Researchers and practitioners in the field of child maltreatment often consider child abuse and neglect as a single or repeated series of isolated events. However, such an approach fails to acknowledge that some children's development is characterised by repeated incidents of maltreatment over a prolonged period of time. It also fails to address the cumulative impact of repeated victimisation on children's physical, psychological and developmental outcomes. In this paper, the experience of maltreatment is explored using data from a statutory child protection service, and a new conceptual approach for describing chronic maltreatment is proposed.