Reports of suspected child abuse double

Press, 10 July 1987, Page 2

Reports of suspected child abuse double

By

SUE LANCASTER

A doubling in reports of suspected child abuse in Christchurch is stretching Social Welfare Department staff. Social workers were under “a high degree of pressure” to cope with the increased workload, said the Social Work Division’s operations manager of resources, Mr Jan de Bruin. There was much more community awareness of child abuse, he said. “The number we get in at the moment is definitely a result of news media publicity about child abuse,” he said.

Nine suspected cases of abuse were reported in the last week. Mr de Bruin said the department used to receive about four complaints of child abuse each week. The numbers had increased during the last three weeks. The Social Work Division was being reorganised to meet the workload. About 60 per cent of the reports turned out not to be child abuse cases, he said. Some were overreactions, and others isolated incidents. Sometimes a child reported to

have bruises might genuinely have fallen over. However, every complaint was investigated, Mr de Bruin said. His staff had been too busy in recent weeks to analyse figures to check if actual cases of child abuse in Christchurch had increased. There had also been 15 reported cases of “serious neglect” of children in the last week, but that was an average amount. In many reported cases there was a fair degree of neglect, but often it was because of extreme financial problems. _____