Drugs and Child Maltreatment

1. The child harmed with drugs.- 2. Identifying the drug.- 3. The clinical presentations.- 4. Social and family context and its relevance to child maltreatment through drugs.- 5. Child protection after a diagnosis of maltreatment through drugs.- 6. Laboratory Testing for Drug Exposure.- 7. Conclusions.- 8. References.

David Joyce is a physician practicing in clinical pharmacology and forensic toxicology. He is professor of medicine and pharmacology at the University of Western Australia, director of drug analysis services at PathWest Laboratory Medicine in Perth, Western Australia and head of clinical pharmacology at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, also in Perth. His consultative practice includes forensic toxicology in medical, coronial and child protection contexts.

Peter Winterton is a child protection and family physician with forty years of experience over a wide area of clinical and medico-legal medicine. He has been involved in child protection work since the late 1970s when the recognition of child sexual abuse medicine became a recognized sub-speciality. From 1999-2013 he was Medical Director of the Child Protection Unit at the Perth Children's Hospital. Especially during this period he became increasingly aware of the interaction of drugs and child maltreatment. He has worked collaboratively with the other author of this book on many cases, being the inspiration for putting this work together. His unique combination of child protection medicine and family medicine has allowed him to appreciate the harm of drug misuse across the whole community and its potential inter- generational effects at every level of society, from prenatal exposure to adulthood.