Interview: A national voice for nurses - Sue Smith, chair, NationalSafeguarding Children Association for Nurses

"He said, 'without national standards there is no equity'. And he'sright - if we all have different standards and ways of working, the oneswho don't get the fairest deal are the children," she says. And shepoints out that despite the crucial nature of safeguarding work, namedand designated nurses had to work without uniform standards, training orpriorities up to 2004.

So a year ago, Smith, a principal lecturer in child health at theUniversity of Huddersfield, helped found the UK-wide NationalSafeguarding Children Association for Nurses (NScan) to create anational standard and give the profession a voice.

As an example of why the association was needed, Smith, a former nurseconsultant in safeguarding children, highlights the absence ofnationally available training strategies used by named nurses to spreadgood practice to nursing colleagues. "We were finding that people in newjobs were starting from scratch with nothing to go on. Yet many of ushad already sat down and started to write down information about theChildren Act 1989 for colleagues.