The welfare ministry has created guidelines to help child consultants spot child abuse, officials said Wednesday.

The package includes a 10-point checklist that has points on bruising and scarring as well as a child's physical growth, officials said Wednesday. It contains graphs showing a child's average height and weight at each age to check whether a child is developing properly.

The guidelines will be given to child-consultation centers and municipal governments nationwide to help determine if children have been abused and to develop measures to help them, according to the officials at the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.

Consultants will also check whether the guardians have alcohol problems, if the parents show regret for having had children and whether the family is isolated from the community.

Consultants are expected to use the guidelines to help alleviate abusive environments so children can return home, or to help them live independently.

Under the revised Child Welfare Law, municipal governments have since Friday taken over some duties from child-consultation centers, which apparently could not handle the growing number of requests for help from communities.

The ministry created the guidelines partly to help municipalities with little experience in handling abuse cases.