Synopsis
Secure immediate safety when child maltreatment is suspected, create an accurate contemporaneous clinical record, preserve relevant evidence and share necessary information lawfully, proportionately and promptly with safeguarding partners while explaining decisions where safe.
- Treat medical emergencies first and maintain safe supervision while senior safeguarding, social care and police actions occur in parallel.
- Identify who has parental responsibility, who may receive information and whether telling a caregiver would increase risk or prejudice investigation.
- Record date, time, people present, information source, exact significant words, observations, examination, decisions, advice and actions contemporaneously.
- Separate fact, reported history, professional opinion and hypothesis; attribute every third-party statement to its source.
- Use measurements, anatomical descriptions, approved photographs and body maps, but never substitute an image or diagram for prose.
- Share relevant information without consent when needed to protect a child, applying necessity, proportionality, accuracy and secure transmission.
- Document what was shared, with whom, why, the lawful safeguarding rationale and any decision not to inform the family.
- Before transfer or discharge, name the safe destination, supervisor, transport, result owner, review time and contingency if the plan fails.
Key red flags
A child may be collected by a person named as unsafe, taken abroad, removed before assessment or returned to a location where serious harm is credible.
Clinical notes omit the child's exact words, the questions asked, who supplied information or the reasoning for referral and discharge decisions.
A body map, photograph or copied social-care note is used instead of the clinician's own complete examination record.
Professionals delay necessary information sharing while seeking consent, proof or approval from a person who may pose the risk.
Sensitive results appear in a portal, voicemail, discharge letter or address accessible to an alleged perpetrator without communication-risk review.
Different services assume another team has referred, checked siblings, followed results or confirmed the safe destination.
Investigation priorities
Establish danger, supervision, parental responsibility and lawful decision routes.
Management branches
The child faces imminent removal, contact or serious further harm.
- Move care to an observable appropriate area and treat urgent illness.
- Call senior paediatrics, safeguarding leadership and hospital security as needed.
- Contact children's social care and police for protective authority.
- Record who can visit, receive information and collect the child.