Child Protection System Research Articles

Aboriginal Kinship Carers and Children with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder in Western Australia: Advancing Knowledge from an Indigenous and Disability Lens

Children and youth with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) have limited access to assessment, diagnostic, and treatment resources – a distinct disadvantage in meeting their care needs in Australia. Limited knowledge exists on the intersection of FASD, Indigeneity, racism, trauma, and child welfare involvement. Notably, the lack of support for children with FASD increases the risk of adverse outcomes, including incarceration, homelessness, mental health problems, and early mortality. Children with FASD are often cared for in the child protection system by kinship carers, many without a diagnosis or the benefits of FASD informed care. Rarely considered is the Australian response to FASD or the Aboriginal worldview on disability. Qualitative research was utilized to conduct semi-structured interviews with six carers of Indigenous children with FASD–three foster carers and three relative or kinship carers. Seven core themes identified by carers included: FASD awareness, caregiver health, advocacy for the child, mothers of the children with FASD, loss and grief experienced by the carer, social costs, and children in child protection care. Carers identified that limited resources existed to address the disabilities and care needs of children, including training and respite. Financial disparity exists with relative carers receiving less income than foster carers. Carers demonstrated advocacy, resiliency, and resourcefulness in providing care. A lack of knowledge of FASD and core resources in child welfare services were identified as major challenges in providing care. This research examined the caregiving experiences of foster and Aboriginal kinship carers, caring for children with FASD in child protection.

Demanding Change of Colonial Child Protection Systems Through Good Trouble: A Community‑Based Commentary of Resistance and Advocacy

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, led particularly by Grandmothers and Aunties, have persistently challenged statutory child protection systems and the harms they inflict on our children, families, and communities. Reflecting on our own experiences advocating for Aboriginal families and communities at the practice and systems level, this paper explores a reflective commentary approach concerning opportunities and challenges of community-based advocacy toward substantive sustained change. We note how the voices, experiences, and expertise of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people continue to be marginalised or ignored by non-Indigenous authorities, colonial systems, and practice. Despite the apologies and promises of successive governments, contemporary systems continue to reflect “past” approaches. In this context, we honour the strong women who have, and continue, to stand up for their children, families, and communities, further rallying for ongoing resistance and reform.

Trajectories of care leavers according to indicators of psychosocial adjustment: A cohort analysis

BackgroundThe study of the trajectories of care leavers regarding their involvement with a series of public services and institutions contributes to identify some indicators of psychosocial adjustment and therefor make proposals of improvement in their transitions into adulthood. ObjectivesThe present study aims to contribute to knowledge in this regard and the objectives focus on analysing the relationship of care leavers once they become adults with (i) the child protection system as parents, (ii) the penitentiary system, and (iii) residential resources for people with disabilities, analysing the results according to gender, country of origin, type of foster care when they were minors, type of support received as young care leavers and years in care. MethodWith a pioneering study in Spain, we analyse cohort of former looked-after young people from the Autonomous Community of Catalonia born between 1983 and 1993 (N = 8334), based on the analysis of official records. Bivariate data analysis and three logistic regression models was carried out. Results and conclusionsThe results indicate that despite experiencing higher rates of vulnerability in these three areas compared to the general population, it is notable that the majority of this population with a care background overcome adversity without displaying any of these indicators. Differences by the variables of gender, type of placement and support received are discussed to help identify factors influencing the life pathways of former looked-after youth.

Caring records: professional insights into child-centered case note recording

The consequences of poorly processed reports of child abuse and neglect, along with governance challenges in child protection systems, are well-documented. Recent research, inquiries and royal commissions emphasise the need for child-centered and participatory practices that support the rights and dignity of children and their families. However, the challenges of quality case recording in child protection systems and contexts remain unclear. This paper reports on the findings from a pilot study that interviewed (n = 22) and surveyed (n = 56) social work students and social work curriculum developers from Australian Universities and practitioners currently working in the Australian child protection service system. By capturing participants' professional insights, we aim to understand the embedded barriers to transforming child-centered systems by focusing on strengths and possibilities in current practices rather than reiterating deficiencies in recordkeeping. This paper reveals insights into how professionals working in the child protection system understand and are supported in child-centered case note recording and recordkeeping practices. It also identifies the possibilities for the crucial role that interdisciplinary collaboration and alignment between social work and recordkeeping informatics can play in transforming and supporting recordkeeping approaches and practices that prioritise and uphold the rights and dignity of the child.

