Non accidental injuries, the term used inside the child welfare sector, and by medical experts to describe injuries which are believed to have been caused by adults deliberately inflicting physical harm to children, are notoriously hard to identify.
The result is that sometimes, innocent parents who have not harmed their children at all are found guilty of child abuse, resulting in families being torn apart by a misdiagnosis. We have assisted on cases liked these in the past and it is clear from current practice that only a select few medical practitioners around the country have any real business diagnosing these kinds of injuries. Most doctors and attending nurses have very little training in this area. Combine this thought with the reality that even science is not yet up to speed on this kind of injury and what you have is a recipe for injustice and children finding themselves in care, when they should be at home with their parents.
Of course, the reverse can sometimes be true – these fractures may sometimes appear accidental.
But new research is about to turn this area of practice on its head, literally. Ground breaking research now suggests that skull fractures may leave telltale signs that can help better determine what caused an injury.
The findings could help to uncover what really happened in child abuse cases, and determine with greater certainty whether the injury was accidental, or not. This has been made possible via the use of a mathematical algorithm to help classify the fractures.
The article outlining this research says:
“Until now, researchers believed that multiple skull fractures meant several points of impact to the head that were often classified as child abuse. The new research proves that theory false: a single blow to the head not only causes one fracture, but may also cause several, unconnected fractures in the skull. Additionally, not all fractures start at the point of impact—some actually may begin in a remote location and travel back toward the impact site.”
This is an exciting development in the determination of childhood injuries, we hope it leads to bigger things.
Researching Reform 
Last Summer I was diagnosed with a fracture of my Talus bone. It’s the largest bone in the ankle. I was told that people who have this fracture suffer some kind of trauma, like a car accident. I had no trauma. It had just happened. Spontaneous fracture. My excellent consultant had the foresight to refer me for blood tests of vitamin D and calcium even though I had just had a blood test (but it didn’t include testing for that). When the results came in, my calcium levels were fine but my vitamin D levels were low and I was put on a course of vitamin D3. This may have contributed to the fracture.
My question is, are the children found with fractures checked properly for a cause rather than blame the parents? There are other reasons that fractures occur and they should be fully investigated before any child is removed from their home unless it is obviously the parents fault. We keep hearing of children being removed, sometimes for a year or more and then returned after it comes to light that there was another cause which had nothing to do with the parents, for fractures sustained. No one wants another tragedy but it’s a tragedy when a child is removed from their home erroneously.
It’s also a mockery of justice, especially when there are such high stakes as losing your child, that you cannot call in another consultant!
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