Definition
Any recorded act of commission or omission by a parent or caregiver resulting in harm, the potential for harm or threat of child harm, including neglect, psychological, physical, sexual and emotional abuse. Harm does not need to be intended.1 In the UK, statutory guidelines of CM include child exposure to IPV, and maternal evidence for omission or commission during pregnancy such as NAS and FAS.
Includes indicators such as neglect (pre-post birth), child protection recordings or out-of-home placements by social care services (see code list browser).
Suspected CM included any maltreatment-related indicator with codes or measures describing presentations likely to refer to CM but without mentioning the underlying cause (e.g. harm caused by non-specified person), safeguarding procedures or child social service interventions.48 For instance, the “suspected CM, NOS” indicator contains codes mentioning “Victim of sexual abuse”, “Multi-professional risk assessment done”, “Assault in the home”
Indicator list
Code list
Child maltreatment (1312)
Implementation
ACE domain, Indicator(s) | Rule-based algorithms | Scrip/code* |
---|---|---|
CM, FGM | Apply codes mentioning circumcision to female children only (e.g. “54314 - routine or ritual circumcision”). Code list includes markers for rule inclusion. | cm_fgm <- merged_data %>% filter(Domain=="CM" & individual=="4" & gender=="female" |
Publications
Gilbert R, Fluke J, O’Donnell M, Gonzalez-Izquierdo A, Brownell M, Gulliver P, Janson S, Sidebotham P. Child maltreatment: variation in trends and policies in six developed countries. The Lancet. 2012 Feb 25;379(9817):758-72. Code list can be found here.
Royal College of General Practitioners. Child safeguarding toolkit.
Go back
Dr Shabeer Syed, Clinical Psychologist & Senior Research Associate
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
gtag(‘config’, ‘G-HKLPGD444V’); </script>