by Adam McCullochFellow Community Care blogger Simon Stevens wonders - not entirely seriously - if we'll see the day when you could be arrested for eating a Big Mac or ordering fish and chips. I laughed out loud on reading this but then I noticed a Community Care poll from last month (12 May).
It asks whether allowing a child to become obese should be counted as child abuse. Incredibly, amazingly, astonishingly, 81% equated obesity with abuse.
So Simon, it looks as if your outlandish prediction has legs!
To those who voted 'yes' I start by asking 'what is obesity?'. Next I would like to ask if you believe every large child is being force fed.
Child abuse is obviously a criminal offence; being fat isn't. Child neglect more often, I would have thought, leads to children being malnourished than grossly overweight.
I can't think of any basis for believing child obesity amounts to child abuse. But apparently I'm in a small minority.
But maybe I've misunderstood the issue... any views?
I can come from the comfortable position of having voted no.. but then, I don't work in children's services. I just think it depends on too many variable and where you draw the lines but I can't see any circumstance where I would actually equate it with abuse - I'm not making a very good job of arguing but I think that's because I agree!
child neglect is very rarely a 'one off problem' or a single facetted issue - assessing the wider circumstances of that child and the parenting that they receive is what does or does not lead to a label of child abuse being applied.
I think the answer to this is maybe. You link malnourishment to neglect but surely feeding your child huge amounts of fattening food when they are overweight can be considered abusive, given that abuse is often about actively damaging your child. Why is starving your child abusive but overfeeding them not? Both have very serious health implications.
I did once work a case where two children were so overweight that their health was in danger and this was attributable to neglect.
I.e, Mother did nothing but lie on the sofa all day complaining that her children were 'out of control' and father actively carried on feeding both mother and children on unhealthy fatty food. Mother was at the point of not being able to move because of her weight; children smoked, drank alcohol and gorged on fattening food...they were 12 and 13 and well over that in stones...nealy 20 stone in fact.
Their health was at risk, their schooling suffered, their quality of life was appalling and they ended up in care.
The primary issue was the children's weight and that was the reason for the referral. Surely by allowing a child to become so overweight that their health or even their life is at risk is abusive?