THE NATURE OF CHILD NEGLECT

The paper discusses the nature of child neglect, and draws on the existing literature to provide evidence that neglect can be extremely damaging to children. This is in contrast to the views we hear personally from some social workers: that neglect is simply the consequence of material poverty, or a condition that need not arouse the same degree of professional concern as physical or sexual abuse. We report on a study of neglectful families, in which we have attempted to devise a simple instrument for quickly detecting the probable existence of neglect. Use of this instrument confirmed that among families referred to an NSPCC Child Protection Team there was a strong association between physical and emotional neglect. Working on the use of the first questionnaire we have developed a second and shorter Scale of Parental Caregiving, which has yet to be tested in practice.