Child welfare policy and practice: Rethinking the history of our certainties

Abstract

This paper presents a critical retrospective examination of the policies and practices in child welfare as these relate to the declining well-being of children today. There are four key structures around which child welfare is organized: family, state, market and charity. The development of child welfare practices over time follows a cyclical process modulated by the power relations among these key structures that has favored systemic maintenance over transformational change. It is suggested that child welfare policy and practice is informed by three “certainties” or accepted truths that are embedded in broader cultural understandings and that come to be seen as constants rather than as variables. The certainties we address here are: the dichotomy of public and private; the primacy of autonomous individualism and the capacity of corrective intervention. Acting on these certainties not only limits the scope of problem solving in child welfare, but more fundamentally, it constrains the formulation of critical questions about the nature of child welfare policy and practice. The future of practice must explore a new set of critical questions that challenge these certainties if truly empowering models of child welfare practice are to be developed.