the word 'neglect' and may not even indicate that they are being neglected. It is therefore recommended that professionals are proactive in exploring for and identifying neglect. When neglect is disclosed, action is not always taken. Equally, when professionals pass concerns about neglect on to other professionals in the workplace they find those professionals do not always respond. The NSPCC recently reported on the case of a teaching assistant, who contacted the organization with concerns about a particular child. The teaching assistant asked to remain anonymous, fearing that she would be sacked by her school if they were to find out that she'd made the disclosure. Assessing and identifying Assessing and identifying neglect pose several challenges for practitioners. Selecting the right method to identify neglect can be helped by having a clear conceptualization of neglect. Neglect is a process whereby a child experiences developmental delay owing to the fact of not having received sufficient levels of any combination of care, stimulation or nutrition, which collectively can be referred to as nurturance. Given that neglect is a dynamic between the child's development and levels of nurturance, the question in identifying neglect, becomes one of where does one start, with the child's development or with the levels of nurturance? Development-focused methods Some professionals identify neglect by measuring the developmental levels of a child, for if those developmental levels are normal, one can, by definition, conclude that a child is not being neglected. Areas of development that could be measured include weight, height, stamina, social and emotional responses, and speech and motor development. All these features go up to make a medical assessment of whether a child is thriving, so that a professional looking to start an assessment of neglect, might reasonably start with information collected by a doctor. Infants are often weighed and measured when seen by their physicians for well-baby check-ups. The physician initiates a more complete evaluation when the infant's development and functioning are found to be delayed. What this suggests is that social work staff could consult medical notes to establish if the baby or child is failing to thrive, as the first step in a pathway towards identifying neglect. If developmental levels are subnormal, then the identification of neglect requires the professional to establish if those subnormal levels of development can be put down to the level of nurturance experienced by the child. One needs to discount that