Reconsidering the best interests of the child construct

BackgroundIn many ways modern child protection systems begin with the 1962 seminal article ‘The battered-child syndrome’ by Kempe and colleagues. The article focused on injuries to a child presented at a hospital that were at variance with the explanation given by a parent regarding the occurrence of the trauma. What followed somewhat later from this seminal article was the introduction in 1974 in the US of mandatory reporting of child abuse and prevention legislation that defined what must be reported. This legislation was influenced by the equally seminal ‘In the best interest of the child’ construct as developed by Goldstein and colleagues that was published in book form in 1973. ObjectiveThe purpose of this commentary is to call attention to limitations to how the “best interests of the child” has been implemented. ConclusionThis article provides an overview of criticisms of the best interests construct and suggestions that the construct is a dated view about what is in a child’s best interests. There is a need for a new balance between explanations about child abuse and neglect (CAN) that takes account of poverty, social disadvantage, and the interests of children and their families.

IMPROVING CHILDREN'S QUALITY OF LIFE THROUGH CHILD-FRIENDLY CITY POLICIES IN THE REGIONAL AUTONOMY SYSTEM

This article examines the issues of children's quality of life in Indonesia, particularly in cities that are not conducive for children, characterized by a high level of violence against children, inadequate infrastructure meeting children's needs, and low stakeholder involvement in policies and child protection in those cities. The research aims to describe efforts to improve the quality of life for children through the implementation of child-friendly city policies within the framework of regional autonomy. The research methodology employed a qualitative approach, utilizing literature reviews and policy studies. The results of this study indicate that efforts to enhance Child-Friendly Cities within the regional autonomy policy framework involve the development of policies, programs, strategies, and development activities prioritizing children's rights. Initiatives include the declaration of Child-Friendly City policies, the development of infrastructure tailored to children's needs, and the enhancement of child protection systems. The implications of this research provide a clear understanding of the crucial role of active stakeholder involvement in building child-friendly cities. By integrating principles of regional autonomy policies, this study establishes a foundation for formulating more effective strategies and programs to enhance the quality of life for children in cities. Furthermore, it offers recommendations for the implementation of similar policies in different regional contexts.

Qualitative exploration of child welfare workers’ decision-making experiences and perspectives on fairness

ABSTRACT Assessing and responding to risks to children’s safety is a primary concern of the child protection system (CPS), and decision-support tools have been developed to assist child welfare workers (CWW). Yet, a limited understanding of CWWs’ decision-making experiences impedes our efforts to effectively support them. This qualitative study examines the unique characteristics of decision-making in CPS through focus groups involving CWWs from an agency in California. Five themes emerged: CWWs’ responsibilities, decision-making characteristics, domain-specific complexities, and CWWs’ perspectives on fairness in decision-making. The findings highlight the need to incorporate CWWs’ experiences and insights in developing future decision-support tools.

‘Supervising children to be good people’: Parents and children's views of child supervision in Laos

AbstractResearchers have paid little attention to child supervision in Laos, an ethnically‐diverse country with a community‐informal child protection system, and where many young children are regularly home alone or with another child. To explore what constitutes (in)adequate child supervision and its perceived effects, we conducted individual interviews with community leaders and professionals (n = 23) and focus group discussions with parents/adult caregivers (n = 74) and 12–17 year‐old children (n = 51) in six rural villages in Saravane and Borikhamxay provinces. Adults and children in both provinces described similar understandings and support systems of child supervision. Mothers are the main caregivers of young children, and literate fathers contribute to supervising school‐age children. Grandparents, older siblings and other relatives, teachers, and village authorities contribute substantively to child supervision. The main aims of supervision are child safety, socialization and moral development in cultural context. Parental unavailability due to employment, farming and migration; limited infrastructure; and lack of material resources are the main barriers to adequate supervision and may result in injuries, school dropout, teenage pregnancy and illicit drug use. Understanding the determinants, consequences, and patterns of child supervision across cultural and socio‐economic groups is needed to inform culturally acceptable strategies to support children and families.

