RCGP Chair Responds to Lord Laming’s
Report on Child Protection
13th March 2009
RCGP Chair Professor Steve Field yesterday
responded to Lord Laming's important Report on Child Protection.
“GPs dedicate a huge amount of their time to the care of children
and their families so we welcome Lord Laming’s emphasis on the role
of the GP in recognising and responding to child protection
issues."
He went on to say: "Safeguarding children is a
major concern for the RCGP and we are pleased to see that our work
in this area - including our joint toolkit with the NSPCC and new
practice accreditation scheme - has been acknowledged.
But, as Lord Laming points out, there is still
a lot to do and we want to move to a situation where every practice
has a GP responsible for child protection.
Safeguarding children is a core part of our
training curriculum for GPs but while this covers our trainees,
educational support for established GPs remains insufficient.
The curriculum covers child protection training but we are
very concerned that there is currently only one area in England
where trainee GPs are guaranteed a placement in a specialist
paediatric environment. This needs to be addressed urgently
and we have made representations about this unsatisfactory
situation.
But it is not just in a specialist environment
that GPs learn about child health - child protection and multi
professional learning occur mainly in the GP practice environment.
We believe that all GPs completing their training are competent but
not necessarily confident, which is why in addition to pushing for
more paediatric placements, we are also pushing hard to extend
training to five years so that they have more experience in general
practice too.
We are very happy to work with the Department
of Health, the Department of Children, Schools and Families and the
Treasury towards this five year training goal. We are also keen to
support and work with Dr Sheila Shribman and her colleagues to
develop better professional development opportunities for
practising GPs, including multi professional learning opportunities
and e-learning.
The RCGP has also been a strong advocate for
health visitors so the review of their role and education is a most
welcome announcement.”