Another NSPCC Campaign

According to an article in the Daily Record the NSPCC are launching the Now I know campaign and going into every primary school in Scotland to teach children how to recognise abuse and where to go for help. About 9000 primary school children are suffering from neglect or sexual abuse, they say.

We are told that `Eighty per cent of kids on child protection registers in Scotland are under 11 but only 14 per cent of kids who contact the NSPCC’s ChildLine are in that age group, indicating others are too young to know the signs and seek help.`

But not too young to be picked up by Child Protection Services?  So from where does the NSPCC get its figure of 9000 primary school children are suffering and what percentage of those are sexually abused ? This figure is very misleading.

According to Scottish Government statistics, there were 2706 children on the child protection register at 31 July 2012. The most common concern was emotional abuse (38%) and the least common concern was `the child placing themselves at risk `(2%). The second least common concern was sexual abuse (8%). It is also important to know that a `concern` can be merely a suspicion and that no hard evidence is required.

Table 2.3 shows that for the 2,706 children on the child protection register at 31 July 2012 there were 5,705 concerns at the case conferences at which they were registered - an average of 2.1 concerns per conference. The most common concerns identified were emotional abuse (38%), neglect (37%) and parental substance misuse (34%).

Table 2.3 Concerns identified⁽¹⁾ at the case conferences of children who were on the child protection register at 31 July 2012

Concerns identified at case conferences	% of children registered at 31 July 2012
		2012
Neglect	1,006	37%
Parental substance misuse	918	34%
Parental Mental Health Problems	516	19%
Non-engaging family	453	17%
Domestic abuse	758	28%
Sexual abuse	229	8%
Physical abuse	471	17%
Emotional abuse	1,016	38%
Child Placing themselves at risk	46	2%
Child Exploitation	9	0%
Other concerns	283	10%
Total concerns	5,705	211%

(1) The 2012 data should not be compared to previous years' data on category of abuse/risk. The Scottish Government published revised National Guidance for Child Protection in Scotland in December 2010 which expanded the categories for abuse/concerns identified at case conferences. As a result, many of the categories in 2012 may have been included in other categories previously or would not have been counted as they have no equivalent in previous years.


It looks very likely that the NSPCC are going to be supplying primary school children with the wrong kind of information to protect themselves, creating alarm and suspicion in otherwise innocent children who know nothing about sexual abuse. What is interesting is that most children who phone ChildLine complain about bullying at school, an intractable problem that has not been eradicated in 20 years of ChildLine.

Undaunted the charity hopes to raise £2.5 million in Scotland for the Now I know campaign.

Also see this article:

TheOpinionSite.org asks, if the NSPCC is such a bunch of money-grabbing, over-paid charlatans, why are they still allowed to have such influence over government policy and allowed to tell lies that are conveniently ignored by those in authority when exposed as such?

The answers are simple, if rather depressing:

"The NSPCC is the only charity with statutory powers of investigation and referral. This means that the charity is 100% an arm of the government of the day and as such, is allowed to continue its dishonest practices with impunity."

• Its activities and falsely secured respectability mean that the government has a ‘fall guy’ when a policy goes horribly wrong. Ministers just blame the NSPCC advice and its alleged ‘research’ and claim the government was acting in good faith.
• The royal family and celebrities have strong funding connections with the NSPCC. They give it an air of further respectability and surround it with a protected status that most will not even dare to criticise.

NSPCC MAINTAIN ABUSE HYSTERIA AS DONATIONS FALL