Units set up to reduce ‘batterings’

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 34026, 15 December 1975, Page 6

Units set up to reduce ‘batterings’

fN.Z.P.A. Staff CrspdD j LONDON. The number of preschool children who will be injured at the hands of “battering” parents in England and Wales next year has been estimated at 3500. Mr Nicholas Rose, a research officer for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to

Children, said that of those children injured more than 100 would die. He based his estimates on two areas. Manchester and Leeds, where registers of children at risk had been set up. Mr Rose said the number iof deaths would be a drop of more than 250 mainly because of special units of social workers that have been set up in several centres to help people who batter their children, or fear they may do so. “The presence of the units makes people more aware of the problem and it is spotted sooner,” he said. The society wants such units set up all over Britain and estimates that a national network could cut the number of children battered to death to fewer than 40 a year. The director of the societv, the Rev. Arthur Morton, said the annual cost of each unit was $48,300. “We are asking local authorities to help — but the economic climate is making it difficult,” he said.