In the case of Kai Kai (剴剴) — a one-year-old boy who died, allegedly from abuse by a Taipei nanny surnamed Liu (劉) — a Child Welfare League Foundation (兒福聯盟) social worker was handcuffed and detained by police for falsifying home visit records and failing to detect the abuse at an early stage.
Meanwhile, many are wondering why the Taipei City Government’s Department of Health did not include the boy in the government’s Specialized Doctor Child Care Program.
The handling of the case has caused panic among medical groups online, with doctors worried that they could also be held accountable for failing to detect child abuse cases in a timely manner. Some are planning to withdraw from the program.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare launched the Specialized Doctor Child Care Pilot Program in 2020. The ministry invited health bureaus throughout the nation to incorporate a “list of children under the age of three in high-risk and vulnerable families” provided by social care bureaus with their designated cases, and assigned them to specialized doctors who would regularly monitor the children’s health and development.
Why was Kai Kai not included in the program? Taipei City’s Health and Social Welfare departments should provide an explanation.
Had he been included, the abuse might have been detected at an early stage through home visits stipulated in the doctor care plan.
However, even if Kai Kai was included in the specialized doctor program, would the tragedy have been avoided?
It is doubtful, because apart from meeting with the children in clinics and making phone calls to encourage those looking after them to send them for vaccinations and regular health check-ups, the program only has home visits for high-risk children once or twice a year.
During such visits, doctors might not necessarily be able to detect child abuse unless the child’s health is extremely poor or they have new or old wounds that cannot be reasonably explained during a medical examination. Doctors are naturally obliged to report a suspected case of child abuse to health or social bureaus.
However, abused children are usually not taken to a hospital by abusive nannies or parents, so how can such cases be detected?
Instead of doctors, perhaps neighbors are more likely to notice whether a child is abused. Therefore, communities should be encouraged to report cases of child abuse to the police.
Otherwise, doctors might withdraw from the program if they are worried about being handcuffed someday, just like the Child Welfare League Foundation social worker — despite the fact that they were actually being investigated for forging home visit records.
Lin Yung-zen is president of the Taiwan Primary Care Association and a supervisor of the Taiwan Pediatric Association.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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