CHILD PHYSICAL ABUSE
- Document all physical injuries whether or not they occur in your care or at your service.
- Check your service policy regarding documenting injuries incurred at your service eg Incident Reports.
- For your own protection you should always document injuries incurred outside of your service.
Before we start looking at indicators for physical abuse, we need to briefly talk about documenting physical injuries. Later in the course we will cover documenting in a little more detail when we learn about dealing with disclosures and reporting – but for now it’s important to mention it before we talk about physical injury and abuse.
For your own protection, as well as the child’s protection, you should document all physical injury or harm to a child – whether or not it occurred at your service.
Your service should have clear policies and procedures in place, such as Incident Reports, for documenting when injuries occur whilst children are in your care.
But it’s also very important to ensure that when a child arrives at your service with an injury that has occurred at home, that this is documented.
This procedure is not only part of practicing good Child Protection, but it protects you and your service against unwanted allegations.