Editorial: Enough talk, now let's do something

Something is stirring in the national heart on the subject of child abuse. There are just so many harrowing cases that people can absorb before they react in one of two ways. They either shut off, refusing to read another account, or resolve that it is time to really do something about it. There is not much that most people can do individually but when enough of us feel strongly about something, the message has a way of reaching those who hold the handles of power.

It is not even necessary to march in the streets, as people did in Carterton at the weekend, although that helps. Any politician worthy of the name has an antenna that detects, amid the daily noise of public opinion, that there is a groundswell for something to be done.

If the subject of child abuse is not already under urgent discussion in every party's caucus at Parliament, it probably will be this week. The public is tired of talking and reading about it. It wants practical suggestions.

We have passed the point where solutions will be found in either social explanations for child abuse or heavy-handed punishment of the perpetrators. Both have value but apportioning blame does nothing to stop another child being battered. Those children need every agency and every person they meet to act on suspicion of abuse.

In that regard, ACC has set a fine example with its decision to alert the Children, Youth and Family Service whenever a child is the subject of more than 10 accident claims by the age of 5. It may be an arbitrary rule. Children are accident-prone. A few will amass 10 injuries through no fault of anybody. And suspicious cases should be checked long before the 10th claim. But at least ACC is determined to do what it can.

The Medical Association ought to welcome the ACC initiative. Instead, its chairwoman, Dr Pippa MacKay, doubts that any doctor suspecting child abuse would fail to report it. It would be good to think so, but family doctors are in a difficult position when dealing with regular patients. And sometimes, as in the case of James Whakaruru, abusive parents will take a battered child to a different clinic every time. If the doctor suspects abuse he or she may be all too ready to believe the family has a regular doctor who should be dealing with it.

The ACC decision, taken after reading the Children's Commissioner's report on James Whakaruru, means that abusive parents cannot escape attention forever. Whenever the child's treatment is the subject of an ACC claim, it will be logged.

The danger, as with any mandatory reporting mechanism, is that guilty parents will simply not seek treatment for the child, whose predicament would then be worse. That may be a good reason not to impose mandatory reporting on doctors but it applies less to an agency such as ACC. Abusers are unlikely to calculate that another claim for the child's injuries will trigger an investigation by CYFS.

The most practical steps, though, are those that try to prevent injury to children in the first place. There are a number of services offering advice to parents who are struggling to deal with a difficult child or with parenting generally. They are well patronised but probably not by the parents who need them most. There are also state programmes that try to keep in touch with babies born into circumstances that do not bode well for them. We may need to reinforce those efforts.

There are also initiatives coming from the community, which can be helped by people such as television newsreader Liz Gunn and Xena star Lucy Lawless, who lend their public profiles to the cause.

Child abuse is not a recent phenomenon, it has happened throughout the generations and by all accounts violence suffered by one generation tends to be visited on the next. What is new is the degree of attention it receives today and the willingness now to do something about it.

Let's do it.