Recently published national guidelines for children’s professionals on how to address child abuse and neglect concerns have been branded bulky and unsophisticated by children’s services directors. 

The guidance is a hefty 581 pages not including annexes and crucially fails to take into account external factors such as poor quality housing, insecure employment and benefit sanctions.

Further criticisms of the draft National Institute of Clinical Excellence (Nice) guidelines were raised over the links between sexual abuse and emotional or behavioural problems, which were also called into question by the ADCS for ignoring male victims.

This is not the first time guidance has been deemed too long for practitioners, so it’s surprising that government departments aren’t trying to do something about this. We blogged a little while back about an interesting research initiative, which hoped amongst other things to offer information in manageable portions for professionals. We wrote in to their consultation to suggest they took documents like these NICE guidance notes and turned them into accessible, compact guidelines which used only simple English and an easy to follow format.

Isn’t it time something like this became a cornerstone of the child protection sector?