![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/alumni\/files\/2017\/06\/Bob-Birrell-Video-201x300.jpg\")
<\/a>On April 27th, at the 2017 Victorian Forensic Paediatric Medical Service (VFPMS) seminar on The Medical Evaluation of Child Abuse, Bob Birrell was honoured as a visionary and pioneer, whose work formed the basis of an important field of medicine. He was given a special award on behalf of the Royal Children\u2019s Hospital, the VFPMS and the RCH Medical Alumni.<\/p>\nFifty years ago, Bob Birrell and his police surgeon\u00a0b<\/em>rother John, published two seminal papers\u00a0describing the features of child physical abuse\u00a0and advocated bringing the police into hospitals where cases of abuse were being treated.<\/p>\n At the time, they were not believed and there was strong opposition to police involvement from Bob\u2019s seniors.<\/p>\n It is now abundantly clear that the Birrells were right and the deniers were wrong. A whole discipline of paediatrics has developed to deal with child abuse and neglect. This event was proper\u00a0<\/span>acknowledgement from the Royal Children\u2019s Hospital, the forensic community and the RCH Alumni that Bob\u2019s\u00a0outstanding and important contributions should never be forgotten.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The award ceremony was watched by 30 Alumni and by the non-Alumni attendees at the seminar. A<\/strong> tribute to Bob Birrell was given by Dr Kevin Collins<\/strong><\/a>, president of the RCH Medical Alumni, and other tributes were given by A\/Prof.\u00a0Matt Sabin, Chief of Medicine, Dr Hugo Gold, the Alumni Vice President, and Dr Anne Smith, the Director\u00a0of the Victorian Forensic Paediatric Medical Service (VFPMS).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The award constituted a framed certificate and after the ceremony there followed a lunch, which was attended by 22 members of the Alumni and by Bob and Jan Birrell and their son Mr Peter Birrell.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Bob Birrell honoured for “Child Abuse” work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":108,"featured_media":488,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-events","category-in-the-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/108"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487"}],"version-history":[{"count":35,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":573,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487\/revisions\/573"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/alumni\/files\/2017\/05\/Birrell-Award-212x300.jpg\")
<\/p>\nVideo recording of event<\/strong><\/a><\/h1>\n