Supervisory neglect: Critical questions regarding child supervision and protection system responses

Concerns about child supervision are present in a large proportion of the circumstances responded to by North American child protection systems. This paper examines different perspectives on low-supervision, from parental-deficit to critical-ecological formulations, to address two questions that are central to assessing reports: why low-supervision is deemed to be harmful, and why low-supervision events occur The implications of this knowledge for child protection system responses is explored, and the conceptualization and application of supervisory neglect as a maltreatment category is critically questioned in order to tease apart what this label may represent in practice. The paper considers how thinking could be reframed to make supervisory neglect a more discrete classification which informs subsequent action, including centering the environmental hazard in supervisory neglect formulations and giving primacy to the impact on the child rather than to parent behavior. The role of normative thinking in decision-making and the risk of perpetuating social inequalities and oppressive power is also considered. More research is required to examine responses and outcomes under current systems of practice, and how child protection workers and systems reflexively analyze reports. In addition, more societal dialogue is needed to prevent widespread risk-averse thinking about how children should be supervised, which can reinforce restrictive child protection policy.

Attachment and the (mis)apprehension of Aboriginal children: epistemic violence in child welfare interventions

Child protection systems in Australia continue to disproportionately investigate Aboriginal families and intervene to remove Aboriginal children, applying non-Indigenous constructs and understandings of child development that contribute to these enduring inequities. Attachment theory is one such prevalent framework with significant applications in child protection. While constructions of attachment have attempted to grapple with diversity, its application in Australian child protection policy and practice reflects dominant socio-cultural perceptions as a foundation for decision making that misrepresents Aboriginal families and their children’s developmental needs. We position this socio-legal application of attachment specifically, and developmental sciences more broadly, within a long history of settler-colonial intervention, providing a façade of scientific authority that perpetrates further harms on Aboriginal children, families and communities. We offer insights about a new frame for attachment that respects Aboriginal worldviews as part of structural transformations to address those harms.

State-level variation of child neglect: Child protection systems investigations and substantiations

State-level variation of child neglect: Child protection systems investigations and substantiations

The Child Protection System in Finland

The Child Protection System in Finland

The overrepresentation of parents with disabilities in child protection

BackgroundRacial disproportionality and disparity have long plagued the United States child protection system (CPS). Determining whether disproportionality exists for parents with various disability diagnoses, and the points at which it may occur within CPS, is important to the provision of appropriate assessment and service delivery to children and families. ObjectiveThis study describes the characteristics of parents with different types of disabilities and estimates their representation at various CPS decision-making points. Participants and settingThe sample consists of a longitudinal, population-level cohort of individuals aged 15–21 identified from statewide educational records, whose disability status could be determined. Statewide CPS records were integrated to determine subsequent CPS involvement (as alleged offenders/parents involved in a child maltreatment investigation, and/or as parents of children placed in out-of-home care [OHC], and/or as parents whose parental rights were terminated [TPR]), or lack thereof. MethodsDescriptive statistics, chi-square analysis, disparity indices with decision-point enumeration, and logistic regression analyses were used to answer study questions. ResultsFindings reveal consistent and significant overrepresentation of parents with disabilities at CPS investigation as compared to parents without disabilities. Additionally there is a fairly similar trend across disability diagnoses in the reduction of overrepresentation at OHC, followed by a diagnosis-specific change in representation as parents with disability move into a situation of TPR, with some parents with disabilities being over-represented and others not. ConclusionAttention to practice, policy, and research are necessary to provide fair and equitable services to parents with disabilities and their children in CPS.

Beyond participation: Parent activism in child protection as a path to transformative change

In light of calls for reform in child protection systems in various countries, including the UK, there has been a growing interest in involving parents who have lived experience of these systems at both the individual case and broader organizational levels. However, critics have argued that these activities are tokenistic and claimed they perpetuate the status quo. This article aims to conceptualize contemporary parental activism within the context of child protection in the UK, differentiating it from mere participation and exploring its potential to facilitate transformative change.Through a content and thematic analysis of in-depth qualitative interviews with parent activists (n = 28), we identified three key features of parental activism: embracing a critical consciousness and aspiring for change, challenging power and oppression, and developing community agency. By employing a political lens to examine various forms of activism, whether in collaboration with or independently of professional allies and systems, we argue that they enable opportunities for achieving transformative change to arise, leading to new, justice-based social arrangements and structures that enhance children's and families’ welfare and well-being.

