<P> It is most common for guidance to suggest professionals should focus on the levels of nurturance provided by the carers of the child, where neglect is understood as an issue of the parents' behaviour towards the child . Some authors feel that establishing the failure of parents and caregivers to provide care would be sufficient to conclude that neglect was occurring . Action for Children state that, "A child experiences neglect when the adults who look after them fail to meet their needs" clearly defining neglect as a matter of parental performance . This raises the question about what level of nurturance, a carer or parent needs to fall under, to provoke developmental delay, and how one goes about measuring that accurately . </P> <P> The method, which focuses on the stimulation provided by the carer, can be subject to critique . Neglect is about the child's development being adversely affected by the levels of nurturance, but the carers' provision of nurturance is not always a good indicator of the level of nurturance received by the child . Neglect may be occurring at school, outside of parental care . The child may be receiving nurturance from siblings or through a boarding school education, which compensates for the lack of nurturance provided by the parents . </P> <P> Neglect is a process whereby children experience developmental delay owing to experiencing insufficient levels of nurturance . It has been argued that in principle, this means that when starting an assessment of neglect by identifying developmental delay one needs to then check the levels of nurturance received by the child . Certainly, where guidance on identifying neglect does urge for practitioners to measure developmental levels, some guidance urges practitioners to focus on how developmental levels can be attributed to parental behaviour . However, the narrow focus on parental behaviour can be criticised for unnecessarily ruling out the possible effect of institutionalised neglect, e.g. neglect at school . </P> <P> If one starts by concluding that the levels of nurture received by the child are insufficient, one then needs to consider the developmental levels achieved by the child . </P>

During childhood several developments in information processing occur