Safeguarding Children: The Australian experience of safeguarding children: Positive interventions to prevent methadone administration to babies by substance misusing parents and carers.

A cluster of Serious Case Reviews (SCRs) were commissioned by North Wales Safeguarding Children Boards following the purposeful administering of methadone to babies by their parents/carers. This alerted professionals to a previously unrecognised form of child abuse. After completion of these SCRs in quick succession a literature search revealed little or no research of this area of abuse. A quote from one SCR reads “the giving of Methadone on a regular basis is a highly unusual event. This was not something that either the Clinicians looking after the child nor the writers of this review had come across before. While it is not possible within the scope of this review, to consider the wider implications of this it should be acknowledged that research is required in order to understand the scope of this practice and what further measures agencies may need to consider.”

With the experience and knowledge of these cases in North Wales a further literature search revealed a cluster of similar cases in New South Wales, Australia which were being analysed to identify learning and interventions which could be implemented across NSW.

In order to learn more an application was made to the Florence Nightingale Foundation for a Travel Scholarship to learn from the Australian experience of purposeful administering of methadone to babies and in addition to learn from their experience of the wider Safeguarding Children agenda.

The outcomes from the visit included examples of client information that had been developed in NSW and distributed to highlight the dangers of methadone ingestion in babies and children. Permission was given for these resources to be further developed for use in the UK. Following the distribution of these resources in NSW there have been no further incidents of methadone ingestion reported in NSW. Although there is no evidence that this is attributed to the information resources it has been a positive experience for NSW.

In addition much information in relation to other aspects of multi agency working in the field of safeguarding children was gained during the visit.  These include interventions to prevent Non Accidental Health Injuries in young babies, the format and content of Child Death Review bulletins, the NSW process to ensure a state overview of allegations of professional abuse, documentation templates/guidelines for medical abuse examinations and holistic assessment tools to use when children are admitted to paediatric wards.