A specialist in paediatric medicine said on Saturday that the government needs to further step up support for abused children, despite a proposal to make it mandatory for professionals to report suspected cases of abuse.

Patrick Ip from the University of Hong Kong said about 1,500 abuse cases were reported last year and the number is rising, with many incidents dating back to the pandemic. He said inappropriate parenting was often a major contributing factor.

"Because of the Covid pandemic, many of the children cannot have proper social interactions and cannot be exposed to physical schooling with support from the teachers and the social workers," Ip said.

"So when those children, in particular those children with developmental or behavioural issues, need to be confined to the household environment for a long period of time, many of the parents actually do not have the good parenting skills and capability to handle the emotion of the child," he added.

"And also the mental stress and the mood of those parents have been severely affected as well."

The expert noted that the number of reported cases remains high at a time when the government is moving towards mandatory reporting. Under legislation published in May, social workers, teachers, nurses and doctors would face penalties of up to three months in prison and a HK$50,000 fine for failing to report cases involving "serious harm".

Ip said the administration should do more to help victims, noting that abuse could lead to severe trauma, resulting in behavioural, learning, or health problem.

"We expect the government to invest a little bit more in both social education and medical support of all those victims of child abuse in order to have a close monitoring of their well-being, and also support the needs in terms of learning and development of all those children," he said.

"[We need] to try to back up all those parents to relieve their stress and also to better improve their mood in order to ensure the children can be grow up in a healthy and safe environment."

Asked about an incident this week in which girls aged two and four were admitted to hospital after allegedly being fed candy containing cannabidiol, he said professionals working with substance abusers need to also focus on their family members, especially those with young children.