The Perspectives of Family Foster Care in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia

Reforms of the child protection systems, provision of family- and community-based alternative care has been developed to a certain level in all countries in Central and Eastern Europe and has increased the role of care provided by foster families replacing institutions to ensure that the best interests principle is taken into consideration when children are separated from their families. The research describes the foster care system in the so-called Visegrád countries: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, and the results based on at least 50 interviews in each country conducted by local experts on subjective well-being of foster parents, their perceptions about their roles and place in their respective countries and their needs. The article includes the legal framework, recruitment, preparation and support to foster families, their subjective well-being and needs in the four countries, including the history of their child protection systems to better understand the current situation. The outcomes show differences in approach to foster care, the perception on the roles, responsibilities and needs based on the different traditions, earlier and current policies and practices. Understanding the attitude changes related to the rights of children, those in vulnerable situations, and to their families of origin would be essential to further develop and improve the child welfare and protection systems, and listening to children on their perceptions and the realisation of their rights.

Denmark covered in international social work

Üsküdar University Faculty of Health Sciences organized an event titled "International Social Work: Social Work Education and Child Protection System in Denmark".

Immediate and Lasting Results for Children and Families Engaged in the Child Protection System in Australia

Immediate and Lasting Results for Children and Families Engaged in the Child Protection System in Australia

Do we recognize child witnesses of domestic violence as victims?

The family, as the primary social group, should provide the child with protection, security and love. However, some families can be the source of a child?s most intense vulnerability. In these families, children may be exposed to different types of violence or may witness domestic violence. Although the Republic of Serbia guarantees the right to a safe family environment with a large number of international and internal legal instruments, numerous professionals in the child protection system still do not recognize child witnesses of domestic violence as victims. Children are not only victims of domestic violence when directly affected, but also as witnesses in all situations when they are exposed to acts of violence that one family member perpetrates on other members. Children are exposed to violence in the family when they directly observe the violence, but also when they hear sounds, blows, and screams from another room, or when they see the consequences of violence against a family member (bruises, injuries) or feel them (sadness, low mood, fear) see the intervention of the police, emergency and social services, or when they hear relatives and people around them retelling acts of violence. Contemporary findings confirm that exposure to domestic violence harms various spheres of child development (immediate or delayed, short-term or long-term). The subject of this paper is representation of the position of children witnesses of domestic violence in family law, through the review of key international and domestic standards (laws and policies), research and practice analysis. The objective of the paper is to emphasize to the professionals working in the child protection system the importance of recognizing children witnesses of domestic violence as victims, for the system to be able to provide the necessary protection, crucial help and support, i.e. conditions for growth and development in a safe environment, and for the children to achieve the rights which belong to them - meaning freedom from all forms of violence which is an obligation the Republic of Serbia took by ratification of international agreements.

What do you Think about Parenting? Challenges to Cohesiveness in Child Protection Teams

AbstractChild protection work requires professionals to manage the different perspectives regarding intervention aims and strategies associated with different personal, academic and organisational backgrounds. Parenting assessment is a determinant task for intervention and for children's future where universal or automatic criteria remain unavailable. This study aimed to explore and characterise the existing agreement (and disagreement) between child protection workers on statements related to judgements on parenting. A total of 325 Portuguese social workers participated in the study, mostly with a background in social work and psychology and more than six years of experience in child protection. Professionals were required to distribute 50 sentences in a scoring sheet (Q‐sort methodology) with 11 points. The results were interpreted through the matrix of operationalisation of minimally adequate parenting. Three main answer strands revealed different focuses in sorts' configurations: the child, the procedures and the child's ecology. The clear difference between the factors could contribute to maintaining the child protection system as an adversarial one, and not as an effectively cooperative system. To promote team cohesiveness and intervention success, and to reinforce professionals' wellbeing and resilience, metacommunication on parenting assessment criteria is proposed as a determinant strategy.

Attachment Theory: Its Absence and Role in Deinstitutionalisation Strategies

Institutional care for children without families is still widely used globally as a child protection intervention, despite concerns that it violates child rights, separates children from their families, puts children at risk of abuse and neglect and is harmful for child development. This article applied attachment theory to analyse the use and risks of institutional care. It also discusses the challenges and consequences of implementing deinstitutionalisation strategies, a series of policy-driven activities aimed at transitioning a child protection system from an institutional to family-based model of childcare. A secondary data analysis found the progressive elimination of institutions can be effective where deinstitutionalisation strategies implement an attachment approach to improve institutions alongside building permanency planning capacity for children. This article proposes that institutional care may have a role as a child protection intervention where it is temporary, recognises a child’s need for secure attachment and facilitates safe permanency in a family setting.