Child protection threshold talk and ambivalent case formulations in ‘borderline’ care proceedings cases

Abstract

This paper focuses on cases about children who were the subject of child protection plans and designated by children's social care services as ‘borderline’ for compulsory intervention by way of care proceedings. It moves beyond abstract language, into the everyday vocabularies of practice, with the aim of better understanding decision-making in such cases. The majority of these cases had been categorised as neglect (34/47 children). While social workers and managers clearly invoked a threshold or line for compulsory action, their discussions demonstrated a range of factors about why it was not always easy to identify when this line had been crossed.