Ideal Queen's Speech: Protect children from emotional abuse

"My Government will introduce a Bill to protect children from emotional abuse under criminal law."

Child neglect is the most common form of child abuse and the most common reason for a child protection referral across the UK. Neglect can affect all aspects of a child’s physical and emotional development, and in the most severe cases can lead to psychiatric or mental health problems, or to death.

Emotional abuse can include continually singling a child out, repeated verbal attacks, forcing them to suffer degrading punishments or a perpetrator making a child witness domestic violence. The effects of this cruelty are long lasting and profound.

Action for Children has been campaigning for 3 years to update the criminal law to recognise the seriousness of emotional abuse alongside physical abuse.

Last week the NSPCC released new statistics showing that this year over 8,000 people contacted their helpline regarding emotional abuse, with 5,354 being referred to local authorities as serious cases. These figure show that public awareness of emotional abuse is rising whilst providing further evidence about the scale of emotional abuse.

There is a loop-hole in the current criminal law which does not allow us to recognise severe emotional abuse as a crime.

We need a common understanding about the impact that severe emotional abuse can have on a child which we know to be just as damaging to a child’s development as physical abuse. We also need to strip out the unhelpful language and update the law so that police and social workers can work to the same definition of child neglect, and more effectively protect children together.

Research tells us that countries around the world have looked at their laws on child maltreatment and made changes to explicitly include emotional abuse. These examples provide helpful comparisons when it comes to defining severe emotional abuse and updating our laws in the UK.

We know that social care responses need to move towards early intervention with families in order to make prevention the cure. In the vast majority of cases of child neglect, the solution is to work with the family and to help parents to create a safe, happy home where their children can thrive. This is something that Action for Children staff do on the ground every day, providing practical support to thousands of children and families. But sadly, not all cases of child neglect can be protected by the civil law.

In the 81 years since the 1933 Act was drafted, our understanding of the harm caused by emotional child neglect has developed significantly. If our laws are to truly protect vulnerable children, the UK must catch up with other countries and reflect this in our own criminal laws.