AN ACTION plan is being put in place in hospitals in Southampton following the report into the death of Victoria Climbie.

Child protection bosses at Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust (SUHT) have been working with colleagues at the city's primary care trust and social services to put together a list of actions to be taken within hospitals.

The move follows an inquiry into Victoria Climbie, a little girl from London who died after the authorities in the capital repeatedly failed to spot physical abuse by her minders.

Dr Peter Betts, a paediatrician for SUHT, told members of the trust's board at a meeting that the plan was essential.

He mentioned one example of an eight-day-old child being admitted to the hospital suffering eight fractures and a bleed into the brain and said this was not an unusual occurrence.

Staff at SUHT are currently investigating some 30 child protection cases every month. These are incidents where staff question whether or not the child's protection is an issue.

Senior child protection nurse Brenda Harris said one of the main points of the action plan was to increase the strength of specialist staff and introduce a procedure for staff to follow to ensure they are assessing each case appropriately.

She added: "We hope our action plan will promote good practice. All of these actions need to be spread through education and training for staff.

"If you take all the cases, then for the bulk of them we hope we get it right, but there's always going to be some cases where we wrongly judge parents and there's always going to be times when we misjudge what's happening to children.

"But we are pretty sure that, in most cases, our staff pick up on it and follow it through well."