Beyond the state: Conceptualizing protection in community settings

Abstract

In the last two decades, the child welfare system has undergone a series of dramatic changes. We have moved from a broad concern for the social welfare of children and families to a restricted focus on detecting, investigating and assessing instances of child physical and sexual abuse and neglect. Spiraling reports of suspected or actual abuse and neglect, higher caseloads, reduced resources and lack of support for both families and workers, have all contributed to narrowing the focus of contemporary child welfare to one more aptly characterized as child protection. Child protection discourse is concerned with the nature and extent of state intervention into family life for the purpose of protecting children at risk of harm. While much attention has been given to boundaries and procedures for state intervention, it is less common to critically examine the actual activities involved in protection of children. An exception to this is the feminist scholarship on the topic, illustrating that protection is very much a gendered activity entailing the scrutiny of women's mothering practices and often associated with mother-blame. In this paper, another dimension to protection activity is explicated, namely that which occurs in a community setting. Drawing on a qualitative case study of a community agency that serves young mothers, we document its implications in 'child protection' processes and its markedly different approach to protection from formal child welfare agencies. Given the community agency's emphasis on supportive services to mothers, we turn a critical eye on usual conceptions of protection, where it occurs, and how it is accomplished.