National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC)

The NSPCC was founded in 1884 as the London Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.  The successful growth of what has become an institution is obvious in the change of title, and equally obvious is the concern the people who contribute so much to the NSPCC have for children.  The NSPCC  lobbies for and supports children at risk in England Northern Ireland Scotland and Wales, but does it really do that or is it more a case of self promotion and protection within the establishment?

I know it must be hard to try to prevent child abuse and save those children who are being or have been abused. No one would deny the difficulty involved but I don’t think there are many people who would say the NSPCC is a real success story either, or if they do its in the growth of the society and the wealth of the organisation.  

Every child abuse horror we know of, certainly in my lifetime, is basically a failure of the NSPCC. Paedophile rings, many children on at risk registers seem to slip through the NSPCC net and I find that worrying. I don’t want to feel that the NSPCC is more mindful of its premier position than it is of child welfare.

Every child on the at risk register should be on an NSPCC register and every child should be seen on a regular and unexpected basis by both social services and the NSPCC. A child on the at risk register is deemed to be at serious risk of abuse from parents or relatives. It seems to me that if the NSPCC and social services were as pro active as they should be most abusers would be very wary of unexpected and frequent visitors. 

It might help the abuser to realise the child is not the only one at risk. This must be beneficial parents who abuse their children often do so because being a parent is not a cooing fantasy its a very difficult and often thankless task and sometimes people need physical guidance and supervision to help them become the parent they dreamed they would be.

It may be probably is that the At Risk Register is shared with the NSPCC but if it is where are the interventions in those cases social services fail? If the NSPCC does have access to abuse registers then every social services failure is also an NSPCC failure.

I think the NSPCC needs a huge clear out and a reevaluation of the way they do their work they should not be there to back up the system their role should be to shout for the child, to intervene if they feel a child is being failed by the parents or social services. There is no way the NSPCC should be considered an extension of social services. It needs to be looked upon as much as a watch dog of social services as a protector of children.

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I’ve written this as an additional explanation to the comment I left on the excellent post by ‘the needleblog’.