing fields. The book provides an overview of safeguarding and child protection, with an outline of current policy and legislation, followed by a series of chapters from a variety of contributing authors considering ideas such as the importance of early detection, international approaches to public health nurses in child protection and the challenges of leading child protection in acute services.The chapter on the health visiting contribution to child protection is particularly useful for all health visitors, but especially those studying health visiting and safeguarding or those leading health visiting or safeguarding services. The chapter gives examples of the contribution of health visiting to safeguarding in all tiers of practice identified in the Health Visitor Implementation Plan. The chapter also discusses recent research and learning from serious case reviews.A clear argument from the book, that is not always highlighted in many texts around safeguarding, is that the health visitor's role in safeguarding is more than identifying concerns and referring them to appropriate agencies. The authors highlight the vast amount of safeguarding work completed thatis preventive in nature and, as such, is often not seen as being 'safeguarding'. For example, building early attachments between infants and parents, and increasing an understanding of healthy sexual relationships in young people are both roles of public health nurses that are preventive or an earlyintervention. This highlights the wider and sometimes less tangible public health role in safeguarding; as such, the text is relevant for those involved in the commissioning and design of services, especially during current commissioning changes where the need to articulate the vital role of the health visitor in safeguarding is so important.' Journal of Health Visiting'An engaging and informative text which would be a valuable purchase for many practitioners, particularly those undertaking specialist community public health nursing courses.' Nursing Children and Young People (Royal College of Nursing)