'Take your action for children' neglect campaign

Child neglect is a major feature of life in Wales, with some studies suggesting 10% of children are at risk. Neglect robs children of the childhood they deserve, and tears their families apart. 

As part of Action for Children's 'Take your action for children' neglect campaign they've launched their first annual review of the issue in partnership with the University of Stirling. It's called 'Child neglect in 2011' and it looks at what neglect is, what professionals think about it, how it's tackled currently and how this can be improved. 

The research highlighted that no one knows exactly how many children are neglected, that people are worried about child neglect, but don't always feel able to report it, that over half of social workers and a third of police officers say they feel powerless to help and that there are not enough services to help neglected children, and cuts are making this worse.

Action for Children are asking the Welsh Government to help local authorities improve their recording of neglect and measuring how well they tackle it, so they know what to do to improve, and to make local authorities get better at giving neglected children and families assistance to tackle problems early.  

Action for Children is also asking people to take two minutes to forward a prewritten email to their AM (through an automated system so all you do is enter your name and postcode and it's forwarded directly to your AM). 

Find out more on the Action for Wales website.