This thread has moved on hugely since I last posted - and in a very positive direction. The handbook idea could be really powerful. As could some way of getting lawyers and doctors together to discuss, regularly, research and developments in child health.
Nightowl, I'm so glad your son is back with you. Appalling that SS threatened your parents - I don't understand what goes through the minds of a SW trying to stop medical investigations. Is it a power trip? A determination not to be proved wrong? A belief that anyone who challenges them must be doing so for nefarious reasons?
I think there is possibly a real gap here that people on this thread are identifying about doctors and lawyers keeping up to date with developments in the field of child health - maybe the systems just aren't in place to support the sort of joint continuing professional development that Spero is talking about.
My interest in child protection is merely as an observer of, mainly, the NHS.
I've had one of the most eminent doctors in the country tell me how he was threatened by a social worker for, quite reasonably, suggesting she was leaping to conclusions about one of his patients whose child had been injured.
He was being a good GP, saying 'let's consider the most obvious cause first' (as in, a red snotty nose and a cough is probably a cold, let's not panic about bubonic plague - or Munchausens - until we've excluded more common conditions). All very rational and routine. But a social worker who got a bee in her bonnet felt able to threaten one of the most eminent doctors in the country for daring to challenge her. That level of determination to twist information to fit the story you've already decided on is not confined to that one social worker, or indeed to social workers. It happens to doctors and nurses and speech and language therapists and other professionals, too.
And how on earth are unjustly-accused parents supposed to manage to challenge unwarranted assumptions when even eminent doctors are told their careers are on the line for speaking up?
If you look at child protection, it's quite striking how some panics dominate for a while, then everyone realises it was all a bit overdone but eventually some other fad gains traction. Satanic abuse. Marietta Higgs. MSbP (then rebranded FII). There are of course abusive parents but it's unlikely that many parents who are ill themselves have Munchausen's, yet at one stage if was incredibly popular, especially amongst everyone who was persuaded by Roy Meadows.
There are some issues that I see affecting child protection that are common in healthcare generally. Mind's Death by Indifference reports show what can go so badly wrong when a group of vulnerable people suffer from prejudice, and the people who should be caring for them treat them with disdain. Nothing to do with child protection, but something relevant about treating families with hostility when they dare to challenge the professionals.
Look at the SN boards - it's not uncommon for some professionals have a patronising attitude towards families, believing that 'we are the experts, if you don't do what we tell you, you are obstructive and difficult- even if we've told you several different things that are contradictory'. That can, in thankfully rare circumstances, turn into 'and we'll protect the patient from you because we know best'/it's ruddy inconvenient to have you hanging around making sure your relative has something to eat and cluttering up our ward'.
Sorry, that's ended up being very long, it's just from being alarmed about child protection sometimes not working very well, I can see lots of parallels in other areas where professionals get things wrong.